Sunday, November 6, 2011

Doing the Digital Charleston…


The decision on Digital (in this case Red Epic) and Film remains in limbo on our show. The key issues are the ability to monitor focus during action scenes and the potential for practical light elements to induce flicker in a majority of the shots. The latter problem is not a camera problem, it's a problem of electrical stability and not having the budget for the devices which can stabilize it. We're not too happy at the prospect of pushing over what we all see as the finer image quality of digital because of bad voltage regulators or because the resolution of the camera shows off even the smallest variances in focus, but this may be what happens. The DoP isn't happy about it either but he knows that the best looking shot ever is still NG if it's not in focus. Without a through-the-lens viewing system it's hard to be as confident as you want to be when you are shooting once and shooting fast as will be the case here in India.

Our VFX team is devastated by the prospect of shooting on film after all. They have worked hard to develop a working pipeline for Red while all around were failing and now it looks to be all for naught because of non-technical issues beyond our control. It's hard to accept that this is an unworkable system when many action films around the world, including Hollywood have been successfully made with this camera. Everyone says they don't want to be the last to learn digital, but it seems that ultimately there will be a big dash for the chairs when the music stops.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Two Months In!


Mocking up shots for PreVis
Today marks the two month anniversary of my arrival in Mumbai. We are getting closer to shooting every day. We are madly prevising and planning and R&D'ing and trying to pull together an organizational plan, both in terms of production and pipeline. We are acquiring talent from some of the more experienced shops around Mumbai which is having the expected effect, namely lots of new and different ideas about how to move forward, all of which have to be evaluated and placed into the context of this shop. You can't just come in and replace everything, but you do have to turn the ship. People have to embrace new and controversial ideas. In many cases this is a task of convincing everyone that there is no Magic Bullet, there is no One Best Way and that preparing for all eventualities only prepares you for the things least likely to go wrong. What is required is for everyone to agree on one way to proceed, one way to organize, one file format, etc. It almost doesn't matter what you agree on as long as there is one way to go and everyone knows what it is. That one way may change, but it's changing something that everyone will know is changing. It's the foundation that allows the change to happen without destroying everything.

I spend almost every day talking to somebody about discipline. Now that we are in PrePro the tendency is to ignore all the would-be rules, like filenaming conventions, versioning, always calling the coord before showing The Boss, etc. It's no big deal, it's just PrePro. What always happens, though is that people don't try to learn the discipline until they are under fire and then it becomes duck and run when it needs to be stand and fight. I am desperately working to convince everyone to pay attention. Right now is Boot Camp and if everyone gets used to keeping their boots shiny and their bunks made, we'll still have a nice place to work when the going gets tough later on. It's in the rush to finish that people throw everything to the wind when they need to rely on their training and stay the course. That discipline is what makes shots go through the pipe instead of spilling out onto the ground.

Wow, that's a lot of metaphors.

We've had a lot of meetings with the director of the film. He's spent a lot of time with us going over shot breakdowns for what we will shoot in December. This is in meetings with us, DoP,  Prod Designer and Action Director. Basically Heads of Department. It's a very open forum with even the PreVis leads chime in with ideas. This kind of openness requires a steady hand at the wheel. You need to hear all the ideas without being prejudiced by where they came from and then you must decide what to do. I think it's a good way to go but it is mentally taxing. I think this director is doing a fabulous job of keeping his creative environment simultaneously open and decisive. Haven't seen much of either trait lately in Hollywood. I'll leave it at that.

This week will see the release of The Next Big Indian VFX Film in Ra.One. We are all waiting to see what Red Chillies, the VFX Company owned in part by the film's star Shahrukh Khan and VFX supe'd by Hollywood vet Jeff Kleiser, have come up with. It's certain to influence everything we are doing.

This week is also more holidays in India. Diwali is Wednesday which is the big one. Then we have a month to get ready to shoot. It's going to be a very busy November.








