Dr. V Chandrasekaran, Chairman & CEO, PentaMedia Graphics Ltd.

Internet and digital technology are poised for a revolution in the country

Ranked among the world’s top three animation companies as per Robi Rancarelli report for the past three years, Pentamedia Group has been undergoing internal regroupings lately. Hence, exchange4media caught up with the man behind Pentamedia’s growth in the software, multimedia and entertainment domains.

Dr V Chandrasekaran started out with BHEL (Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd.). He moved on to be associated with Systems & Applied Sciences Corporation in Washington D.C., and later started Pentafour Software & Exports Ltd. This has currently hived-off its business and emerged as PENTAMEDIA GRAPHICS.

He is also a part of the steering committee for the Govt. Of India’s Ministry of Information Technology, NASSCOM, TANITEC, Computer Society of India, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, ESC, FIEO and EGO. In a Conversation with Neeti Gupta of exchange4media.com, he talks about digital animation, its scope in India and abroad and the future trends.

Q. What would the cost be for a full-length animation film like your own productions?

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In the last 60-70 years, though more than half a million live action films have come, hardly 50-60 animation films have been released. And if you trace the background, they were all doing it in 2D. Each film took two - two and half years to complete. Even today, some of them take 18-20 months to complete it.

When I came in, I started finishing films in 6-9 months, while some big companies produced 4 films in 10 years. In the last six years, we ourselves have produced a film an year or so. Today, Pentamedia alone is doing four films in a year, where usually in a year, total of four animation films were released earlier.

The moment you reduce the time it takes in completion of a film the cost comes down. Previously, it was 80-90 million dollars for two years, now when we finish a film in 6-9 months, it comes to 15-20 million dollars. Today, with a decent script, you would be able to do it between 7-15 million dollars.

Q. How expensive is digital animation?

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When there were only a few people doing it, it was far more expensive. If you take, say, Jurassic Park, which happened in 1992-93, in the entire movie, dinosaurs come for only 6 minutes out of the about 100-minute film. ILM charge for every second of it was $6000.

Otherwise, can you imagine someone has to create dinosaurs? For every movement you require motors and all. Previously even we have charged, for every second, about a lakh of rupees. However today, it will come to about 10 to 15 thousand rupees.

As volumes come, costs go down. Digital cameras are taking over. For compositing, film cameras cost about Rs 40 lakh, and they take a large amount of film. While a digital one can be had for Rs 1-10 lakh, and can do any amount of shooting that can go immediately into computers for processing.

Q. What are the current thrust areas of PentaMedia.

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PentaMedia is known for its animations, primarily 3D animations. We would have done about 5-6 films of this genre in as many years, which itself is really a landmark in the international animation world.

Alibaba was in the Oscar nomination list of 17 this year Previously our Pandavas won quite a few film festival awards.

3D animation would definitely be our thrust area. But all said and done, at Pentamedia, we are looking at entertainment as a whole. We have split our business into five different areas. These are studio entertainment, i.e. Pentamedia, Media Dreams, which makes live action films, web entertainment, which is Num TV, theme entertainment in form of Mayajaal, the complex and lastly sports entertainment. We have a sports village coming up, and we also plan to provide virtual coaching. In Cricket, we have done a lot of TV programmes. As you might know, we have Srikkanth with us.

Pentamedia group looks at these as big screen, small screen, and personal screen. I myself have coined the word large screens, which I mean as theme parks and such.

Q. Tell us about your Web venture Num TV. Things don’t appear to be all too good with it.

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I still think this will rule the world at some point in time. With TV programming schedules, we have all changed our life habits. With this, we need not.

At one point in time we were doing 40 channels live, and even today, we are the biggest in the world on live stream. I was using 3GB of bandwidth from Singapore, 10 times more than what India is, totally put together. That time, broadband was just being made available; people did not even have a definition for broadband.

I am glad that Reliance is now talking about 8M. Broadband has to be minimum 300K, if you have to watch moving stream. It is now becoming affordable and available, but with the dotcom companies crashing, we were not able to market it well.

Previously, ‘what comes on net is free’ was the concept. And we also did a foolish thing by giving Num TV free for first 8-9 months. At one point of time, about 300,000 people were watching. When it went into payment mode, they started talking about quality.

Today, I am not only looking at Indian channels, but also Chinese, Korean and Japanese channels. Entertainment always has a local flavor. I was also looking at Asians living in U.S., Europe, who are computer literate.

Already we are in talks with some broadband players. If someone takes broadband, they will get Num TV with it. They want to attract the Indian community with it. Even today, they have to pay about $15-20 for each Indian channel. I was offering 25 Indian channels for about $25.

