Indian Firm: Prime Focus, Playing A Growing Role In Creative Industry

The Indian Film industry hit prime time last year with Slumdog's 8 Oscars. Few know it's more behind the scenes role in the creation of this year's mega money maker, Avatar.

"The firm is steadily climbing the ladder to the top of the visual effects industry. Its staff has increased from four college-age kids to more than 1,200 post-production pros. After selling equity to a couple of top Indian entertainment firms to finance acquisitions, the company now boasts four studios in India, another in London and two more in the United States. And last year, the firm earned 3.67 billion rupees ($80 million) in revenue. But the company's biggest strides have been creative.

Prime Focus played an essential behind-the-scenes role in two of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters of 2009 -- Chris Weitz's "New Moon" and James Cameron's "Avatar." The company established itself as one of the cutting-edge firms in the visual effects business by producing about 10 percent of Mr. Cameron's path-breaking 3-D superhit and a whopping 80 percent of the shots for the second installment of the "Twilight" franchise."

This is where I strongly disagree with Richard Florida, who from what I have read, places almost all his chips on the idea that creativity trumps all and costs don't matter that much.

From what I can tell, costs matter a whole lot in more and more industries and lowering those costs can let one be more creative and take more risks.

A trend that should be good for places like Pittsburgh, which has a large supply of creative people and what should be a sustainable cost advantage. Will we take advantage of this?