Quote Of The Day

No, they aren’t animated characters. They are human beings who were made to wear body suits. “The design of the characters is such that one gets fooled into thinking it is animation,” shrugs Rao, which was indeed the very illusion that had to be created. “In a sense, it is ‘live’ animation!” he quips, referring to the fact that it was all shot live.

Prakash Varma, ad filmmaker, Nirvana Films, has directed the commercials, and reveals that the Zoozoos were a big challenge to create. The practical aspects of how they will move, talk, gesticulate and emote were very important. Essentially, costume design and artwork were crucial elements.

“It took me three weeks of pre-production to understand how it will work,” says Varma. There were two fabrics that were considered for the body suits, and one was rejected for it had too many wrinkles and was shiny. The wrinkles would have shown when the characters moved, thereby shattering the illusion of animation. “So we chose the more practical, thicker fabric,” Varma explains.

The production team divided the outfit into two parts: the body and the head. The body part of the outfit was stuffed with foam in some places, while the head was attached separately. To make it look bigger than a human head, a harder material called Perspex was used, which in turn was stuffed with foam (with scope for ventilation).
If one wishes to understand the size of this head, here’s a fact: a human head would typically reach up to the mouth level of this giant Zoozoo head. “We kept the hands and legs thin, which is why we cast women – and occasionally children – wearing the costumes,” says Varma. The thin limbs, contrasted with big bellies and a bulbous head, all add to the illusion that these creatures are ‘smaller’ than humans. Sets were created to suit the size of the Zoozoos.
Cinematically, this ‘size’ was a trick: the creatures look smaller than they actually are on screen, to portray a different world of sorts. For this, the speed of shooting was altered: Nirvana shot it in a high-speed format to make them look the size that they do.
Furthermore, simple sets/backdrops were created and spray painted with neutral Greys – a colour of choice so that attention isn’t diverted from the main characters. For a supposedly ‘outdoor’ shot, even the shadow of a Zoozoo was kept ‘live’ and not done in post production: it was painted in a darker shade of grey on the ground. An even lighting was maintained throughout.
There was virtually no post production work done.
The films were shot by Nirvana in Cape Town, South Africa, with the help of a local production house there, called Platypus. Incidentally, the same combination of people also worked on the ‘Happy to Help’ series last year. When asked whether Cape Town is fast becoming a tourist spot for Vodafone and Nirvana, Varma laughs, saying, “Oh no! It’s just that we are very comfortable with the team there and know what sort of work to expect from them.”
Nagpal adds here that the production cost had to be minimal for unveiling such a large number of commercials. “Otherwise, our production costs would exceed media spends,” he quips.

Cloud Computing - The future

The advent of modern day web applications has begun with the introduction of Ajax. Earlier in the early nineties, all the data had to be processed at server and each resultant web page was delivered to the client as a static document. That was until Netscape introduced JavaScript, a client-sided scripting language, which added some dynamic elements to the user interface. A plug-in by macromedia called Flash Player, which is based on vector animation, enabled interactions on the client side through scripting. But it was not until the term Ajax (for ‘Asynchronous JavaScript and XML’) was coined, an increase in dynamic or interactive interfaces took place and applications like Gmail started to made client side more and more interactive. Google primarily pioneered this change with a variety of web applications like Google Docs, Gmail, Picasa, Google Maps et al. and with the introduction of their own browser Google Chrome, they emphasized the need for the rest to adapt to the changing scenario.

Let’s now give a thought to what the future might have in store for us and for this we’ll have to consider three things:
Cloud Computing – which is computing, via the Internet, that broadly shares computer resources instead of using software or storage on a local PC. This ‘Wikipedia’ definition is self-explanatory.
But for the sake of elaboration, let’s consider Google Docs. Google takes care of the entire Infrastructure and provides us a Platform through the Internet to access the Web Application. A user need not worry about the storage, software installation or hardware compatibility etc.
Web Applications – Due to the above mentioned reasons, there has been a dramatic increase in the quality and quantity of the web applications, most of them free and secure to access, during the last five years or so. Google Docs acts almost exactly like any of our office application and all we need to use it is a web browser and a personal computer system or any portable device that is capable of running a web browser. There has been a steady competition developing between the Desktop and Web Apps, a Visible split has been recorded among the users and it can be considered as a Paradigm Shift towards the latter.
Connectivity – The wired and wireless connectivity has improved manifold in terms of speed and security during the past few years. With better and faster Internet access combined with cheaper Memory, this has become a hot prospect in the industry. In fact, Google is planning to launch ultra-high speed Internet connections of over 1Gbps across a few trial locations this month in the US as part of an experimental study.
All the above considerations will lead to an important conclusion. We are now part of a phase transition. Most of the desktop applications we take for granted will soon be passe as once had been when hotmail took over the world.
There can be a day when your desktop will be full of shortcuts to web application links and the most important software, and maybe the only useful one, installed is a web browser. Be prepared for that.