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Many people see Bollywood as Hollywood's cheap knock-off copy, like Adidos or Sunbucks coffee. It sounds similar but just isn't quite as good. And for Bollywood, this may well be the case. Hollywood started its romance with computer generated VFX in the 1970's and Bollywood started in the 1980's. Since then, Bollywood has done nothing but catch up and nowadays the gap is smaller than ever. Bollywood may not have the budget or the international recognition Hollywood has, but what it does have is man-power, skill, and cheap labor.
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It may come as a surprise to most, but the majority of VFX grunt work in big VFX Hollywood movies is outsourced to India. The reasons for this are quite simple: they can get it done for a quarter of the price and they speak English. India has over 300 animation studios, 40 VFX studios, and 85 game development studios which are currently employing an estimated 15,000 artists.
Lack of Creativity
Most of the work done in Indian VFX studios for Hollywood is menial and labor-intensive, like rotoscoping, keying, wire removal, and match-moving, with no room for creativity. And strangely, the work they do for Bollywood is too.
Even though all Bollywood films use VFX with big-budget films around the 2000 mark (on average between 500 and 1500 shots), they use it differently to Hollywood.
Whereas in Hollywood VFX are used to help with the storytelling, make something look spectacular or dramatic, or to add something to a set or a scene, in Bollywood, it's used to cover short-comings in the industry itself.
Lack of Actors
The majority of Movies in Bollywood are backed by Individual producers or production houses such as Yash Raj films or Dharma Productions, and many of them work with the same group of "Superstar" actors over and over again. These are known as "The Acting Royalty", where acting is the whole family's vocation. Some such families are the Kapoor's, the Khan's and the Akhtar's. This makes it harder for other actors outside these families to succeed and means that the diversity of actors available is very limited.
The film "Fan" is a great example. Actor Shah Rukh Khan (who is also the producer) plays two roles. One is of a famous actor, the other is a fan that looks like him. Rather than cast another actor with similar looks, the Vfx house "Redchillies" had to painstakingly change the actor's appearance, body structure, and height in every scene to make him look different.
Lack of Budget
Bollywood's value is currently around $4 billion, while Hollywood's value is over $50 billion. This difference in wealth translates to a movie's budget and Bollywood films tend to have 5 times less money than their Hollywood equivalent. For example: In "Bang Bang" (which is the Bollywood version of "Knight and Day"), there's a car chase scene set in a snowy mountain range: they don't have the funds to film there, so they use VFX. If the scene is set at night but was filmed during the day, they use VFX.
Lack of freedom
Another aspect that seriously limits the creativity of Bollywood's VFX studios is censorship. The country's vague censorship laws mean that virtually any film can be banned or censored, and every film has to be reviewed and have the government's seal of approval before release. The Film "Padmaavat" passed censorship, only to receive criticism from more conservative-minded people demanding that a scene where "Deepika's" midriff could be seen should be erased, so VFX were used to cover the offending midriff with a saffron cloth. The lack of originality in most of Bollywood's films doesn't stem from their culture or people, but from the controlling producers and production houses that prefer to put their money into a copy of a Hollywood blockbuster than an independent original Bollywood film.
A change is happening though. The recent success of the Baahubali films is a strong step in the right direction. And although with their sudden creative freedom the VFX studios may have gone a little "over the top", what they have shown us is that they have talent, dedication, and imagination. Bollywood is capable of doing some incredibly original things and it'll continue to do more as soon as Bollywood's Producers stop aspiring to be "Hollywood" and start inspiring "in" Bollywood.
Please give us a like if you enjoyed this video and let us know, in the comments, what you think about Bollywood VFX!
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