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Raja Simhan T.E

Technology is making its presence felt in film-making with touches that deepen impact and lighten costs.

A scene from Mangal Pandey - The Rising

IN the Hindi movie Mangal Pandey - The Rising, there is a war scene that features hundreds of soldiers. That's only in the movie.

In reality, the director shot the war sequence with a minimum cast and used special effects to multiply the number of people. This saved him the pain of arranging for hundreds of people — and producer money.

Welcome to the technological era in Bollywood.

Technology makes a difference to the same scene - by simply multiplying the crowd without the actual use of large numbers of people. - (Pictures supplied by Autodesk.)

Starting with blockbuster Lagaan, the list of recent Hindi movies that have used technology includes Lakshya, Koi Mil Gaya, Khaki, Qayamat and Black, says Pankaj Kedia, Regional Sales Manager, South-East Asia and India, Autodesk Media and Entertainment Division. The list will keep growing in future, he adds.

Films are the most popular form of entertainment in India, although television seems to be catching up during the past few years. The Rs 20,000-crore Indian film industry releases around 1,000 films a year, he says.

Hollywood has been using technology for some time now. The award-winning Gladiator had a scene that showed a coliseum with six storeys. However, in reality only one storey was built, and the rest was multiplied using digital set enhancement tool. Around 600 people were used to shoot a shot, and the number was multiplied three to four times digitally, says Kedia.

The Indian movie industry has also started adopting technology more vigorously to enhance the quality of movies that are reaching out to a global audience, he says. For instance, in 2003, when the animation Hollywood blockbuster Lord of the Rings was released, only two Indian films used software to do colour correction or in post-production of the movie. The number increased to 18 films in 2004.

And, in the last eight months of this year, around 40 films have used post-production software and by the end of the year the number could be around 65. Mangal Pandey - The Rising fully used digital intermediate — a process in films by which sections of, or the entirety of a motion picture is digitised — and an hour of visual effects, he says.

Earlier, films used to do colour corrections that could only be red, green and blue. However, technology now allows the director of photography (DoP) to make an overall colour correction in a film, including the smallest ones.

For example, for a blue moon-lit night, the shot can be done with basic lighting and can be improved using colour correction, he says.

Six years ago, some Indian films used to have one to five minutes of digital work and that has increased to 40-50 minutes in the last few movies such as Black, Paheli and Mangal Pandey - The Rising.

"Technology helps directors of photography with the narrative, but it cannot take over the narrative. The importance of the directors of photography won't go down. Technology will only help them do better films," he says.

If a picture has been shot badly, the entire thing needs to be redone. Technology can only help in improving the shot through better colour corrections. Technology allows directors of photography colour control later in post-production - they can take more shots and improve them.

Around Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore is spent on technology in a movie. Use of post-production software has been mostly in Hindi, and is now slowly catching up in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam movies, he says.

According to Kedia, with increased focus on technology by the Indian entertainment industry, Autodesk, which is a $1.2-billion US company, is likely to have a good time in the next few years.

Media and Entertainment (formerly Discreet), the $200-million division of Autodesk, provides integrated digital content creation, management and distribution tools.

It develops systems and software for visual effects, 3D animation, editing in production - these are crucial to the creation of digital moving picture in feature films, video, broadcast graphics, interactive games and the Web, he says.

In the last few quarters, the Indian entertainment industry has gained a lot of prominence in the APAC (Asia-Pacific), and today is the biggest market for the division in the region. "We are on a growth path along with the entertainment industry," he says.

raja@thehindu.co.in

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