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What Hollywood found in India

IndoCarib

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FORTUNE -- India's IT industry emerged as a major global force over the last decade by providing all manner of left-brained services, from coding to call support. Now, as entertainment becomes more and more computational thanks to complex 3D special effects and animation, Indian firms are becoming crucial to the world's creative industries as well.

The global film industry is packing movies with ever costlier digital wizardry as it competes with new entertainment choices, from social networks to mobile phones. In 2009, nine out of the world's ten top-grossing films relied heavily on visual effects. These days, as much as a third of the budget for major Hollywood films is earmarked for special effects, according to a research report by accounting firm KPMG. The annual amount spent by filmmakers on special effects in the world's top five markets totals some $1.9 billion.

And yet, the domestic companies responsible for producing all those digital alien creatures and razzle-dazzle explosions have felt squeezed. They often struggle with razor-thin margins due to high labor and technology costs. That's where Indian firms have stepped in. Their cheaper wages result in costs for visual effects shots that are about 25% to 50% of what they would be in the U.S., according to a report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. (Increasingly powerful high-speed networks that make zipping around massive data and video files easy haven't hurt either.)

Not surprisingly, Indian special effects, animation and video gaming firms have been growing. PriceWaterhouseCoopers predicts the industry will grow at a 21% annual clip, more than doubling in size to $1.84 billion by 2015.


That growth has already attracted major projects. This summer, James Cameron's Digital Domain opened studios in partnership with Reliance MediaWorks, an affiliate of India's Reliance ADA conglomerate. What's more, Reliance ADA provided about half the $825 million in financing for DreamWorks SKG (DWA) in 2009. Recent Digital Domain projects include Real Steel and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

In March, Lucasfilm said it would partner with India's Prime Focus for the 3D conversion of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which is due for theatrical re-release at the start of 2012. Indian companies like Crest Animation Studios and DQ Entertainment, meanwhile, have announced new projects with Lionsgate Entertainment (LGF) and France Television this year.

In partnering with production companies doing cutting edge work, some Indian players see an opportunity to take their industries to a new level. Aggressive deal making could set the stage for technology and skills transfers, much like it has in developing economies around the world in industries as diverse as mining and automobile manufacturing.

Naturally, RelianceMediaWorks's CEO, Anil Arjun, is bullish. He argues that the company's deal with Digital Domain will be "a game-changer due to the significant leap in available capacities and technology transfer" it will allow. The company currently has a roster of 600 3D and visual effects artists but plans to expand to 1,000 next year. That should allow it to take a bigger slice of a ballooning market.

The interest for Indian firms doesn't stop at making better pictures for Western audiences, either. Many are also eyeing the opportunity to repurpose advanced entertainment technology for the fast growing and content hungry domestic market. A boom in multiplex theaters and cable and satellite services is leading to massive demand for films. PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts the number of multiplexes in India will double to about 500 by 2015 and that the television market will expand to $13.4 billion from $6.8 billion over that time.

The industry faces plenty of obstacles, though -- many similar to the ones traditional IT firms struggled with. Talent is in short supply and Indian companies have to invest heavily in training employees. But the scarcity results in poaching and controlling attrition is now a key challenge for executives, KPMG notes. What's more, other Asian countries are increasingly competitive. Singapore and Malaysia, for instance, are offering aggressive funding and subsidies to woo business.

Still, if the industry can overcome these hurdles and realize its bold ambitions, it could play a major role in what consumers see on the silver screen.

What Hollywood found in India - Fortune Tech

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'Puss in Boots' heats up India’s animation market

Bangalore: When Antonio Banderas drawls, “Is it hot in here or is it just me?” in Puss in Boots, DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.’s spin-off from its Shrek movies, 200 animators in a Bangalore studio will probably concur that it is indeed hot, with the here being the business of animation.

For Indian animation, Puss in Boots, which has topped charts for the second straight week in the US and Canadian theatres, is indeed a milestone of sorts.

