Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Flat Earth VFX

Some new (to me at least) and interesting info in this morning’s seven and a half minute NPR story about the Rhythm & Hues studio in Mumbai that recently completed work on The Golden Compass and Alvin and the Chipmunks:

• India is on track to take $1 billion/year of Hollywood computer graphics production within the next few years.

• Tax breaks in the UK are so generous they make it difficult for US studios to compete DESPITE the unprecedentedly weak dollar.

• Talent costs, which would not logically decline over time (or ever) in the west, are low in Mumbai and Hyderabad - it’s the connectivity costs which are high. Connectivity is a commodity which would logically decline over time, in many cases rapidly.

• Perhaps most significant, there’s clearly no marginalizing the contributions made by the 200 person Mumbai office, who are heard being congratulated for work on the Monkey in Golden Compass - a major CG character. The CG creature (animal) work on that film has received universal praise; some claim it’s the best yet in any film (I haven’t seen Golden Compass yet and can’t comment).

This is not like the in-betweening studios that do The Simpsons - the Mumbai R&H office is heard receiving credit for a major breakthrough with the monkey ("a central CG character") in Golden Compass.

I corresponded with a couple of R&H folks (from the main L.A. studio) who said that the job simply wouldn’t have been possible without Mumbai, that it allowed them to bid a bigger job than had been in their scope (so everyone benefited) and that although the Mumbai folks started out with the ‘simple’(meaning easier to work on from remote) stuff—roto, tracking, and simple compositing, and gradually introducing the more difficult stuff as communications problems got solved, and their capacity and capability increased.

It looks like a nice place to work!

Compositing •
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