Reliance partners In-Three for world's largest 2D-to-3D conversion operation

More than five years ago I was at ShoWest 2004 in Las Vegas when a contact told me about a secret demo that was taking place, away from the cinema trade show itself, in a hotel room in Flamingo. "These guys have converted regular films to 3D," I was told breathlessly. I managed to secure an invite and was escorted into a mid-size hotel room with an oversized 2K projector taking up most of the space, as well as a few chairs and a screen.

I had been covering the digital cinema the industry long enough to have developed a healthy skepticism toward tall new claims, but what I saw that night blew me away: 3D clips of films such as "2001: A Space Odyssey", "12 Angry Men", "Casablanca", the original "Star Wars" and many more classics. And they all - worked. The 3D did not look fake, gimmicky or tacky in a 'colorization' sort of way. It looked as if the director had intended the film to be stereoscopic in the first place and I found myself wanting to watch the films again, this time in 3D. That was my first introduction to In-Three. I could not write about it in my E-Cinema Alert newsletter, but I knew that the company was onto something great.

Fast forward three and a half years and I'm having dinner at an Indonesian restaurant in Amsterdam during IBC 2007 with my friend and mentor Richard Wolfe, where he also invited and introduced me to Neil Feldman, the CEO of In-Three. The digital cinema deployment was spluttering, the 3D deployments were just starting and "Avatar" was in the early pre-production stages.

Neil told me more about In-Three, the Dimensionalization(R) process and projects they had worked on and were in the pipeline. I also realized that Neil stood out as one of the sharpest and most visionary business men - in an industry that is not exactly short of that type - while also having a tremendous amount of warmth and generosity of spirit. A rare combination. While In-Three had not yet come out with its first full-length feature film, it made me appreciate that Neil and In-Three were in this for the long haul, something that was confirmed when I subsequently got to visit his facility in Westlake Village, around the time that we acquired Lowry Digital, and saw some of the latest footage and examples of their work.

It is thus with tremendous excitement that I can finally share the news that Reliance MediaWorks is partnering In-Three to create the world's largest 2D-to-3D conversion facility, right here in Mumabi, able to cater to 15-25 projects per year, once it is fully up and running. Making this possible was a true team effort on both our side and In-Three's side. You can read more about it in this article from Wall Street Journal:

Indian conglomerate Reliance ADA Group is partnering with a Los Angeles company to produce 3-D movies out of a new 1,000-person facility in Mumbai that will be the largest of its kind in the world.

Reliance and In-Three Inc. will convert 15 to 25 feature films per year from regular two-dimensional format to 3-D, the companies say. Reliance's planned $40 million facility, which is scheduled to open in January, will house the 3-D operations along with other film services it already provides, such as post-production, visual effects and restoration of classics.

But even more depth is provided (as so often) by Carolyn Giardina in The Hollywood Reporter:

"We feel next year is going to a big year for 3D for theaters and the home," said Neil Feldman, CEO of In-Three, which recently worked on Disney's 3D "G-Force." "We anticipate such a large volume of work that we need capacity, and that is where Reliance comes in. We are setting this up in advance."

Slated to launch in February, the operation intends to hire hundreds of employees -- possibly as many as 600 -- during its first year. They will be trained and equipped to handle 15-25 feature film projects a year. Further out, the companies expect the staff to number in the thousands.

The companies said that work on the first joint title will commence early next year, with several more projects planned for a start in the year's first half. Titles were not disclosed.

The number of 3D cinema screens worldwide recently topped 6,000, and the transition continues to move forward albeit at a slower pace than many had hoped. It is expected that the first projects from the facility will include new features and legacy titles as well as theatrical commercials.

There has also been coverage in the Economic Times and Reuters, with more set to follow no doubt. And if you have not seen it already, make sure to watch Disney/Bruckheimer's "G-Force" to appreciate the power of 2D-to-3D conversion and why In-Three stands head and shoulders above all other companies in this field. Watch this space for future fruits of our joint labour.

Our finances are looking up

Reliance MediaWorks still turned a small loss for the most recent quarter, but a significant improvement on the previous quarter and the outlook is very rosy, as this interview in ET with our CEO Anil Arjun makes clear. Some key stats:

How would the remainder of the year pan out for entertainment players?