As much as a fifth of the animated sequences in the movie was done at Technicolor India Pvt. Ltd, which put a 200-strong Dreamworks dedicated unit on the job. This was the first time a part of a Dreamworks full-length feature film was made in India.

“What we did here is integrated with the work done back in the West. Nobody can tell which sequences came from here,” says Biren Ghose, country head of Technicolor India. “Today we do what they do.”

Puss in Boots, a story of the cheeky cat bandit before he meets Shrek and Donkey in Shrek 2, has taken in $34 million in its opening Halloween weekend. It is expected to be released in Indian cinema halls on 4 December.

To be sure, full-length animated movies targeted at the US and global markets, the world’s largest, have earlier been made with Indian involvement.

Mumbai-based Crest Animation Studios Ltd co-produced Alpha & Omega, a story of two wolves, which opened in the US theatres last September and grossed $25 million as on 28 November 2010, according to the Internet Movie Database, a unit of Amazon.com Inc.

India’s fledgling animation industry, which has been the next big thing for several years now, is likely to see more work coming its way.

Dreamworks’ studio in Bangalore has earlier worked on television episodes and supplementary content for DVDs and the successful Shrek spin-off was a significant evolution.

“Puss in Boots is a beachhead for Indian animation,” Ghose says.

“It really is a landmark. The Indian animation industry has grown up both in terms of skills and investment. Many top studios come here,” says Timmy Kandhari, entertainment and media leader with audit and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers India. The country doesn’t yet have all the “skill sets” admits Kandhari, but those that are available “are available at reasonable cost in comparison to the West.”

PwC India puts the size of the local animation and visual effects industry at Rs. 2,300 crore last year, a growth of 24% over 2009. It sees the industry growing at an average annual rate of 20% over the next few years to reach $1 billion by 2014-15.

After investing more than $10 million over the past three years, DreamWorks has turned the Bangalore studio into an increasingly important piece of its production pipeline, the Los Angeles Times newspaper reported on 29 October.

The work from India was “terrific, and stands up to anything that was done here,” Puss in Boots director Chris Miller was quoted as saying in the report.

Technicolor India, a unit of Technicolor SA, the 95-year-old motion picture technology company that is in businesses such as creating content, 3-D conversion, and delivery on a range of platforms from DVDs to set-top boxes, employs 1,200 people in the country.

Besides Dreamworks, Technicolor India has teams working for other studios and television production houses in the US and elsewhere, doing not just animation but visual effects work.

For example, its teams are working on visual effects for a prequel to Ridley Scott​’s cult film Alien, as also other projects for Dreamworks, including television episodes for Kung Fu Panda. Another unit has animated many episodes of Nickelodeon’s Penguins of Madagascar​ television series.

“It is no longer about simple and cheap,” says Ghose, “Higher-value work is happening.”

Still, making full-length animation films out of India is a different ball game.

“A world-class film can cost in the region of $100 million. You can make live action films here for (a fraction) of that budget,” says PwC’s Khandari. “We still have some distance to go in terms of distribution, especially worldwide, marketing, merchandising and so on.”

Puss in Boots heats up India
 
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If you sum up the whole article, the only advantage which revolves around India is "being cheap" and a sustainable economy cannot be built over cost-cutting. I hope India is going to utilize this window of opportunity to crop its own home grown talent and grow as a hub of 3D animation in the future which competes on creativity rather than cheap outsourced labor work of drawing characters and animating them!
 
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If you sum up the whole article, the only advantage which revolves around India is "being cheap" and a sustainable economy cannot be built over cost-cutting. I hope India is going to utilize this window of opportunity to crop its own home grown talent and grow as a hub of 3D animation in the future which competes on creativity rather than cheap outsourced labor work of drawing characters and animating them!

you just cant jump from being a nothing to being a creativity hub, India is working through the cycles and it will take time. Atleast we are on the right path, there are many more advantages in India but again you will never see them.
 
