Suryansu Guha

Though we often conflate ‘filmmaking’ with film shooting in production backlots, the actual amount of work involved in making a finished film is often a complex transnational process involving a global workforce. My dissertation is interested in a specific phase of filmmaking called post-production, that usually takes place once the film has been shot. As the post-production industry in India continues to cater to both a domestic market as well as a global market, my dissertation looks at the changes it has undergone since the late 90s. As global media conglomerates became more dependent on the outsourcing of post-production work to India, it gave rise to a number of outsourcing firms called ‘one-stop-shops’. My work documents this gradual IT-fication of the post-production process and work-flow to show how creative work is taylorized and transformed into rote, menial and monotonous service work. The ‘one-stop-shops’ handle this workflow with a steady oversupply of invisible and dispensable creative workers to help its clients curtail production expenses and bypass labor laws. My dissertation demonstrates how their operations in a growing service economy allows for the degradation of post-production work and a disavowal of the artist whose work is taken for granted as ‘back-end process.’