NVIDIA Spices up Bollywood VFX Creation
Renowned for a rich culture dating back thousands of years, India is building a new cultural legacy-the movie business. Popularly known as Bollywood, the Indian film industry annually releases 1,000 films, approximately 10 times what Hollywood produces each year.
Despite this prolific output, the film business in this movie-obsessed society of more than a billion people is just getting geared up. For years, moviegoers have flocked to Bollywood's traditional song-and-dance fare, which was once described by NPR reporter Holly Kernan as "three to four hours long, chock full of songs, and never sticking to just one genre."
While no one foresees those kinds of films going away, the business is certainly expanding creatively as well as financially. Indian filmmakers are increasingly using digital filmmaking technologies for visual effects, animation and post-production. The rise of multiplexes is allowing a wider variety of films to be distributed. Meanwhile, Bollywood is investing in Hollywood -- and vice versa.
"What's happened is, the Bollywood folks are starting to take notice of what's going on worldwide, and they're saying 'We want to get involved in this,'" said Laura Dohrmann, NVIDIA's Digital Film Group Marketing Director, who heads up the company's Digital Bollywood Initiative. Based in Mumbai, Dohrmann's role is to help local studios develop the digital filmmaking community with training, expertise and educational initiatives. She also evangelizes technologies such as NVIDIA's Quadro GPU accelerator cards, which have a huge following in Bollywood. Because of her regular interaction with most of India's major production houses, Dohrmann has a unique perspective on the evolution of Bollywood filmmaking.
Among the milestones she cites is last year's release of KRRISH, the first major superhero movie to be produced in Bollywood, complete with splashy visual effects. Two other recent films, OM SHANTI OM and CHAK DE INDIA, featured visual effects by Red Chilies, a production company founded by prominent actor Shahrukh Khan. At the same time, the growing business is attracting international players. Sony, DreamWorks and Disney have forged relationships with Indian production houses, and mainstays from the Hollywood production company such as Rhythm & Hues are opening dedicated facilities in India.
"Rhythm & Hues is here in both Mumbai and Hyderabad," Dohrmann said. "They won the Oscar this year for Visual FX on THE GOLDEN COMPASS. So now, everybody wants to work with Rhythm & Hues, because they know they do good work."
"The way Rhythm & Hues chose to address the Indian market is unique, because it's not an outsourcing or offshore model," said Prashant Buyyala, managing director of Rhythm & Hues India. "Essentially, the artists and support staff are like employees of the Los Angeles office in another building."
"We kind of moved the building halfway around the world," Buyyala added. "We don't have any separate Indian projects, or Asian projects, or separate tasks that are done in India. It's all one common pool of resources. We have the same network, the same software, the same projects, the same tasks and everything."
Most of Rhythm & Hues' projects are for Hollywood feature films or television commercials. When a project comes in, if a producer needs 30 animators, they are drawn from a geographically agnostic pool. "It could happen to be that 10 of the animators are in India, and 20 happen to be in L.A.," Buyyala said. "The same shot actually can go back and forth between all the facilities. For a single shot, the animation might be done in L.A., the lighting might be done in Mumbai, and the final effects might be done in Hyderabad. So, it's completely transparent, even in a single shot."
Despite this prolific output, the film business in this movie-obsessed society of more than a billion people is just getting geared up. For years, moviegoers have flocked to Bollywood's traditional song-and-dance fare, which was once described by NPR reporter Holly Kernan as "three to four hours long, chock full of songs, and never sticking to just one genre."
While no one foresees those kinds of films going away, the business is certainly expanding creatively as well as financially. Indian filmmakers are increasingly using digital filmmaking technologies for visual effects, animation and post-production. The rise of multiplexes is allowing a wider variety of films to be distributed. Meanwhile, Bollywood is investing in Hollywood -- and vice versa.
"What's happened is, the Bollywood folks are starting to take notice of what's going on worldwide, and they're saying 'We want to get involved in this,'" said Laura Dohrmann, NVIDIA's Digital Film Group Marketing Director, who heads up the company's Digital Bollywood Initiative. Based in Mumbai, Dohrmann's role is to help local studios develop the digital filmmaking community with training, expertise and educational initiatives. She also evangelizes technologies such as NVIDIA's Quadro GPU accelerator cards, which have a huge following in Bollywood. Because of her regular interaction with most of India's major production houses, Dohrmann has a unique perspective on the evolution of Bollywood filmmaking.
Among the milestones she cites is last year's release of KRRISH, the first major superhero movie to be produced in Bollywood, complete with splashy visual effects. Two other recent films, OM SHANTI OM and CHAK DE INDIA, featured visual effects by Red Chilies, a production company founded by prominent actor Shahrukh Khan. At the same time, the growing business is attracting international players. Sony, DreamWorks and Disney have forged relationships with Indian production houses, and mainstays from the Hollywood production company such as Rhythm & Hues are opening dedicated facilities in India.
"Rhythm & Hues is here in both Mumbai and Hyderabad," Dohrmann said. "They won the Oscar this year for Visual FX on THE GOLDEN COMPASS. So now, everybody wants to work with Rhythm & Hues, because they know they do good work."
"The way Rhythm & Hues chose to address the Indian market is unique, because it's not an outsourcing or offshore model," said Prashant Buyyala, managing director of Rhythm & Hues India. "Essentially, the artists and support staff are like employees of the Los Angeles office in another building."
"We kind of moved the building halfway around the world," Buyyala added. "We don't have any separate Indian projects, or Asian projects, or separate tasks that are done in India. It's all one common pool of resources. We have the same network, the same software, the same projects, the same tasks and everything."
Most of Rhythm & Hues' projects are for Hollywood feature films or television commercials. When a project comes in, if a producer needs 30 animators, they are drawn from a geographically agnostic pool. "It could happen to be that 10 of the animators are in India, and 20 happen to be in L.A.," Buyyala said. "The same shot actually can go back and forth between all the facilities. For a single shot, the animation might be done in L.A., the lighting might be done in Mumbai, and the final effects might be done in Hyderabad. So, it's completely transparent, even in a single shot."
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