You have to look at it in perspective. When we spoke about it last quarter I talked about the resolutions of the issues; we have seen an 80% growth in this quarter in terms of our topline itself. Now if I look at the market performance in terms of the box-office, like I said, it has been a 20% growth in terms of box-office. What is important is that the realisation per film has increased by about 38%. If you look at numbers like for instance the wide release films, which are about the 500 print release, it has been about a 68% increase in topline.

You are still at a net loss level of about Rs 11 crore, while revenues have jumped. When do you start to see the bottomline becoming profitable?

We have seen a major improvement between Q1 and Q2, in fact our EBITDA from operations was a minus Rs 9 crore in Q1, and it has grown to Rs 35 crore in Q2; our loss was about Rs 65 crore and it is now down to Rs 11 crore. A lot of that has been attributed to the depreciation in the interest cost because we went through a very large capital expansion in the past one year. I see a lot of gain flowing from Q3 onwards. Clearly by the third-fourth quarters will reflect positively on our topline and bottomline.

The war chest of INR 600 Cr (US$ 130m) will enable us to do some spectacular thing in the second half of this financial year. Stay tuned for details.

Apparently we are the 25th biggest cinema chain in the US

A good article from the LA Times that gives an overview of our cinema chain in the US. There is even mention of what we are doing on the digital front:

Seeking to upgrade the experience and the environment, Big Cinemas is spending $12 million to renovate theaters -- many of which it acquired from mom-and-pop operators -- with new digital projectors and sound systems, computerized accounting controls, stadium seating and concession stands serving Indian food.

...

Reliance reached out to Indian film distributors, offering to act as a "one-stop shop" to deliver their movies across the U.S. via a company-owned fiber-optic network that pipes films directly from Mumbai to New York. That assures quicker and cheaper distribution than in the past, when canisters of film would have to be flown in and could get held up in customs, causing costly delays.

The Hindi films are subtitles, so any of you non-Indians out there tempted by this, go and have a visit and see it for yourself. You can say that 'Patrick sent me" - but that won't qualify you for a free mango lassi drink or samosa. Just admire the digital picture.

Adlabs set to become Reliance MediaWorks

It was announced today that Adlabs Film is changing names and becoming Reliance MediaWorks.

The new moniker makes sense as not only do we not just do ad-films, which is how the name came about 30-odd years ago, but since Manmohan Shetty sold the business to Reliance ADAG we have grown significantly and expanded into many new areas of business. Here is how the Business Standard covered the news:

Adlabs Films, India's leading film and media services company, and a member of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, announched that it proposes to change its name to Reliance MediaWorks Limited, subject to shareholders and other requisite approvals.

For the year ended March 31, 2009, the Company delivered total revenues of Rs. 733 crores ($152 million), reflecting a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 80 per cent in the last three years.

The original name, Adlabs Films, was reflective of the company’s initial business as a film processing laboratory. Pursuant to the Reliance ADA Group acquiring the controlling stake in Adlabs in the year 2005, the company has witnessed transformational growth in the canvas and scale of its operations.

Commenting on the development, Anil Arjun, Chief Executive Officer said, “The name Reliance MediaWorks Limited more accurately reflects our identity as a diversified film and media services company with a global presence.

We are privileged to draw upon the international recognition of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group brand, to further strengthen our leadership position in the media and entertainment business. ”

And I guess we will no longer be confused with Atlabs, though this too has changed name to Deluxe Australia.

No word on a new logo (the one above is the group company logo) but I'm sure I will be getting new business cards before too long. However, not soon enough to take with me to IBC in Amsterdam next week, which I will be attending Friday-Tuesday, followed by the Judge Business School in Cambridge, where on Saturday 19th September I am giving a keynote on 'The Globalisation of Indian Cinema - A Corporate Perspective' and sharing a panel with distinguished guests like Anupam Kher, Parminder Vir and Partho Sen-Gupta, in conjuncture with the Cambridge Film Festival.

India's BIG Cinema embraces opera

BIG Cinemas is going where no Indian exhibitor has gone before - to screen digital operas. Given the very different musical culture of India this is a more significant undertaking than previous opera screenings in Europe and North America or even Japan. I am happy to have played a small part of it and look forwards to seeing what the outcome will be.

