Interview of Abishek Nair

My friend Abishek Nair and myself were
recently having a conversation over email where I kept prodding him
about what he’s going to do next. You see, being a Bangalorean, he’s
not a software engineer! He’s a vfx whiz. In normal English, that
means he’s one of those guys who creates the visual effects in ads or
movies that you might have seen. A couple of days after that email
exchange, Abishek calls me and says that he’s got a contract with a
Singapore company (with whom he had just finished a project) and was
going there to work on even more cooler stuff.

I was happy to hear that because I’ve seen some of his work and I
think he really is talented, all he needs is a platform to showcase
his skills, and this new gig should be a very good opportunity for
him.

We met up a couple of days before he took off, just to catch up. He
showed me some of his latest work and I was just blown away. You must
have seen the latest Limca ad on TV featuring Riya Sen…

He went on to explain the software that he uses and how “node-based”
software has shaked the vfx industry literally, thanks to the
popularity of Apple Shake, and so on. I was surprised at how much
painstaking effort is required to create these visual effects – we
take movies like King Kong for granted but the amount of work behind
the scenes is mind-boggling.

Coincidentally, Dad had recently bought a new Sony DCR-DVD 708E
handycam and I had brought it over to show it to Abishek… I got a
brainwave – why not make an interview? It need not be anything
professional, just something that happened. I think Kiruba’s
enthusiasm, while encouraging podcasters in a session at
BarCampBangalore3, had rubbed off on me.

And here I present to you – the first ever video that I’ve ever shot!
The best parts are the demos of Abishek’s works and his description of
how it was created.

Note 1: You can also download the
video
for offline viewing.

Note 2: The audio quality is a little faint in the beginning, but much
better after we switched off the fan :)

If you are interested to know more, you can write to Abishek – his
email address is abisheknair (at) gmail.com.