If trimming production cost is what filmmakers are looking at, then technology could significantly help them achieve this.
Storyboarding, which is a practice of filmmakers to visualise and plan their scene for the day, is a time-consuming, elaborate process of drawing each scene on sheets of paper before they are shot.
In animation films particularly, the ‘storyboard' culture is more popular, as the scenes are virtually designed.
Making the process simpler is ‘Storyboard,' a software that helps filmmakers shape an idea into visuals through a hassle-free process involving just a few clicks.
The students of SRM Sivaji Ganesan Film Institute were on Monday taught about using the software that promises to simplify the work of directors and cut down on the time spent on conceiving the scene at the locations.
“It saves a lot of time and money for the producers. The trick is to get into the practice of storyboarding and rehearse each scene,” said Lilly Vogelesang, technical consultant, Toon Boom Animation Inc., the company which developed the software.
In her lecture-demonstration to the students, she spoke about how the characters in animation films have a perfect lip sync with the voice of the dubbing artists.
A voice-identification facility in the software would automatically adjust the lip movement of each character, in sync with the voice. “The software matches nearly 80 per cent of the lip movement and voice. Animation filmmakers usually do a bit of manual work to make it look completely perfect,” she said.
She also demonstrated the working of ‘Harmony,' another software that was used extensively in popular animation films such as ‘Hanuman' and ‘Princess and the Frog.'
Extensive planning
Observing that extensive planning before shoots can bring down the production cost, G. Ramkumar, producer and son of Sivaji Ganesan, said Tamil filmmakers should get familiarised with such software to economically plan production schedule.
Dean of the Institute Gnana Rajasekaran said filmmakers from India should catch up with the growing technologies and incorporate such software in their filmmaking process.