From the Economic Times:

BIG Cinemas, an R-ADAG company, has forged an alliance with London-based More2Screen to bring Italian operas to Indian cinemas. Big has entered into a revenue-sharing arrangement with More2Screen, which will involve screening two operas and a concert. More2Screen specialises in providing alternative content programming like operas, sporting events and concerts to theatres that are digitally equipped.

According to Tushar Dhingra, COO, Big Cinemas, the objective has been to provide distinct content. His company was the first multiplex chain to organise a show of Vagina Monologues in India.

Sadly I will not be around to watch the first one myself as I have to head back for SAWA/Cannes Lions and Cinema Expo, but I have seen them in test screenings and they look and sound fantastic. Ad to it an opera-like venue like the gorgeous BIG Metro cinema and it should be quite the night to remember.

Adlabs ties up with Pathe in first European deal and opens multiplex in Chicago

Adlabs has become the first Indian movie major to tie up with a major European exhibitor to establish a virtual Bollywood presence in Europe. The deal between Adlabs' BIG Cinemas and Pathé Theatres will give India's largest film distributor and exhibitor an outlet for Bollywood and other Indian films in all major cities in The Netherlands. From the article in Economic Times:

In the Netherlands, the company will roll out three Big Cinemas screens in Pathé Theaters' existing megaplexes in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Hague. "Pathé is a perfect fit in our global strategy to bring Indian movies to Europe and other continents. Starting with the Netherlands, we will explore other countries in Europe," says Anil Arjun, CEO of Adlabs Films.

Pathé Theatres is a part of EuroPalaces movie theatre chain that runs 834 screens in France, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands.

Indian distribution houses prefer Pathé for exhibiting their films to cash in on the 7,00,000 Hindi movie fans of Indian, Pakistani, Afghani, Turkish and Moroccan origin.

Here, Hindi movies like Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Singh is Kinng, Jodhaa Akbar, Dostana and Om Shanti Om have grossed $130,000-200,000. "We believe that the admissions can be over 400,000 annually. The efforts so far to distribute Indian films can be described as sub-optimal. There are segments the world over where the demand for content is more than the supply, and we believe we can tap into this," adds Mr Arjun.

While the UK constitutes the largest overseas market for Bollywood and other Indian films, the rest of Europe makes up a significant and under-served share. This virtual presence is a further step in the direction of smart and tactic expansion by Adlabs at a time when most other Indian media companies are retreating or re-grouping.

Meanwhile in the US Adlabs is opening its first purpose re-built multiplex with a high-end luxury five-screen multiplex in a wealthy suburb of Chicago. While Adlabs already has more than 170 screens across the US, these were acquired from different cinema operators, while this is the first one refurbished inside-out to BIG Cinema specification. From The Business Standard:

The multiplex, Big Cinemas-Golf Glen, is located in Niles, Chicago. It will have five screens and a premium lounge. The facility will be digitally connected to Adlabs India, enabling the films to be transferred on fibre optic cable within four to six hours instead of using physical films, a statement issued by the company said.

"The Chicago launch is in keeping with our vision to establish a strong foothold for Big Cinemas worldwide in markets with an appetite for Indian cinema," said Anil Arjun, CEO, Adlabs Films.

"Big Cinemas has a significant presence in the US with 170 screens and accounts for 25 per cent of the box office turnover for Hindi Films and over 65 per cent for Tamil and Telugu films released in the US. This multiplex at Niles, Chicago is part of Big Cinema's strategy to actively promote and ensure better reach of Indian movies," he added.

The multiplex will screen a mix of Hollywood, Indian, Polish and Korean films and will have stadium seating to enable live telecasts of cricket matches and other events.

The grand opening will be on 29 May. Wish I was going, but too many other things going on in India right now. I will try to post some photos from the opening party when I get them sent to me.

Adlabs goes after the restoration outsourcing business

Outsourcing of work might not be popular right now, but it is a fact of business life in the global economy. And few businesses are as ripe for BPO (business process outsourcing) as restoration and image processing. Adlabs/Reliance has recognised this fact and is making a major play for this segment, based on the triple strength of, a) Lowry Digital's reputaiton and relations in Hollywood, coupled with, 2) a global fibre optic network, and now also, 3) a mega-size operation in India for handling enormous amounts of content.