Monday, October 10, 2011

Test Shoot at Mumbai Filmistan



I made my first outing onto a Bollywood stage last Friday.  We shot a camera and VFX test at a studio called Filmistan (not to be confused with Film City, Camerastan or any other similarly named Mumbai film lots.) We tested an Arri 435 film camera against the latest Red Epic digital capture device. We shot the regulation grids and charts and skin tones, looking particularly at contrast and dynamic range. We also shot some effects passes using the Red Epic to check out the mattes from chroma and the viability of repeatable heads. 

We were in one of the smaller "floors" as they call them here. There are some nice studios in Mumbai (I am told) but this was not one of them. It wasn't a lot worse than the dumpy warehouse we shot in in Melbourne, but it was worse. No grid, oddly shaped spaces and very dirty, even by film studio standards. It wasn't too hot though which was a blessing. It was certainly workable and not uncomfortable per se but all the things you're used to, even in the makeshift studios in Australia and Canada, are simply missing. Power is hard to come by. There's no sanitation. Of the restrooms, I was told "You don't want to go in there."  There were no chairs, no fire and safety areas, no controls on power and no safety officers. You just have to look out for yourself. Morocco was the same, only in India people also look out for each other, so it's not quite so dangerous. I'll be interested to see how things change when we're in full cry with big name actors around. Supposedly the big names shoot on the nice stages unless the film they are doing is self-financed in which case they apparently would rather have the money in their pockets so they shoot at places like Filmistan. 

We did somehow manage to get a nice green screen with the spandex textured surface which I was told was non-existent in India. Probably scammed off one of the other VFX heavy Bollywood projects headed by an American who demanded a "real" green screen. I was told to expect something like a Green Bay Packers jersey unless I used my Hollywood clout to demand a good screen. I guess that worked!

Beyond the building itself, everything was pretty well sorted. The lights were not numerous but not old either. Lots of Kinos and Arris in good working order. Flags and stands were all in good shape and the people working them were professional and efficient. It worked like any other experienced set I have been on. There were a few loose ends here and there but not more than I have seen elsewhere, especially on a one-off test day. We did have HD video assist and we had a mixer (SD) for lineup. The VFX team handled all the data from the Red as we have the expertise there. We're asking for a load of work to take on the DIT and data transfer to editorial etc. but the guys are game and they know what they are doing technically so at least we can be sure that the image quality matches our exacting standards. We had a MacPro on set which allowed us to look at the HDRX output of the Red right after we shot it using the Red software. We are planning to build up a cart that will allow us to do on-set compositing of digital backgrounds in addition to QC on the Red data stream and various other VFX related malarkey. That's something you don't always get.

So it's a mix of low standard amenities but high-standard filmmaking tools. Obviously it's all about the image quality in the end, so it's the right place to put the focus I think. The set design and performances will put good things in front of the camera. It's less important what's behind it. I get fat at Crafts Service anyway.

More on the results of all this in an upcoming post.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

A little of the day-to-day


Working conditions are genrally pretty good. Everyone has decent monitors and appropriate computing technology. It's clean. There is air conditioning. The light is pretty good. It's a cube farm at best, though. Most places it is rows of computers set on a long desk that seats between 8 and 20 people. The chairs are good and desks are fine. There's just not much personal space. Doesn't seem to be a problem. Everyone works shoulder-to-shoulder. By American standards it would be considered a sweat-shop, but it's really nice compared to most Indian businesses and it's not uncomfortable.

Working hours are usually 1030am to 7 or 8pm. It took me a little while to get used to the late start. I'm still usually one of the first ones in. This seems to be standard Indian hours. I think the horrendous commute times have made the whole commercial schedule slip later. Maybe it's just Indian time.  Lunch is in the canteen everyday. I eat there a lot. Many people bring their own food which is prepared by the canteen staff. People like me without people at home to make lunch for them pay for the local fare which is usually rice and curry or dahl or masala. It costs about US$2/day for everything they have plus a soda. So far I am enjoying the food fine. When we do go out often it's fast food and that stuff, from the chains mind you, not the street stands, is pretty horrible. There are some nice restaurants around, but we usually don't take the time to go out.

It's a six day week every week. People take it for granted. It's one of the aspects of work here that echoes days gone by in most parts of the VFX biz in America. I will say though that I don't think it's much different than it still is in smaller or newer companies in The States where people work ridiculous hours because everyone else is. 

