Adlabs sets foot in Kolkata

Adlabs has set foot in the city with their film-processing and post-production business. The processing lab is coming up in Salt Lake and the high-end post-production set up has started in Moore Avenue, closer to the heart of the film industry in Tollygunge.

As Kapil Bagila, corporate head, strategic Planning, Adlabs Films told The Telegraph (Edition 21.12.06), "There are only three regions (In India) which actually and consistenly produce film content- the west, the south and the east." So after winning over the first two, it was high time they came to east. According to him they've already received a very positive response.

The processing lab will host a state-of-the art Dolby preview theatre, a first in Kolkata.

Someone clued in to Tollygunge film industry knows that even in Satyajit Ray's time he would go to Prasad in Chennai for the processing of films. The trend is much bigger today with every producer who wants a good technical quality in his film going to Chennai and Mumbai (Adlabs Mumbai has many clients from the city). All this despite the existence of government-owned Rupayan which has some of the modern equipment but is yet falling out of the race because of poor-quality technicians and a sincere urge to keep updated.

Now here is the buzz from two people from Tollygunge. Riingo, a talented maker of ad films and telefilms, with his first feature film Kranti released in Puja this year, is still not finding it exciting as yet. As he says, the machine was never a problem, the men behind it was. So he will wait and watch. Oona Ghose, an assistant director in feature films, including the upcoming Aamra, is not hiding her excitement. She was waiting for such facilities for long and was in fact one of the people from Kolkata who were pestering Adlabs to consider the city as the next destination.

Digital cinema debuts in Bengali

The first digitally shot Bengali feature film Kranti saw a September release. Directed by Riingo, a familiar name on Bengali television for his telefilms and produced by Shri Venkatesh Films, the largest and most progressive production house of Kolkata, this film possibly gave birth silently to a revolutionalising technical trend- digital cinema.

The film was shot on a high-definition digital format, got colour correction done and finally converted to film format. Hence the texture, hues were refreshingly different from others. The highpoint of shooting in this style is that the film can be given the desired look in terms of colour at a much lower cost. The director can use this technique to stylize his film and raise the quality bar.

Kranti also is the most stylishly shot Bengali film ever. Since cinematography was handled by Riingo who has a strong hold of the craft, the frames looked very different than average fare and at par with current Hindi films. Also most probably for the first time, three people from a band Hip Pocket (Som, Rishi, Samidh) scored the music (You must not consider Neel Nirjane by Subrata Sen where the band Cactus featured as part of the story and hence had songs specially composed for the film).