Film production and VFX is the work of making a film or a series, from casting the actors to the final file that a cinema or a streaming service plays. VFX, short for visual effects, means images that are made or changed on a computer. Many of the artists who make visual effects for Hollywood films and global streaming series work in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. India has become one of the largest places in the world where visual effects are made.
Every film passes through three stages. Pre-production is the script, the planning and the casting of the actors. Production is the shoot. Post-production is everything after the shoot: editing, visual effects, colour, sound and mastering. Mastering means preparing the final versions of the film for cinemas, TVs and phones.
Here is a typical case. A director in Mumbai is making a Hindi disaster film in which a flood sweeps through a coastal town. First, the casting team finds the supporting actors on an online casting platform. Actors record their auditions on their phones and upload them, so nobody has to travel to Mumbai for a first audition.
Next comes the shoot. The scenes on a rooftop at night are filmed on a virtual production stage. Huge LED screens behind the actors show the flooded town. A game engine draws that town live, and the picture moves as the camera moves.
The flood itself is made after the shoot, by a VFX studio. Its artists use fluid simulation software, which works out how real water would move through the streets. The studio's pipeline software passes each shot from artist to artist and keeps every version. Then the colour of every shot is adjusted, and the sound is mixed.
The film is released in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu on the same day. A dubbed film usually looks dubbed, because the actors' lips do not match the new words. AI lip sync changes the actors' mouth movements to match each language. This matters in India, where many viewers prefer films in their own language, as described in vernacular internet. AI tools now help with dubbing, clean-up and even whole scenes, which raises questions about consent and credit; see AI-generated content.
Finally, the film is mastered in immersive audio and HDR formats. Immersive audio places sounds around and above the audience. HDR, short for high dynamic range, gives pictures brighter highlights and deeper shadows. The cinema master is compressed with a video codec and sent to cinemas, and a second master goes to the streaming service.
Who pays for all this? The film's producer, or the streaming service that ordered the series, pays each company for its part of the work. VFX studios are usually paid a fixed price for each film or series.