From the press release:

Adlabs Films Limited, a member of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group today announced their establishing a BPO business for the media space.

Adlabs Films’ BPO will be one of the world’s largest comprehensive digital restoration and content processing services facilities. Spread over 90,000 sq ft, it will employ 1200 employees within a year and will comply with MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America) standards.

The BPO is aimed at providing a comprehensive one point solution for the transition from Analog to Digital and Physical Media to Digital Data.

The BPO has already commenced business with 300 employees and has recently obtained a prestigious order for digitization and digital restoration of 1000 films preserved by the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), Pune, a media unit of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India.

This operation will cover much more than just restoration:

The services of the BPO include: Restoration, Encoding, Transcoding, Compression Authoring, Format & Standards Conversion, Duplication & Dubs, Meta tagging, Repurposing/Versioning, QC & Broadcast Logistics and Archiving.

My boss was interviewed by The Hindu and gave some more details:

Anil Ambani-promoted Adlabs Films on Thursday said it is looking at tapping the USD 400-million market for digital content restoration through its new media BPO venture and is planning to foray into North America and Europe among others.

"With new platforms like mobiles, online and HD, the demand for content restoration has picked up... Major portion of the demand is coming from North America, Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia," Adlabs Films Chief Executive Officer Anil Arjun told PTI.

The 300-employee BPO division, which became operational four months ago and will add another 900 employees this year, is looking at major opportunities in North America and Europe.

I am thrilled on a personal level, partly because it is the company I work for, but also because I feel passionately about archiving and restoration and have been ever since I first read The Parade's Gone By.

There are tens of thousands of films slowly fading or corroding in archives around the world and for every restored "Gone With The Wind" or "Casablanca" there are tens of thousands of obscure titles that are just as much an important part of our audiovisual history that desperately need to be saved for future generations. Thanks to operations like this the cost of restoring films will go down and more will be saved.

Adlabs sends Bollywood films to US via submarine cable

The announcement has finally been made and I can at last talk openly about something very exciting that we have been doing for the past four months. As of Christmas last year Adlabs has started its Indian film releases to its US cinemas using the submarine fibre optic cable owned and operated by our sister company Reliance Globalcom. The press release is out:

Reliance Globalcom’s privately owned global fiber-optic network has enabled Adlabs to move its content more efficiently, dramatically reducing delivery times by 50-90 percent while securing the encrypted content during the transport process. Adlabs found the dedicated optical-fiber communication (OFC) network to be a superior transport method, as it exceeds the film industry’s requirements for speed, security and reliability.

“Reliance Globalcom’s global network acts as an international digital artery that allows Adlabs to offer content and media services globally,” said Anil Arjun, CEO, Adlabs Films. “With Reliance Globalcom’s extensive fiber assets, multi-metro connectivity and service assurance, we have the agility to serve the industry by moving film and media assets quickly and securely anywhere in the world. This means more movies and HD content like broadcasts of national sporting events and ceremonies can reach the big screen faster, more efficiently and in more locations around the world.”

Adlabs has successfully distributed many films over Reliance Globalcom’s fiber network, including the latest Indian hits such as Ghajini, Luck by Chance and Delhi 6. The films were all mastered in the DCI-approved 2K format in Mumbai by Adlabs Digital Cinema, sent over OFC to New York and screened in Adlabs’ BIG Cinemas digital cinemas in New Jersey and California. In comparison to the industry’s traditional method for delivering digitized films (i.e., physical shipments via a courier system), Adlabs preferred Reliance Globalcom’s global infrastructure for various key benefits.

What the press release doesn't say is that Ghajini was set to open on 23rd December (never an easy date), and not having done this sort of thing before, we sent a hard drive back up to be on the safe side three days before the film's opening. Despite there being a direct flight Mumbai-New York, the courier company (which shall remian nameless) sent the drive Mumbai-Frankfurt-London-Chicago-Newark, where it arrived December 28th, i.e. five days after the film had opened. After that we never looked back. Optical fibre connectivity (OFC) was the only way ahead.

Variety did a good write up of this announcement:

Anil Arjun, CEO of Adlabs Films, told Daily Variety that costs "are competitive with shipping (hard disks). But shipping has hidden costs, because there are time delay costs, there are delays in customs."

