Advent of Low Budget Animation Filmmaking in India

The terms "low-budget' and "animation film' sound like an oxymoron. After all, any sort of animation requires investments. But it seems that in India, animation films based on Gods, seems to be the money spinner. And no one else but India, which has been known for its frugality and ingenuity, could do it.

That was the driving force behind our desire to make "Bird Idol'. The Bird Idol was budgeted at Rs. 5 Crore ($1 million) -- the cheapest animation feature film made in the country, perhaps in the world. So could this be the advent of low budget animation films in the country? The rave reviews garnered by "Bird Idol' from both critics and audiences alike, makes us believe so.

I say this because my team has done it. Despite such low budgets, one hundredth of the budget for most Hollywood animation films, we successfully made the film, and in record time.

The secret lies in re-engineering the process of animation to suit the budget and yet maintain quality. Indian audiences are exposed to Hollywood animation, and they will reject your film if you cannot reach the quality standards set by them.

Fortunately iRealities is a software company with close to two decades of experience in the technology domain. So we rewrote a lot of software, changed processes, and did things that have never been done before e.g. motion capture would have cost us say a crore. Instead we spent Rs. 10 lakh to shoot live performances of actors, which became the reference point for our artists. Now this is a completely indigenous process, rarely tried, if ever.

Normally an animation films requires hundreds of people at different stages of production. For making "Bird Idol' we could manage it with just 30. This is because every process, every task of every individual was optimized.

The next major expense of an animation film is rendering. Most animation studios worldwide, be it Pixar or Dreamworks, have their own expensive, sophisticated rendering farms. Not having the liberty of budgets big enough to set up one, we stripped 20 eight-core rendering machines, removed them of any other functionality, and clubbed them together to make our own, low budget but effective rendering facility.

The inspiration and the out of box thinking responsible for the success of a "low-budget' "Bird Idol' is everywhere to be seen. Go to YouTube and you will find hundreds of low budget, but good animation shorts made by small groups of individuals worldwide.

In India, we have the same tools, same software, same infrastructure, then why can't we do it then, we wondered.

And we did it!

Yet the most important thing to remember is that animation in itself is never enough. Animation is a tool. You need a good story, good dialogues and a good director. Fortunately we had a great director in Jyotin Goel.

For anything new, it is difficult to get people to believe in you. We were again lucky to have Warner Bros., the producers of "Bird Idol' who were impressed with the story and small budget. And though many told us that the publicity for the film was not enough, and neither was the number of prints, but we are happy that we were able to pull it off.

So all of you out there in India and in other countries who are venturing into animation, but don't have the luxury of a big budget, can take heart from the fact how we made the movie with low budgets.

A lot of people will tell you it cannot be done. They will discourage your team. But it is up to you to boost your own morale, believe that it is possible and at the same time inspire confidence in

Prasad Ajgaonkar

Interactive Realities

Media
@adgully

News in the domain of Advertising, Marketing, Media and Business of Entertainment

More in Media