This article is written by Mr. Wall.  The article is that of his commentary and opinion alone.  Please respect that.

Everyone please welcome friend, Mr. Wall, to New Film Dimension as a writer and movie fan.

US-Based digital entertainment company Imedia Ventures Ltd. Has recently signed a deal with CDI, an Indian based CGi animation company to handle the 3D animated Sci-Fi thriller 3000 BC.

This deal marks a change that American based CGi studios have feared and whether you know it or not, the movie goers will be regretting.

Indian studios have been around for a little while but when it comes to American studio movies they’ve strictly been outsourced for secondary shots, the kind that no one notices and the kind that the main studios don’t want to deal with since they’ve got the primary shots to worry about.

What’s the difference between caring about the secondary vs. the primary shots you might ask? Simply put: Quality. If the shot has a lot going on and requiring meticulous detail then it’s important to keep it in house, if there’s a bunch of shots that require minimal detail, will be on the screen for a blip of an eye and not worth hiring on more contracted employees then out source them to India.

That’s the obvious line of why some work stays with the studio and the other shots get outsourced

Sadly, once again the accountants have taken creative control of another movie; they figured out that the studios in India are at least half the cost of the American counterparts, what they didn’t take into account was “why”.

Let me point something out before I explain all the problems of this deal. The Indian studios are excellent at doing what they’re told. If the main studio gives them a grocery list of what exactly needs to be done with each shot then that’s exactly what the main studio will get. Nothing more and nothing less.

And that’s one of the many problems with giving a country 9000 miles away the reins on a movie. They will not be making any creative decisions while creating this movie, they won’t question anything that looks off and they won’t’ try to improve anything that could be easily improved. Nope, if it’s not on that checklist it’s not going to get done.

Meanwhile the studio that owns this movie won’t have a clue of what’s going on until they get the shots back from India. Now these aren’t “shots” as in stills that could be easily emailed, no, this is completely rendered animation that must be delivered on hard drives either by Fed Ex or hand delivered which are then viewed by the powers that be, critiqued and any adjustments would be sent back to the animation studio to fix.

When all of this is done locally it still takes weeks if not months to get everything hammered out and that’s with the animation studio making good judgment calls which actually help reduce the amount of additional work needed. When this is done across oceans with language barriers and inadequate grocery lists it just becomes a mess.

I can’t emphasize enough how the lack of judgment calls by the Indian studios will affect the completed work. I’m talking about art here, no matter what your opinion of CGi is you have to agree that it’s a form of art, something that takes a keen eye, attention to detail, sense of creativity and the desire to use them. It’s not something that can be handled by following a check list especially for the bigger shots, the ones that people remember and talk about.

I’m sure the accountants who thought of this plan figured they were going to save at least half of the money they would normally spend, what they didn’t take into account was all the work they were going to have to do trying to micromanage a studio 9000 miles away with results that will be nowhere near the quality of Pixar, PDI and just about every other established studio.

I really hope this won’t become the norm; I’d really hate to see another reason for movies to suck nowadays by taking giant leaps backwards in a bizarre attempt to save money while creating crap no one will want to see.

 -Mr. Wall