NASSCOM Animation & Gaming India 2007: Session Wise Coverage
Indian Animation and CG are moving up the value chain and the domestic market is beginning to hold promise. Feature Film production, both in terms of services and IP creation is emerging as an attractive business model.
The panel at NASSCOM’s “Building a feature film pipeline” session comprised heads of some of India’s leading animation studios. These included DQ Entertainment Founder & CEO Tapas Chakravarti who chaired the session, UTV CEO Ronnie Screwvala, Crest Animation CEO AK Madhavan, Anirights CEO Ashish Kulkarni and Nipuna CEO Venkatesh Roddam.
A lot many studios are announcing features and a lot more are planning to do so sometime soon. The panelists shared some essentials that studios aspiring to get into the animation feature film space need to keep in mind.
It’s all about the story, how its told and how it reaches the audience, always.
The panelists too began with emphasis on story and narrative. “The Script” stressed UTV CEO Ronnie Screwvala, “is the most important thing in movie making and great attention has to be given to your target audience and how you tell them your story”
Crest CEO Madhavan shared,” Getting the story right is a tricky process and one can either opt for approaching it by basing the story on a completely original idea or the other way is to otion a book / comic / story from the public domain”
Giving story as much importance as funding & distribution, Anirights CEO Ashish Kulkarni said, “The day your script is frozen on and the day you get the funding is day zero for a producer, post which the production period, the turnaround, the release and everything else is planned”
“Once you have frozen on the script the next challenge is the visual scripting which has to be as good or better” shared Madhavan
Almost the entire panel laid a great emphasis on the necessity of having experienced key people in the team. “Build a team and remember that experience matters” shared DQ Entertainment CEO Tapas Chakravarti “You must have a producer on board as well as a creative director, and if you are a creative director then find a business partner. You also need experienced writers as well as production managers and so on” he added.
Speaking from the audience, Adlabs Animation head Siddhartha Jain provided his valuable perspective, “When it comes to the Indian market, one has to understand that Animation movie making is after all â€?Movie Makingâ€? and the approach has to be more of the Bollywood / film producer kind. It requires a different domain of experience and its very important that your key team has members who are armed with that kind of experience too”
Elaborating on the experience and team part, Kulkarni provided a back-story context to the discussion, “One has to bear in mind that for the past 8 years, most of the Indian studios have been grooming talent for Television Episodic production, now when the same artists have to work on feature film projects, it takes some time to adapt to this format, in terms of visualizing for the large screen, in terms of the detail of work, in terms of the pace, narrative. Also technology wise the infrastructure needed for a feature film production is much more high end and all this integration of technology, the adaptation for the creative team from one format to another takes time and a great training effort. It requires a different mind set to think for the big screen. Techniquecally one needs to be alert and constantly improving the Cg pipeline thru R & D and innovation is very critical. The good thing is that its happening”
“And experienced talent is key. It is also very important to have contracts in place with the artists which ensure that no artist leaves the project mid way” he added.
Nipuna CEO Venkatesh Roddam shared, “As a relatively new entrant to this space, we are focusing on first gathering the experience and developing expertise”
Roddam also spoke about the need to be process driven & quality conscious when it came to production. “For any large scale business, a lot of the feasibility of the revenue model depends upon â€?time to marketâ€?. At Nipuna our focus is on a disciplined, process driven approach with strong Quality measures (built-in)”
Speaking about budgeting and making projects financially feasible, Kulkarni shared, “Sometimes to make your Feature film project financially viable, you need to opt for creating a slew of projects, like a pipeline of features, where while one feature nears completion, the next gets into production, while a third is into pre production. This sort of de risks the business.
Chakravarti shared, “Make a completely realistic budget, one which you can live with. Base all your decisions on production values, but once you have made your budget than stick to it”
The DQ Entertainment founder shared that the budget for his Internationally co produced feature Skyland was 31 Million US Dollars. Emphasizing on the need for the right kind of International partners, he cautioned, donâ€?t even dare to touch international without the right kind of partnerships in place as it requires extremely deep pockets, expertise and years of contacts. We have taken 51% stake in the French Studio which will own Skyland IP and then along with our partners in Europe we went to the US, We were successful in getting distributors from US and Europe on board in terms of pre sales and then we legalized everything very thoroughly”
Screwvala added that, “Getting the right kind of partners is difficult and one has to understand them carefully before entering into relationships”
Crestâ€? Madhavan pointed out that “Getting in good International distribution / marketing partners is great for the project, additionally it also boosts investor confidence”
Other issues discussed at the session included Copyrights Registrations, Completion Bonding and the need for doing extensive technology R&D to come up with new techniques and means to be able to produce better, quicker at lower cost. Nipunaâ€?s Venkatesh Roddam shared that “For large-scale operations and for scalability – technology research, integrated and managed with process excellence would drive the creative art and production processes.”
The entire panel did unanimously voice that it was extremely important to do thorough research on the subject , the target audience and all other things like production schedules, timelines and so on before getting into the business.
“And after all the research into kick starting the project and all the production expertise, roping in the best possible team with experience, doing a lot of technology R&D and after tying up with the best International distribution
and marketing partners, finally we make a feature” shared Crestâ€?s Madhavan.
“And after that we release the movie, have as big a premiere as possible and Party, and then we Pray!” he concluded.
And that�s a glimpse into the animation film business!