BANDUNG, unpas.ac.id – Apart from the director’s direction and the stunning acting of the actor/actress, the success of big-screen films certainly cannot be separated from the big role of the crew involved. Among the many roles in the film production process, the visual effects designer or the VFX team is one of the important divisions to assist the filmmaker in realizing his vision or story-telling.
In the event of 2020 Piala Citra Indonesian Film Festival, the alumnus of Unpas Visual Communication Design Faculty of Arts and Literature, Gaga Nugraha Ramadhan won the award for Best Visual Effects for ‘Ratu Ilmu Hitam’ directed by Joko Anwar.
Gaga competed to other nominees who also worked on big-screen film, such as ‘Habibie & Ainun 3’, ‘Sebelum Iblis Menjemput Ayat 2’, ‘Susi Susanti – Love All’, ‘Abracadabra’, ‘Perempuan Tanah Jahanam’ and ‘Mangkujiwo’.
“The VFX team added the visual element digitally, which was not possible to do in the Penata scene. Most films take real shoot, so all we can do was manipulating the result [of the shoot]. [If] there is a scene of broken hands, we make it 3D,” he said through phone call, on Tuesday (April 6th, 2021).
This 1998-er alumnus has already had his interest to be involved in visual effect and animation division since college. In 2004, he started his career in advertisement industry as Computer Graphic (CG) Artist that works on animation.
“Before graduating, I took my time working on Post Production in Jakarta. But at that time, there were not as many Indonesian films produced as now, so I got into the advertising industry. It was not until 2010 that I started working on visual effects in films, because the film industry is getting more and more exciting,” he added.
Currently, Gaga has been involving in a production of hundreds of television advertisement, both in domestic and foreign country. Since 2010, Gaga has worked many films, such as ‘Serdadu Kumbang’, ‘Soegija’, ‘Leher Angsa’, ‘Jenderal Soedirman’, ‘Wiro Sableng’, ‘Dreadout’, ‘Hit and Run’, ‘Ratu Ilmu Hitam’ and ‘Nanti Kita Cerita tentang Hari Ini’.
Having a lot of experiences in animation and film makes Gaga trustful to be the VFX Supervisor in several films in Indonesia. He committed to develop Indonesian animation industry and visual effect to be able to compete internationally.
“In Indonesia, the work of VFX takes only 7 months on average. Last time I work on ‘Ratu Ilmu Hitam’ for 3 months and ‘Wiro Sableng’ for 7 months. That is still lacking; because ideally, the work of VFX could take more than 1 year, like in Hollywood. That is why the quality is not that really good,” he explained.
Gaga said that to create an outstanding visual effect, it requires longer time of processing, with a large number of teams. In addition, it also needs many equipment and fund, while Indonesia is not very open in terms of financing the film production. Therefore, he also sent his advices to all prospective graduates of Visual Communication Design students to keep on learning on animation and visual effects, because the film industry currently needs more people in order to compete with foreign films.
“To those who are still students; apart from studying at campus, it is also important to study the subject self-taught. We create our own future. If we want to grow up, we need to study it on our own. Film industry needs more [of you] people in animation and visual effect division,” he ended. (Reta Amaliyah S)*