Tom Thudiyanplackal,
Virtual Production Producer, Senior M&E Solutions Architect,
The Storyteller’s Desk
Indian-born American filmmaker Tom Thudiyanplackal has credits on several landmark movies, including vice president for Development and Marketing for Bollywood blockbusters 3 Idiots and Carry On Munna Bhai, and Producer of the Emmy-nominated nature documentary Seed: The Untold Story. He has traversed several industries and spearheaded creative ventures for Ogilvy Advertising, Reliance Communications, and Vinod Chopra Films in a career spanning over two decades.
After completing the Summer 2021 Unreal Engine Virtual Production fellowship with Epic Games, Thudiyanplackal joined the University of Southern California’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) as the Virtual Production Producer on the short film, Fathead and is leading the authorship on the white paper documenting and sharing the experiences and lessons gathered from the production.
As a producer and technologist, Thudiyanplackal is engaged in experimentation and novel pipeline integrations for virtual production, focusing on volumetric performance capture and photogrammetry of human subjects and end-to-end production methods better suited for low- to mid-budget projects centered on human stories needing a high degree of realism. He is an active member of the ETC virtual production workgroup focused on investigations into virtual production education, light and color science, and LED panel technology.
Thudiyanplackal holds a BS in Physics from Mumbai University, India, and has received formal education in direction and cinematography from Prague Film School. He has co-developed a novel mind-body self-efficacy protocol with his wife as she continues to overcome Multiple Sclerosis (MS) spiritedly. The method has earned a peer-reviewed paper published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine. The curriculum for the protocol for self-care is currently taught at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine.
