The Age: Richard Verrier
DreamWorks's Bangalore studio is expanding as Hollywood taps into India's labour pool, writes Richard Verrier.
When the cat bandit Puss in Boots strides onto the big screen, Vanitha Rangaraju and her colleagues in Bangalore, India, will take special pride in the feline's starring role on the global stage.
The spin-off from the hit Shrek movies represents a milestone for DreamWorks Animation and for the fledgling animation industry in India. The film, starring Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek, marks the first time the studio has relied on a crew of Indian animators
to help produce a full-length feature film.
Until now, DreamWorks Animation had used the studio it operates in Bangalore to produce mainly TV specials and DVD bonus material. But after investing more than $US10 million over the past three years, DreamWorks has turned the Bangalore studio into an increasingly
important piece of its production pipeline.
The investment underscores how Hollywood is increasingly farming out animation and visual effects work to India, to capitalise on the country's low labour costs and to tap into a large pool of English-speaking workers with sought-after computer skills. The
pace of production also is accelerated because of the 24-hour cycle that can be maintained by pairing the Bangalore workers with their counterparts in Hollywood.
''We're very excited because we've been working towards this for three years,'' Rangaraju, the head of lighting for the India animation unit, says.
''This is the first time this has happened in India and it's going to encourage a lot of people to move into the industry.''
DreamWorks is among several studios tapping into the labour pool in India. Sony Pictures Entertainment and Rhythm & Hues, a Los Angeles animation and visual effects house, each have facilities in India that have done work on such feature films as Yogi Bear
and Alvin and the Chipmunks. Walt Disney Studios went into partnership with Prana Studios in Mumbai to produce its 2008 computer-animated movie Tinker Bell. Several large Indian companies, such as Reliance Group, Tata Elxsi and Prime Focus, have established
beachheads in Hollywood to do visual effects and 3D conversion work on films such as Spider-Man 3 and Clash of the Titans.
Traditionally, much of the film and TV work Hollywood has outsourced to India has involved low-skill, labour-intensive tasks such as wire removal - the tedious process of digitally erasing wires used to suspend stunt people and stars in action movies. The animation
work has been confined mostly to TV series or made-for-DVD movies.
But that is beginning to change, as shown by Puss in Boots. About 100 India animators spent six months animating three big scenes in the feature film - including one complex sequence in which Puss, Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) and Kitty Softpaws (Hayek)
enter a giant's castle surrounded by a lush jungle in the clouds. ''Except for the storyboarding, we did everything from start to finish,'' Philippe Gluckman, creative director for the DreamWorks India unit, says. ''I would hope nobody would be able to tell
which sequences came from India.'
DreamWorks launched the Indian studio in early 2008 as part of a partnership with Technicolour, which acquired the Indian animation company Paprika Animation Studios. Technicolour owns the facility but tapped DreamWorks to hire and train 220 illustrators
who work there. DreamWorks sent staff members to India to train the crews and hold classes on topics such as how to shape mouths.
The group's next film projects include Madagascar 3, due out next year, and it is expected to have a role in the upcoming Bollywood-style musical Monkeys of Mumbai.
''It has been a very steep learning curve for all of them,'' Gluckman says.
(The views expressed above are the personal views of the author)