February 17th, 2003 - Animation is the latest buzz at Mediaworks , a separate division of Tata Elxsi. The company is setting up a studio in Mumbai, which would be working exclusively for the Mumbai film industry to churn out special effects for Hindi potboilers of all flavours.
Says, K. Chandrashekar, Head, Mediaworks , “We have already commenced work on several projects but since we are bound by non disclosure agreements (NDA) with them, we cannot talk about the projects before completion. We are delivering one film by the end of this month while another one should be completed by March-end”.
Interestingly, this would be the first digitally post-produced film to be released in India. The entire two and a half hour of the movie has been digitally processed after the shooting of the film ensuring total control on colour gradation.
“All the special effects we see in the Hollywood movies can definitely be created in India as well. You can use special effects to enhance a scene by visually enriching it or making it gory like a building being blown up or even subtly improving a scene using lighting”, he pointed out.
Mediaworks was providing special effects from its Bangalore center for films like ‘Freaky Chakra’, ‘Bangalore Bandh’ and the Kannada film ‘Hollywood’ . But now, the Bangalore division will concentrate more on providing special effects of ad films and TV serials while the Mumbai studio will be offering visual effects for the film industry.
The newly set up office in Los Angeles has appointed Ken Silverman , who comes with over 25 years of experience in the Hollywood film industry, as a consultant. Armed with tremendous experience in production, distribution, content creation and cable TV network, he is currently working on getting film projects, which will get executed here.
The company is looking at a revenue of around $5 million in the next 18 months from both Indian and US markets; Tata Elxsi’s turnover for the financial year 2001-2002 was Rs. 132 crores.
