Thiruvananthapuram:
Terminator 2, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and X-Men: First Class are all top Hollywood productions and what sets these movies apart are their perplexing visual effects (VFX). The man credited for leading the VFX team behind these movies, and many others, Michael Karp, held a session on the visual effects trends in Hollywood and Bollywood here on Saturday. The session was jointly organized by the Kerala Chalachitra Academy and Toonz Animation Academy.
The VFX expert, who has been part of several VFX-centric movies like Titanic, Batman vs Superman and Hunger Games, has been residing in India for the past three years. “India has evolved to become a centre for all of Hollywood’s VFX needs. Availability of talented yet cheap labour has prompted producers to shift almost all animation activities to India. Most Hollywood movies are now animated in India,” said Karp. VFX work for a film which may cost $100 million in the US, could be made at a staggeringly low cost of $10 million in India without compromising on the quality, he said.
“There was a time when the quality of VFX facilities and talent available in India was inferior to what Hollywood has to offer. But the budget available for doing Bollywood movies are high nowadays and therefore movie makers do not have to compromise on quality,” Karp said. Asked about the quality of the animation training institutes in India, he said that though there are some which offer top notch training, majority fails to impart necessary skills required to work on Hollywood films. All VFX studios have their own in house training facilities that sculpture inductees to levels they require.
Though the movie industry is big and despite several VFX work of Hollywood movies now being done in India, Karp said only the ‘cream of the crop’ gets to work with the best studios in the country. “There are about 10,000 or 20,000 people making movies for billions of others. Therefore the rate of employment generation in VFX remains relatively low despite the industry’s large size,” Karp said.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Thiruvananthapuram / TNN / July 10th, 2016