Will Kochadaiyaan and Maattrraan help Performance Capture technology?
Kochadaiyaan making is currently in full progress in London. The making video shows Rajinikanth, Sarathkumar, Jackie Shroff, Shobana along with the directors Soundarya and KS Ravikumar working on the Performance Capture using special suits.
Why Oscar Snubbed Motion Capture film 'TinTin'?
Recently, Spielberg used this technology in Adventures of TinTin. Even though Spielberg worked very hard to convince the Academy awards committee about the merits, TinTin was snubbed by the Oscar awards by not getting even a singe nominations neither in regular film nor animation movie category. There is a strong lobby working against the use of this technology in Hollywood. The group acknowledges that the technology is superior when compared to conventional animation in terms of precision and being able to clearly see even the nostril hairs and skin pores. However, they blame the expressionless eyes of characters resulting in lack of soul in characters as the shortcomings of this technology. They claim the physical movements and emotional projections are not as nuanced and effective as competing technologies. It is clear that most of these opinions are politically motivated by vested interests within Hollywood to kill Motion Capture and protecting the status quo.
Even though TinTin made close to $300M worldwide, it is considered to be an average grosser in the US with collection figure of $77M. This has further strengthened the opposition voice against the use of Motion Capture technology. Even production houses like Disney are currently hesitating before launching new big budget movies using this technology.
Will Maattraan and Kochadaiyaan serve as case studies?
Many of the supporters of this technology are keenly watching two of the upcoming Indian movies, Maattrraan and Kochadaiyaan, to help build some support and strengthen their case studies. Tamil cinema should be proud of trailblazing such high-tech efforts that even Bollywood movies with more money and resources are scared to even touch.
About Performance Capture : Performance Capture technology records actions of actors to animate digital character models in 3D computer animation. The movements of actors are sampled many times per second. This motion capture records only the movements of the actor, not the visual appearance in this video. The animation data is then mapped to a 3D model so that the model performs the same actions as the actor.