The growth of OTT platforms in India has led to creation of more original series that are made here. Many of these series are inclining towards the use of Visual Effects (VFX) that has led to a rise in demand of the VFX industry in India. Prior to the rise of OTT, VFX was limited to heavy budget films which are overly ambitious like Enthiran and Ra.One where VFX were used heavily. In fact the whole films were a work of VFX. But these movies come rarely. Other movies rely very less on VFX, and if they do, a film hardly contains 15 minutes of VFX sequences.
On the other hand, a series has multiple episodes; about 30 minutes each and each episode has a 10 minute VFX sequence (which most of them do have). This makes more than an hour worth of VFX sequence in the whole series giving the VFX artist more exposure. Several series that were released like Rana Naidu and Heeramandi had a heavy emphasis on VFX with 1550 and 1100 VFX shots respectively. Although, a series in India has less budget when compared to a film, still the series are working on allocating more and more budget towards VFX with some projects reaching up to a budget of 50 crores assigned to VFX.
With the rise of OTT platforms, Indian audiences were also exposed to global series that made good use of VFX. Now Indians too are expecting that level of VFX intensive sequences in Indian series as well. This pushes the creators to work hard on the VFX area and creates more opportunities for the VFX artists. Films with intense VFX like Game of Thrones and Dark had been quite popular in India; and though we do have movies that used heavy VFX in most of the sequences like Brahmastra and RRR; but due to lack of appropriate budget, the same things are not being able to be duplicated in web series. We have yet to see a VFX intense series like Stranger Things in India. But the success of series with incorporated VFX sequences like Sacred Games, Rocket Boys etc. is slowly taking the Indian series towards visually ambitious projects.
Soon with the help of right talent and right budget, we will see the VFX in Indian series becoming par with the global standards.