Organizationally the company suffers from the same problems most small tech-related firms suffer with. There's a lot to be sorted and not many people to do it and when the going gets tough the discipline goes out the window and everyone just works till they drop. We are trying to change that. It's fairly endemic here. Copied from the US model when the US model was even more broken that it is now. Those old US problems manifest themselves all over. Tech guys who don't know how to talk to artists. CG guys who just want to show off how cool the CGI is rather than actually make the movie look good. Animators who want actors on the set to be told what to do so that the animation will be easier, etc. Patience is required but the willingness to move in a different direction seems strong to me. People are listening up. They realize they won't move forward without change. Seems obvious but we've all seen the "it's good enough" mentality wreck projects. That's not apparent where I am in Mumbai. People are motivated to do better work  than they have done before. We're changing the way things are being done. The trick will be to hold it in place when the pressure comes on full.

I'm finding a mixed level of talent but always some good talent, so there's always a place to start. It's not as much of a "just throw bodies at it" mentality as I feared.

Team building is no problem. It's a relatively egoless and flat structure where everyone feels comfortable contributing and no-one is told to shut up because it's above their station to talk. Ironically, in a society still attached to their own class structure and to Britain's as well,  I find the openness to ideas is much greater than what is available to most VFX artists in the US. Communication systems need to be improved though so that the teams can work more effectively. People use cell phones to communicate because the email is so unreliable.  That has to change. The information flow needs to be consistent and effective. That's a solvable problem, I think. It just needs to be made a priority.

 Overall the situation in this small company is completely workable. We still need to improve lots of things and we need more talented artists, but we're not floundering and there's no foot dragging on the required changes. Might be the honeymoon but we are making hay while the sun is shining.
Contrast is everywhere.
Here's the lane the building is on. It's not as smooth as it looks.
And here's the building. Somewhat incongruous.



Saturday, October 1, 2011

Indian Bureaucracy - Part Two - Foreign Registration


After you get your visa and get to India you have to register with the police as a foreigner residing in the country. This is really common if you're staying anywhere as an ex-pat for any period of time. Sometimes it's as simple as filling out a form and having someone stamp it or a quick visit to your local constabulary.

In India I was given a guide (a godsend really) from HR at the company in addition to a driver and we headed off on a Saturday morning to the main police station in South Mumbai which houses the FRRO, Foreign Regional Registration Office.  I was given this big folder of paperwork, mostly the same stuff I needed for the visa in the US. I also need my passport/visa and four more passport pictures and money to pay the fees. People were not at all certain what the fees would be. Anywhere up to 2000 rupees was estimated. It ended up being just 150 rupees, which surprised the HR guy. When I got to the entry to the FRRO the people at the desk reviewed my papers and then wrote some numbers on the cover and said I needed to watch for the counter inside. They then sent me through a door that my guide said was for foreigners only and so he could not follow. He said I would find a computer and I should enter my information. 

There was a big room filled with folding chairs and lots of people from all over. There were computers in the back. I sat down at one and answered all the questions, Passport number, visa number, type, where issued, airline I flew in on, DoB, parents home, where I'm staying, airspeed of fully laden swallow, etc. I then needed to print it out. After asking, "What next?" I was pointed to the front of the room where there was an LED sign displaying counter numbers and which number was being served. 

I found out that not everything is covered by this system. It turned out I was scheduled for Counter 3A, which was not on the board and was turned away from Counter 3 when it hit my number. I was told to wait for someone to come get me, which eventually did happen.

I had to go in and review the paperwork again, then wait, then pay the fees,  then fill out a booklet with the same information on the printout that I had given them earlier. I guess they didn't save that data. Maybe that's good. Anyway it was typical duplication of effort.

Then I had to wait again. 

Then they came out and handed me the book, now stamped and certified and said I was done and could leave. The HR guy was thrilled. It took 2 1/2 hours (mostly waiting) and we were done at 1230pm. He thought it would be at least 4pm before we got done. 