Wherever people have broadband, Num is being watched all over the world. Including at corporates in India. About two years ago, through MTNL, we even gave the Budget live all over the world.

Q. Earlier you were involved in a number of co-productions, what is the status now?

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Previously we were learning. We are all computer professionals; we were not in the entertainment media at all. My earlier association with designing systems for radio stations, TV stations across the US, and more thrust on multimedia, helped me identify the areas where I felt that technology had not changed at all in film and broadcasting area. We took the first plunge there.

I think, initially we started with morphing when Divya Bharti committed suicide. We had to find a way to complete that film. Though morphing was at the highest end of technology at that time, now it is the lowest. We came into this, and learned.

We decided to capture Hollywood in 1993. Though we got noticed and recognised late, acceptance was fast.

We did “The King and I” for Warner Brothers and lots of work for others.

Coming to your question on production and co-production, whatever I do becomes a part of somebody else. So if I need something, I have to recreate it all. Hence after 7-8 years, we decided to do our own productions or co-production. Only if some projects are very interesting, like Disney, I will do it without insisting on co-production.

Our concentration from previous 70% other projects and 30% our own productions has today been reversed to 70% own and 20-30% projects.

Q. While you focus on US for production, why did you choose India for setting up exhibition initiative?

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Profits. Here in India, I gave cartoon network a film, Sindbad. One show of Sindbad in US on a Thanksgiving Day gave me $800,000 while here, it is hardly even $8,000.

Slowly, we will move into multiplexes. Here, from Rs. 30-40 tickets, we have been able to move up to Rs. 80. So change is coming in.

After living there, east or west, Madras is the best. We are looking at setting up technology theme parks with entertainment domes in Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Singapore, Malaysia, in short wherever there is a need. We are also looking at tapping some other areas. For instance, Media Dreams, set up mainly for India, can also work there. At some point of time, a strong channel can always work, as per demand.

Q. Why do you feel that the special effects through computers is a much better option?

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Special effects through camera is time consuming, expensive, and quality wise not as good. It can be done in a much better way with computer as a camera. We are the ones pioneering special effects that merge with the live action. Animation is not necessarily for showing abnormal things alone!

Q. You have been doing live action films through Media Dreams as well…

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There we will concentrate on Indian and maybe some English films. It uses lots of digital mediums. As it goes along, the difference between live action films and animation will get reduced. Quite a few hybrid movies are coming in. We will create photo-realistic image digitals.

You can create a human being who is not existing. Unless you tell people, they cannot make out the difference. All those things will come. The difference between live and animation will increasingly get reduced.

Q. Which other companies are involved in animation to this extent?

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Disney has also done all this. But while they have looked at it in a more analog way, we have looked at it in a more digital way.

We use the computer as a camera. This is possible in animation. We do lots of special effects for most Indian movies. For instance, ‘Jeans’, which was released 5-6 years back. It brought a revolution in Indian movies where four characters come in double roles. There was 24 minutes of special effects, which, incidentally, was also selected for Oscar nominations.

Q. Are you going to continue to concentrate on Hollywood?

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Any kind of entertainment, if it clicks in Hollywood, clicks everywhere. You will have to be American-ish on this. So our concentration is on the U.S. Whatever makes $1 in the U.S., makes $1.5 in the rest of the world.

Q. What are the key media trends you see emerging?

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Today concentration has to be on the age group of 12 to 25. You have to take them to the big screen area, as well as the personal screen area for games and suchlike. Above 25, it will have to be the small screen, or DVDs, VCDs.

Internet and digital technology are poised for a revolution in the country. Instead of action games, with more adults coming in, more of strategy and intelligent games will be introduced.

I think India can play a very big role here. Fortunately, quantity wise, we are the biggest in the world in entertainment and food industry. Next is the US.

In entertainment, people always want a different flavour. If we play our cards well, consider entertainment as an industry, we can do a very good job.

Q. Let us touch upon your multiplex venture.

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This is all technology. This is the only place where with one print you can show a movie in all theatres. With Baba, each day, with one print we were showing 18 shows.

We wanted to use whatever I have seen and done in the US to go in the entertainment digital dome.

Q. What is the return on investment in an animation film?

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Any animation film, in a 3-year time will get typically 15-200 million dollars. Usually, if for 3 years you get a return of $1 for a film, the next slab of 3-7 years will get you $1, and subsequently from year 7 to rest of its life, you can factor it at $1. Animation films have a longer life.