Sibi Naayagam is an LA-based filmmaker focusing on virtual production.
Sibi Naayagam is a recent SCA film graduate from USC, and he is currently working for Disney. His recent films include "Mufasa" and "Snow White". He shared with us his student thesis film "Ponni", a story about India fending off British colonists. It is the first virtual production project approved by the Film department. I was amazed that the filming(motion capture) only took six days to complete, and the majority of the project is spent on post building the environment. According to Sibi, this process gives him a lot of freedom to make changes even after filming since everything is done in Unreal Engine. It is possible to completely change the environment and the characters' clothes and keeping the performance the same.
Sibi also showed a new film he is currently working on, where he himself and a friend is acting out an argument. He said the current motion capture and facial capture technology has advanced greatly since four years ago when he was making his thesis film, such that weeks of work could be done in hours. He is very optimistic about the future of 3D software and AI, as he believes the future is in some ways already here, granting access to more creators with less skills.