So now I have my little black book that identifies me as a legal foreign resident of India. Apparently this is an important document in some circumstances which I hope not to find myself in. Or maybe I just need it to ride the train. Possibly I can wave it at shopkeepers who charge me the Tourist Rate and get the local price instead. Haven't had to try that yet. As I said, patience was the key, and having your paperwork sorted made it go twice as fast as usual apparently. Kudos to the people at my company in India for making sure it was together.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Indian Bureaucracy - Part One - Visa




Heading over here I was of course a little bit concerned about the Famous Indian Bureaucracy. I have always rated bureaucracies with Germany as #2 and The Ohio State University as #1. India… well, it certainly isn't easy, but the fact that people at least speak some English and usually good English keep Germany in #2 for Americans anyway, with India just a little less complex. They are, however quite a bit less organized than Germany. Patience has been the key. I have expected it to be difficult, inscrutable at times and redundant. Probably having these expectations going in has helped me a lot.


In this post I will concentrate on the Visa.  At first the idea was to get a Business Visa. This allows the traveller multiple entries for "business meetings." This will work for most VFX purposes. This is the visa to have if you are working for a US company, (maybe your own) and contracting to an Indian company, or working with an Indian company as a client. This visa requires a pile of documentation proving that a) The Indian Company exists, is incorporated in India and pays taxes. b) The company you work for exists and employs you and will ensure that you have a place to stay, medical coverage and you will pay your taxes, c) There is an agreement between the two companies. Plus of course all the international stuff you need anyway. There's a complete rundown of the website of a company called Travisa which the Indian government has contracted to handle all of the USA related paperwork. You can't get a visa directly from the Indian Consulate. You must go through Travisa. Otherwise I think the consulate would have been inundated by various agencies representing various groups and individuals. It's now one stop shopping for the Consulate.

So we started in on the Business Visa, but it was looking to get rejected according to Travisa (good on the phone, contrary to web reviews) because as I am not incorporated and my "company" was not going to pass muster. They actually said that even if I was incorporated it might not fly because I was signing my own confirmation of employment which would raise red flags. It was critical that all the documents be on good letterhead. They were hip to all the Word Template letterheads and would probably reject them just on that basis. Whoa.

So, we switched to the Employment Visa, which was the correct one for me, as I am actually being hired by an Indian company to work in India. No US company is involved. This visa is allegedly harder to get. They told us that the Business Visa would take "a few days" and the Employment Visa "might take months." (Tourist Visas take 24 hours typically, by the way.) The Employment Visa required all the same documents, minus the US company information, plus the employment agreements between the Indian company and me.  We found that Travisa will not accept any uncompleted package. They won't send papers to the Consulate unless they are pretty much a rubber stamp. This actually works pretty well and the people at Travisa in San Francisco were helpful and accurate with their work. They had lots of good communication with email, website and mobile texts. Going down there in person really expedites things. You need to set appointments on their website. After the paperwork was accepted it was only one day to return the visa, at least in my case. They only give out visas between 530p and 630p so you need to plan for that. We went down to the city and were sitting having coffee across the street when we got the text message that all was ready. The Indian company was allegedly working an expedition from the Indian Embassy in Washington to get the SF Consulate to push this through, but I suspect that that had less to do with the fast turnaround than that we had everything together in a nice package. 

A few more details: You have to surrender your passport to Travisa, so expect that. There are fees. They vary by visa type. Usually around US$150-250. Get lots of passport pictures. Lots. You will need them eventually.

Bottom line is that on the USA side, and largely here in India, if you have your documents carefully handled you are way ahead of the game. Almost all the trouble comes from incomplete or incorrect or unverifiable information. Like all bureaucracies, if you make it easy for them it's easier for you.

Next I'll talk about The Foreign Registration. That's Indian Bureaucracy in India. It's different than hanging out at the Blue Bottle waiting for your iPhone to tell you the news.


Thursday, September 15, 2011

So what does Mumbai look like anyway?

