Amit Gupta, Prime Focus

For years now, Indian animators and graphic designers have only been helping hands on visual effects shots for Hollywood movies. Franchises including ‘The Lord of the Rings’, ‘Spiderman’ and ‘Shrek’ have all had Indian professionals working on them, albeit in rather small ways. But even with all this experience, Indian companies have never been given the opportunity to handle all visual effects for a movie. Prime Focus, a leading VFX and post production company in India has shattered this barrier and produced visual effects for over 100 shots for ‘28 Weeks Later’. Released on May 11, 2007, the sequel to the cult hit ‘28 Days Later’ reached the top 5 of both the US and UK movie charts and has received rave reviews across the globe for its bloodcurdling plotline and visual effects. We hooked up with the affable Amit Gupta and spoke about ‘28 Weeks Later’ (Find the trailer on the CHIP-DVD) and the prospect of Indian companies executing visual effects in Hollywood movies.

Q. Finally, the Digital Intermediate (D.I.) process and the VFX of a Hollywood movie (‘28 Weeks Later’) have been handled entirely by an Indian firm, Prime Focus. Even though there have always been Indians involved on major projects, none have ever been given the opportunity to undertake a complete project. What took this development so long?

A. (Instantly) Perception business. Nobody in Hollywood thinks that we (Indians) are capable of handling a complete project. We have always been just a low cost solution for the foreign VFX market. So, we may do even a ‘Spiderman’ but we would still end up doing clean-up shots and are never offered the major shots which would have the hero, some other significant mug shots or the really good-looking sequences. We would be offered clean-up shots at dirt cheap rates compared to the prices of an American or British VFX company.

To turn this trend around and change the perception of the foreign market, we went and bought a major London-based animation company which had been in the market for 20 years. They had done a lot of major projects and were active in the advertising and broadcasting industry. This British takeover move makes us well established in London and we are anyway very strongly placed in the Indian market. So now, we pick up projects from the London base as it is much easier acquiring entire projects from the British and the rest of the global industry, and then we decide our floor plan of completing the project across our London and Indian facilities rather than the client making a decision on that. Basically, now we pitch for projects from the London base and it is more convenient for the parent company to hand over a project to a British company rather than an Indian company. Currently, we are in the process of entirely integrating our workflow between the London and the Indian facilities which makes it more convenient for projects which are being worked on across this demography.

The ‘28 Weeks Later’ project was picked up at the London office and a lot of its work was completed there itself. The digital film mastering or the digital intermediate was done in London. This process requires a lot of creative handholding, and hence it was done in Soho, London, with the director and the camera crew. However, a lot of work on the VFX front was sent back to India. So this way, we try and pick up entire projects in London and share the workload between the London and Indian facilities. This is our model that helped the development of acquiring full-fledged projects from the international market.

Q. Do you think this is the beginning of an exciting trend which will see more Indian VFX companies get complete start-to-end projects from the west?

A. As I mentioned earlier, it is a matter of perception and gaining the confidence of the client, no matter what it takes. From an Indian point of view, the international market is virgin and we have found a barrier and then the way around it. We took the route of taking over a British company but that’s not the only way to get entire projects. The other VFX firms here will have to find their own ways to achieve these ends. At the end of the day, it is a case of the chicken and the egg. You need to find yourself a big start-to-end project and then the offers and openings follow.
 
The opportunity out there is big for all VFX companies. I’m not saying we are the only company capable of doing a full-fledged project. Our size is still small compared to the global point of view and that is the reason and initiative of our rapid growth. We have just found our formula to make it work; other companies have to find their own. Besides the ability to do complete projects, a strategy is integral which is missing in most Indian companies. So, it is difficult but it is possible. It’s just a matter of perception. To exemplify, after finishing the D.I. of ‘28 Weeks Later’ which included about 100 visual effects shots, we are now working on another project which has a new type of storytelling and includes approximately 1400 VFX shots!

Q.28 Weeks Later: can you tell us about your pipeline, the workforce and technology used?

A. It consisted of basic file and data structure management, and an approval process with the client. Our data structure at all our facilities is standardized hence the file structure and naming, the software used, the colors across monitors in London and India, are all standardized. There is usually a huge requirement of 2D and 3D data on projects like ‘28 Weeks Later’, there needs to be an efficient film production pipeline to manage all the data and we have made our proprietary model. With respect to the shot approvals, we break it up into different parts instead of just sending the final edited shot and waiting for the client to send changes and then reworking them. So, we send layouts of the shot, then the edits, so on and so forth by which we maintain a tight progressive workflow.

The workforce on ‘28 Weeks Later’ comprised a 40-odd team. We had about 25 people working at the London facility and another 15 in India. Also, another 20 people worked on the D.I. The movie was released on May 11 and we finished the post production with all the visual effects in four-and-a-half months.
The technology used can be categorized under hardware and software. Nothing new though, we used workstations with quad-core processors and 8 gigabytes of RAM, a 10-gigabit/second Ethernet, 1600 terabytes of storage space, huge rendering farms etc. In software, we use Maya for 3D and a combination of a lot of software like Smoke and Fusion for 2D, and Mental Ray for rendering besides other software for other purposes.

Q. Considering the rate at which Prime Focus is growing, and this development of executing start-to-end visual effects for a mainstream Hollywood movie, do you think there are brighter days ahead for animation and graphics design students?

A. Absolutely. At this facility (Prime Focus, Goregaon), we had a strength of 40 people just around a year ago. This figure is now at a 160 and it is exponentially growing. We usually employ at the average rate of 2-3 employees per week. So it sure looks like an exciting time for animation and graphic students!