Think of animation and visual effects, Los Angeles comes to the mind first as many of the major post production companies there work on Hollywood movies. That's going to be history with Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad slowly emerging as alternative destinations for doing post production work on animation and visual effects for Hollywood.

India is emerging as global hub on animation and visual effects with experts from all over the world working in Indian post production companies, said Mr Rob Hoffman, Senior Product Marketing Manager (3D, Media & Entertainment) at Autodesk Inc, a US-based company, which provides 3D design, engineering and entertainment software that are used by the experts.

In the past, experts in animation and visual effects from India travelled to Los Angeles to work in Hollywood movies. It is the reverse now with foreigners working in Indian post production companies, including Crest, he told Business Line recently.

Reverse migration

“The reverse migration trend is similar to the IT industry. At present, the number of foreigners working here is small but in future you will see a significant presence,” he said, without giving details on how many foreign visual effects experts are currently working in India.

Global experts are brining in new techniques to Indian companies. “I have seen a number of artists from Los Angeles working here on specific projects,” he said. Hollywood animation movies such as Alfa & Omega have been done successfully in India. The movie having been nominated for the Academy Award was a huge recognition for the Indian talent, he said.

Mr E. Balaji, Managing Director and CEO of MaFoi Randstand, a recruitment company too, said that many foreigners are working in India product houses. However, they do not outsource their requirement from a third party, he said.

Changing scenario

For many years, the film production used to start in Los Angeles where the local post production houses work on primary movie shots involving main actors, while the secondary shots came to India to work on visual effects. However, today, a large amount of content coming to India is primary shots while in certain projects the entire work comes to India, he said.

For global audience

Increasingly, more number of Indian companies are making content for the global stage. “In future, content of a movie will originate here, produced here, developed here but distributed all over the world,” he said.

A Deloitte-Assocham report says that in the next three years the Indian Media and Entertainment is projected to annually grow 13 per cent to reach the size of $24.04 billion by 2014.

The entertainment visual effect industry has shown a very high growth rate of 53 per cent over the last few years and is estimated at $222 million in 2013. Around 60 per cent of the market is for work done for overseas clients, the report said.

>raja@thehindu.co.in

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