Here's a view from my office window. The monsoon season continues unabated. It's ben sunny here and there but mostly cloudy and often rainy for days on end since I got here about 25 days ago. The skyscrapers of South Mumbai (Old Bombay) are hazy silhouettes in the distance.
From the 21st Floor of the Lotus Business Park
South Mumbai is totally different than where our offices are in a suburb called Andheri West. They don't allow the ubiquitous auto-rickshaws and the traffic is less chaotic. There's a kind of expectation that you will stay in a lane and not drive down the middle or all over as is actually de riguer in North Mumbai. So it's quieter and more upscale. The tourists are largely in South Mumbai as all the old British stuff like The Gate of India and the Raja Bai Tower are there. It's the stuff you think of when someone says "Bombay." North Mumbai is what you think of when someone says "Developing Nation." I don't by the way mean that as in "Third World." India is on the move, folks. They are building buildings everywhere. Skyscrapers, malls, highways, hotels, bridges, etc. There is money here and the economy is growing by between 7% and 15% depending on who you talk to.

South Mumbai skyline seen at dusk from the southern tip.
The place is a bit of wreck, though. Slums everywhere. Garbage everywhere. Everything except the poshest of the posh places is dirty, broken-down, mildew-infested or poorly constructed. Sometimes all of the above. Some people are seriously trying to fix some of it but it is definitely a swim upstream. There's just so many people and so much going on that it's impossible for anyone to really get on top of it. That's India. Having said that, I don't see a lot of down-trodden people who have given up. Everyone is alive and moving and getting by. For all the failings of infrastructure, (did I mention that the roads in North Mumbai are more suited to jeeps and tanks than cars and rickshaws?) there is an overall willingness to  complain a little (mostly about corruption in the government and the bureaucracy) and then get on with it. Things do get done. 


Two views from the same hotel shows the posh and the not.
Here's a few more street scenes taken from my car. No, I am not driving in this town. For the first time in my career I am accepting that I should have a driver. My driver is an ace. The proximity alarms are constantly ringing but he never touches anyone on two or four wheels or feet.

Bodyguard made piles of rupees in its opening days.
This is a typical traffic situation.


This is my favorite new sign this week:



The director of the film was actually caught in a scam a few weeks back when he paid a bribe to a detective who said that otherwise he would arrest him for non-payment of fees to some distributor. In the spirit of Anna Hezare's anti-corruption movement he went to the police to complain only to discover that the detective was an imposter who had been bilking thousands from numerous people who believed corruption was inevitable and/or had something to hide. They caught the imposters in their posh villas and I guess, threw them in jail!

Ok, so there's a little featurette on India. More to come…






Sunday, September 11, 2011

Three Weeks In. The Work Begins


Happy Birthday to me! My office in Mumbai.

I am three weeks into my Indian Adventure. I have found the people to be incredibly welcoming and excited about the prospects ahead. The director is very interested in building a team of experts than can advise him in making a movie that will outshine all comers in the summer of 2013. We have, along with myself, the production designer from one of the biggest previous VFX films of the last few year (Endhiran), and a well-known action director from Hong Kong. (I'll add "action director" to the list of things to discuss on this blog…)

(I'll note here that I am being intentionally vague about the film and the company I am working with. Sorry about that but there's a level of secrecy about this project that I've been asked to protect in my public blogs, so I will do my best to avoid specifically naming names for now. It's not related to Endhiran.)

The challenges of making a big movie like this is are considerable for a company which has done all of its previous work in India. The big players like Rhythm and Hues, Reliance, PrimeFocus etc. are doing a lot of business as outsourcing from Hollywood, as are Prana and Dreamworks doing in the world of animated movies. There is however also a local VFX industry that is doing work only on Bollywood films. All the cleanup, last minute changes, additional shots, rewrites, etc. that plague us in the VFX business are also part and parcel of Bollywood and this is the meat and potatoes for these companies. They work on a staggering number of films per year, each with a small number of shots varying from A/B comps to put beautiful scenery behind a musical number to complete rebuilds of the photography to change the action that was photographed into something else altogether. Like taking a shoe-leather shot of a guy in a car talking on the phone and turning it into a POV crash scene where a truck rams the car. Involved are all the tools of VFX from painting to comping to 3D reconstructions with full geometry and phototexturing. 

