Animation buzz gets loud

It grows bigger every year.

FRAMES 2005 Day 1 witnessed a tremendous buzz and hyperactivity even as the delegates and participants were all involved in pro active networking.

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LOTR Producer Barrie Osborne

In the morning during the inaugural session, LOTR producer Barrie Osborne opened his speech saying “This is my first visit to India and I am very impressed. I am a little bewildered by the press though. Contrary to thier questions of when will India make films of Hollywood quality, I believe that India’s already doing films of an international level like Monsoon Wedding, Bend it Like Beckham etc”

Speaking about how LOTR became a catalyst for Newzealand, he added “India needs a similar catalyst. And I believe it will happen. I am working with Shekhar Kapur on Paani, we want support from the financial community in In India” Barrie also threw light upon his tie up with N Madhusudanan.

Earlier in the day, Marcel Fenez from PWC spoke about ‘Emerging Global trends in Media” He stressed upon the need for innovation and the increasing connect between the media owner and the advertiser. He also gave some pointers on Animation & Gaming

They were

– Gaming to be driven by Online wireless games and Mobile downloads.

– Currently online gaming constitutes around 14% of the total video gaming segment. This is predicted to go up to a staggering 45% by 2009.

– Generally a typical users for MMOG are young males

– On the other hand COG (Casual Online Gaming) is typically consumed by Young children and females.

Amongst other speakers who said thier little bit for animation were FICCI Entertainment company chairman Yash Chopra, and FICCI secy Amit Mitra.

From an animation and gaming perpective, the turnout was substantial.The majority of the animation crowd was at the Powai Ballrooms where three animation and gaming related sesssions were scheduled back to back. Later in the evening Alias had a special meet for Animation studio heads at The fabulous Velvet Longue where possibilities in training programs were explored.

Amongst the crowd were, R&H India’s Saraswati, Prashant and Prasad, MEL’s Rajesh Turakhia, Crest’s Madhavan, DQ’s Tapas Chakravarti, Milestone’s Sachin Naik, Indiagames Vishal Gondal, Landmarvel’s Vetrivell and Samir Bose, Presto Animation’s Debojit Biswas, CGI Mantra’s Vinit Karnik, Greengold’s Samir Jain and Rajiv Chalikalapudi, Futurethought’s Parshu, Film Maker Govind Nihalini and a lot many others including the international speakers.

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