Can Indian artists deliver to Hollywood standards?
Of course! They can!
One of the prime examples that proves that Indian artists can consistently deliver is Rhythm & Hues India, the Indian subsidary of the LA based Academy Award winning studio. However there are a lot of essentials that go into achieving those high quality standards. Essentials such as an atmosphere conducive to creativity, an encouraging work culture, collaboration between artists, supervision and guidance of the International experts, all of which the R&H India facility has in abundance.
Over the past 3 years Rhythm & Hues India has worked on the visual effects of over 16 major Hollywood feature films and has bagged several high profile projects for 2006. Amongst the projects that were worked on right here at the India facility is Paramount Studios’ productionThe Longest Yard starring Adam Sandler, Chris Rock & Burt Reynolds. The movie is due to be released in India on July 22, 2005.
The challenge presented to R&H for The Longest Yard was to seamlessly fill the football stadium in several sequences with thousands of people so that the scenes look correct and actively support that part of the film’s story. It would have been far too expensive for the producers in the USA to actually film a stadium full of people on a daily basis. So 95 per cent of the work R&H did was crowd replication of various kinds that involved primarily live action compositing techniques, but also included a few shots with CG people. R&H India worked in tight collaboration with the rest of the visual effects production crew and artists at R&H in Los Angeles to be able to accomplish the shots on schedule without compromising the quality in the least.
Sharing his experience of working with the Rhythm & Hues’s India crew, Academy Award winning VFX Supervisor Doug Smith told Animation ‘xpress “I was very pleased with the finished shots. There is no visual difference between the India work and the work that was done in LA for The Longest Yard. I am very happy with the quality of all the shots in
the movie. We did not restrict the type of shots that went to India; India got hard shots and easy shots, same as the LA facility”
“When The Longest Yard added some very difficult shots at the end of the schedule that needed 3D work, the crew in India did a great job, up against a schedule deadline and technical issues creating literally thousands of CG people. Every creative and technical comment was addressed, usually by the next day, making the whole process a positive experience” he added.
“R&H India worked on over 60 complete shots for The Longest Yard, starting with the receipt of the background plates and taking the shots all the way through final delivery of the composites for filmouts. Everything on these shots was completed in the Mumbai facility and required the contribution of all the various departments including the Compositing department, 3D department, Matchmove department, and the Production Pipeline Programming department who wrote quite a bit of software code to be able to execute the crowd simulations. In addition to the 60 plus shots, R&H India also did quite a bit of support work on several shots that were being completed in the Los Angeles facility” concluded Doug.
After the delivery of The Longest Yard, the R&H India crew is busy with the current slate of feature films which include “The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” (Disney), “Superman Returns” (Warner Bros), “Serenity” (Universal), and “Charlotte’s Web” (Paramount). With all this workload and several other upcoming projects, R&H India is actively recruiting artists and technology support personnel and is growing the facility to accommodate high quality needs of the projects.
Animation ‘xpress will also bring our readers a more in-depth case study of the making of the shots in The Longest Yard. Watch out for the case study close to the date of the movie release in India!