What's not so well developed is photo-realistic 3D rendering and animation techniques for synthetic characters and digital doubles. These are areas where I will be focusing our efforts on the new film. We must improve dramatically to achieve success. If you look at Endhiran (VFX work done by a numver of Indian and Chinese shops, by the way) you will get a good look at where Indian VFX are vis-a-vis Bollywood. Terrific staging, imaginative no-holds-barred concept, with animation that is suitable for robots and rendering that needs just a little more finesse. Sound familiar? It should. It's the same path that the USA VFX teams were on when they were just getting into being a big part of the movies. Times have changed and the tools and talent pools are different, but what Bollywood is asking for now is pushing the limits of their local industry, which is of course, all to the good!

The other piece of the puzzle is also a familiar one: Production Organization. As most of us know from moving from small companies to big companies, there's a big difference in what is required when you get on bigger shows. Just grabbing the best guy and handing him the trouble shot isn't so easy when there are 50 trouble shots. A one-off solution is easy to track when it's a one-off, but when you have 50 things flying against the mainstream of production chaos results and the whole shebang begins to become uncontrollable. This is not obvious to smaller companies and convincing them that that this is not only a good idea, it's the law, is one of the keys to success in my opinion. I have found that where I am there is an understanding of this, which is really good. Other companies with more hubris are quick to want to continue to do things the way they have worked in the past and that often creates drama when in the final crunch the truth is revealed. To that end we are also looking for lots of production talent, people who know how to track lots of shots and predict how to get the show done on time in spite of the inevitable unexpected developments. 

My strategy here is to understand what is going on now and then build from that using existing team members. We will then add people to reinforce the weak spots and thus build our final team. This is opposed to another common idea which is to just come in and lay down the law about "How we do it downtown" without factoring in existing conditions. The assumption that everything here is wrong and the best way to go is to start from scratch is, in my opinion, ignorant of the work that has gone before and disrespectful to the crew and the company. I think that's a poor way to start a relationship with a group you will be depending on for the next 80 weeks.

So, after just three of those weeks, I feel like I am welcome here and I feel that I have a creative voice with the filmmakers and the beginning of a working relationship with the Supes and artists on the floor. It already feels like I want to be moving faster, but things must be considered carefully now, as there won't be time for it once we start shooting and shots start streaming in.

So like everything, this is a start. I will keep this going at least once a week and hopefully more often. You can also read about the non-work aspects of this sojourn at jabertonjrindia.blogspot.com or through links at delusiondog.com if you are of such a mind.

Enjoy!

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

India


India!





So here I am in India of all places. Why? For the same reasons I take any other project: The movie is an exciting mix of storytelling and visual effects and the people making it are good people. There’s a lot more to it than that, of course, and quite probably this blog will explore a few of the other things that are going on in the industry that have, for me, resulted in my decision to ply my trade in Bollywood. This is not the common event of an American film taking VFX work overseas for tax incentives or low shot costs. This is an Indian film hiring experienced American talent to help an Indian VFX company deliver visual effects of unprecedented scope and quality for the highly anticipated sequel to the 2006 film Krrish which was one of the biggest VFX pictures in Bollywood history. So rather than American filmmakers hiring Indian companies to meet budgets, it’s Indian filmmakers hiring an American to improve the quality of the work in their own cinema. Talk about swimming upstream! Nonetheless, the idea appeals to me and I am looking forward to seeing it through to a successful result. I wish that by this sort of thing I could single handedly counter balance all the work going the other way, but I don’t get paid that much!
So far, after a week in Mumbai, I find that the city itself is like nothing I have ever experienced before, with the exception of a short visit to Sao Paulo Brazil a few years back. Mumbai is different than Sao Paulo in many many respects, though it does share the problems of poverty, overcrowding, chaotic traffic and marginal public infrastructure.
On the other hand, inside the walls of a VFX facility, in this case Pixion, many things are familiar and the work is essentially the same. The people have similar interests to American VFX artists, with all the attendant additions that are uniquely Indian. I am only beginning to meet people and learn about this vast country and their culture. I am sure by the time this project is finished I will have a cultural awareness I can only guess at today.
So here we go! Another unexpected adventure in filmmaking. Please comment as you wish and we’ll all expand our global awareness.
Cheers!