As the Make In India week is about to gain velocity in the month of February and PM Modi has recently encouraged Startup initiatives in India to create content of our own, another project has been achieved in the animation space. An American animated feature film, Norm of the North, has been animated by studio Assemblage. The production of this film was entirely done in India by Assemblage, while the pre and post production was done by Splash Entertainment.
Directed by Trevor Wall and distributed by Lionsgate, this film opened in 2300 theatres in a selected few regions. Though the film has not received an appreciative feedback from the critics, it has grossed around $9.7 million at the box office within a week.
Norm of the North turns out to be the second feature in Assemblage’s kitty after Blinky Bill the Movie (2015) which was produced along with Flying Bark Productions and Telegael and got 80 per cent rating by Rotten Tomatoes. Assemblage has also produced a feature Alpha and Omega 2, and another feature The Swan Princess is in production; both these projects are for home viewing. Established in December 2013, Assemblage started by veteran AK Madhavan aka Mad Max is one of the few studios in India to deliver two full length feature films in such a short span since inception.
The plot of the film seems quite generic as it portrays the typical Arctic story where the region faces the fear of encroachment by a real estate brat. The Arctic bear, Norm, along with his three lemming friends arrives to Manhattan to fight for his land. Juggling through jeopardy and ending up in simple humourous tiffs, the characters adventure also includes meeting new companions along their way.
The pre production in terms of scripting, story, character design and plot was given to the Assemblage team. AK Madhavan admits, “We got the sketches in terms of the character design form Splash Entertainment as they were the main producers of the film.” A team of around 160 artists from Assemblage worked for a period of 14 months to deliver the entire production.
As the entire film is a 3D animated feature, typical softwares like Autodesk Maya was used for creating the 3D animation, Nuke was used for compositing, Shave and A Hair Cut to create the fur and Arnold for rendering. “Everything right from modeling, surfacing, rigging, compositing, lighting and rendering was created by our team in such a short time span,” he adds.
Splash Entertainment was formerly known as Mike Young Productions and Madhavan had been associated with Splash Entertainment’s current Co-CEO Mike Young, for a CGI television show. Therefore, Mike Young and Madhavan had the seed of Norm of the North in their minds since a long time.
He highlights, “The delivery was a challenge because we had to crack the whole model in a limited span of time. But I credit my entire team who worked tirelessly on this.” Also, there was a huge team of Splash Entertainment who worked closely with the team of Assemblage. Both the teams sat together and finalised on what could be delivered within the specified time frame. “The team members of Splash were sitting in our studio and we would discuss whether each shot would work. It was a collective effort of both the teams; in fact it felt like one whole production unit was working and not two separate ones,” he beamingly says.
Often in animation, rendering becomes a tiresome job as the project becomes heavy and demands a lot of time. In this film, there are a couple of underwater and snow shots and creating water is a difficult task in animation. He explains, “It depends on how smartly you use the softwares to create CGI animation so that the project does not become heavy in rendering. Once you learn the trick, then rendering the project becomes an easy process.
The film portrays two environments, one of the icy barren Arctic and the other of the busy Manhattan hub. According to Madhavan, “Both the environments were opposite to each other. Arctic has more of mountains, glaciers and a floor of ice while, Manhattan has peculiar tall buildings and setting. Creating this distinct environment required a lot of research and in depth study from the team to get the feel of the actual setting.”
Though the critics have pointed out various flaws in the animation, creating the backgrounds like the cars and crowds in a Manhattan setting was a challenge for the team. As this film is a debut of director Trevor Wall, he was directly involved in the entire project. Trevor spent around three months in Assemblage studio, seamlessly monitoring the entire animation and incorporating various changes.
In terms of creating Indian feature films, Madhavan feels, “Animation is an expensive medium. We focus on CGI and the cost of CGI production is high. Therefore recovering the cost in India is difficult by creating content only for Indian audience. Animation has to be a global product. A Good Dinosaur or Minions travels globally, therefore in India we need to create content for a global audience. Animation is a family genre. In India, majority of the parents take their children for movies like Dabangg; the question lies why not take them for an animated movie in the same manner?
As compared to a Disney Pixar or a DreamWorks’ kind of animation definitely, Assemblage has a long way to go. In terms of animation and storytelling, this film has not baffled the audience to a great extent. He admits, “We are nowhere close to any of these giants, but we are new and slowly gaining pace. It is important for us to sustain this pace and develop.”
This film has managed to secure 2.3 rating on IMDb and is yet to hit the large screens in the India. In terms of budget, Madhavan is of the view that they will break even the amount invested. Well, whether this film will succeed or fail is left to the audience to decide. And with many such budding studios, we can’t wait to see when a full-fledged global content film would be entirely created in India right from scripting to worldwide distribution. Mad Max concludes, “India has arrived for a global play. There was a time when we lost our ground but now India is back. Therefore we can now focus on ‘Make in India!’”