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If you sum up the whole article, the only advantage which revolves around India is "being cheap" and a sustainable economy cannot be built over cost-cutting. I hope India is going to utilize this window of opportunity to crop its own home grown talent and grow as a hub of 3D animation in the future which competes on creativity rather than cheap outsourced labor work of drawing characters and animating them!

Cheap, of course. India also has the required IT infra and talent pool for high end 3D animation. So you can say 'cheap and best'
 
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If you sum up the whole article, the only advantage which revolves around India is "being cheap" and a sustainable economy cannot be built over cost-cutting. I hope India is going to utilize this window of opportunity to crop its own home grown talent and grow as a hub of 3D animation in the future which competes on creativity rather than cheap outsourced labor work of drawing characters and animating them!
i was wondering wat can saudi arabia offer other than oil???
i guess Saudi arabia doesnt have 10% of talented people that india has....lol u virtually live on Oil.....when engines starts to run on hydrogen,ull starve and ride on camel :rofl:
 
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i was wondering wat can saudi arabia offer other than oil???
i guess Saudi arabia doesnt have 10% of talented people that india has....lol u virtually live on Oil.....when engines starts to run on hydrogen,ull starve and ride on camel :rofl:

Maybe the Saudis should kick out the many thousands of Indians living there??
 
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Most of the Indians in Saudi Arabia are workers there so they will have to leave eventually.

Yeah right.What about the skilled professions where Saudis falter Hafizzz?Need India to fill up the ignorance!!!
 
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Yeah right.What about the skilled professions where Saudis falter Hafizzz?Need India to fill up the ignorance!!!

Actually Indians is one of the red flag nationalities the labour minister is heavily worried about. They are not here because of their so called "skilled professions" because many of them are worst than Saudis from villages. They are only here because are cheap to hire at 1/3 of median profession wage. This is not an assumption but a hard FACT!

Nitaqat comes into full swing from 26-Nov and the biggest losers of Nitaqat will be Indians who have flooded and wrecked the Labour market.
 
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Actually Indians is one of the red flag nationalities the labour minister is heavily worried about. They are not here because of their so called "skilled professions" because many of them are worst than Saudis from villages. They are only here because are cheap to hire at 1/3 of median profession wage. This is not an assumption but a hard FACT!

Nitaqat comes into full swing from 26-Nov and the biggest losers of Nitaqat will be Indians who have flooded and wrecked the Labour market.

You don't get it.Some of my friends got to become lead animators of Disney and Pixar(friend of my friend to be honest) and that too not even moving from their hometowns.Do you get the difference now?India rules for animation!!!

Saudis are considered to be loudmouths out here so I don't know about it!!!

In other words, irrelevant with relation to CG and animation.


Note#Disney/Pixar don't look for soliciting individual animators from India.They source their work through vendor studios like Paprikaas,Crest etc..Increases the animator's skills and pays outrageously too!!!
 
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Maybe the Saudis should kick out the many thousands of Indians living there??

Who cares??? But the fact is saudi's are one of the most technologically least ranked nation......they will survive till petrol exists or till engines work on hydrogen fule ,which is coming near...

In clean words Saudis are dumbs when it comes to technology or defence technology
 
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Actually Indians is one of the red flag nationalities the labour minister is heavily worried about. They are not here because of their so called "skilled professions" because many of them are worst than Saudis from villages. They are only here because are cheap to hire at 1/3 of median profession wage. This is not an assumption but a hard FACT!

Nitaqat comes into full swing from 26-Nov and the biggest losers of Nitaqat will be Indians who have flooded and wrecked the Labour market.
Once agian,Saudi's have given nothing good to the world ,instead they gave this devil wahhabism which has made this world a dangerous place to live and created so many terrorists..atleast we indians are better than u ...lol even a counrty like pakistan is better than u ....atleast they made helicopter..wat about saudi's??? NOTHING BIG ZERO..
 
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And still special effects in indian movies looks like **** :S
 
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