Whistling Woods to empower students with virtual production

Subhash Ghai-promoted Whistling Woods has joined hands with On Set Virtual Production

MUMBAI, Sep 1 (The CONNECT) – Showman Subhash Ghai-promoted Whistling Woods International (WWI) has joined the On Set Virtual Production (OSVP) initiative undertaken by the Society for Motion Pictures & Television Engineers (SMPTE).

The initiative is a first-of-its-kind Rapid Industry Solution (RIS) activity, structured to lay down best practices for tackling the complexities of emerging technologies.

“Over the past year, the WWI Emerging Media Lab has been doing extensive work in Virtual Production & associated technologies like Photogrammetry, Volumetric Capture and Motion / Object Tracking. With this step of joining SMPTE’s OSVP initiative, the Lab will be able to greatly elevate the complexity and scale of the workflows & technology it has access to,” said Chaitanya Chinchlikar, Vice President, Whistling Woods International, who also serves as the Head of its Emerging Media Lab.

With students being involved in the workflows at such an early stage, the training and exposure they’ll receive from industry leaders will be exceptional and immense. This kind of access to expertise will lead to the creation of multiple career opportunities for the students – both in terms of employment with some of these global giants, as well as in entrepreneurship – in setting up their own MSMEs offering virtual production services in India.”, Chinchlikar said.

WWI ensures to expand its horizon by constantly upgrading the technology offered to its students. From evangelising digital film cinematography in India by setting up the Sony Media Tech Centre in 2010 to teaching content creation for digital platforms by setting up the YouTube Space & YouTube Educator Lab, to educating students in Cinematic Virtual Reality through setting up of the WWI Jio VR Lab, WWI has been a pioneer when it comes to incorporating the latest technologies into their curriculum. The same will be so for Virtual Production too, soon.

With its participation in the OSVP initiative, WWI is taking another big step towards educating both its students and the Indian filmed entertainment industry at large, on workflows of the future. The OSVP RIS will be laying down standards, defining best practices and formulating pedagogy & workflows and WWI’s role as an academic institution in hands-on testing and application of these technologies, in production environments, by its students, which will offer immense opportunities and benefits to its students.

While through the association, WWI students will not only be trained and well-equipped in various aspects of Virtual Production, but they will also have access to the best minds of the industry who have undertaken path-breaking & pioneering work in these areas. For e.g., One of the other founding members of the Advisory board is Lux Machina, which has played a key role in the production of cinematic masterpieces like The Mandalorian, Rogue One, Solo, The Irishman, among others, as well as great quality virtually produced broadcast content like The Oscars & The Emmys.

Having been the key driver of various technological advancements undertaken by WWI for the past 15 years, Chaitanya Chinchlikar who is also on the global Board of Governors of the SMPTE further shared, “By next year, WWI hopes to have in place, a best-practices-based curriculum & training methodology in all areas of Virtual Production. Virtual Production is going to play a huge part in our content creation industry going forward and we look forward to India’s content creators and technologists working on the global best practices available in the same.”