More than one option

• (Co) Daily Variety
  Filmography, Year, Role
• (Co) Daily Variety

Adlabs also plans to bring movies and alternative content from India and other foreign-language territories to niche auds in Reliance's American theaters. Adlabs' Big chain owns 21 theaters with 166 screens in the U.S., targeted at areas with large immigrant communities. The entire chain should be converted to digital production within 18 months.

Adlabs has already used the Reliance Globalcom network to send recent Indian pics "Ghajini," "Luck by Chance" and "Delhi 6" to screens in New Jersey and California.

To date we have done about ten titles and we would have done plenty more, if it had not been for the current dispute betwene Indian distributors and multiplex operators that is blocking any new releases.

Next we are looking to expand this to other parts of the world. Reliance Globalcom covers a ring around the world with its OFC network, so Bollywood will soon be coming to a cinema near you via a secure deep sea cable.

The short shelf-life of Bollywood actresses

 Jai Ho! Slumdog is top dog at the Oscars. I'm very happy that the film did as well as it did and congratulations to everyone involved - including Adlabs' small contribution. So much has been written about it in Indian media, however, that there is nothing new or original that I can tell you about it - though ask me when you meet me what Danny Boyle told me when I met him at Mumbai airport, prior to the film's shoot, was the worst aspect about making a film in Mumbai. These days he is either to effusive or polite to discuss the one horror. And, no, it's not the stench of the slums. 

An article that may have escaped your attention was an opinion piece by Praveen Dass in Times of India (One for the times) that tracks the antecedents of the film extremely well and in the process dispels some of the myths and caricatures about the film:

So, is Slumdog superfluous? Is it guilty of caricature? In parts, perhaps, but not in sum. Besides, soft burlesque, as many parts of Slumdog surely are, is not without its uses. Indeed, three outlandish sequences in Slumdog should point us to its real nature as fabulist melodrama. One is the moment when Jamal, the plucky protagonist, cheerfully plunges into a pool of shit to get an autograph. Another is the surreal image of a child dolled up as a blue Rama in the middle of a riot. And, finally, the dance sequence at the end is the film-makers' paying back their Bollywood debt. All point to Slumdog's true nature as an over-the-top modern fable, best consumed with a pinch of masala. In fact, the film's premise should give that away. Surely randomness and chance never get this good in life, real or reel. Boyle has tried this formula before with his underappreciated Millions. Second time was better. And maybe it needed India.

It is worth reading the whole article. Not least, it made me think that Scotland should have rebelled against how the wannabe independent part of the UK was portrayed in Trainspotting (heroin use, filthy toilets, random pub violence), had they been as easily offended or prone to manufacture controversies as some of Slumdog's critics - admittedly a very small minority in these post-Oscar days. 

While honest self criticism of India is admirably widespread, the same cannot often be said about the Hindi film industry (aka 'Bollywood'), which is why I was all the more fascinated to come across an article this past weekend about how the industry's leading ladies are finding themselves having shorter and shorter careers on the silver screen with each 'generation' (actually 'season' by now). 

The article is called 'Tick Tick Three Your Time is Up' by Indu Mirani. The article is far from preachy but asks some penetrating questions:

So, why is it that heroes can play the lead role for decades while the girls have a shelf life of just four to five years? Earlier, before the multiplex generation came along and changed the way we perceived filmmaking, there was the notion that the minute a heroine entered her 30s or got married, whichever was sooner, she lost her allure. “Women were to be fantasised about” was the explanation and the only way she fitted the traditional Indian (Bombay to Bihar) fantasy was if she was seen to be young, curvaceous and virginal, with particular emphasis on the last virtue. And so any girl who wanted to last longer made sure she was all this.

This often lead to the ridiculous situation where a girl who had debuted at say 18 suddenly claimed that she made her first film at 15, which soon became 12. That that kept her poised at 26 for many years was the idea and in most cases it succeeded.

To keep the virginal image intact was slightly tougher but they managed that too by making statements like “I’ve never been on a date,” or “Love? Never felt it. I’m dying to fall in love.” Sridevi, it is rumoured, was so unaware of things that when she got pregnant and felt the first stirrings of the child she thought she had gas.

This sadly means that Freida Pinto, the female star of Slumdog, cannot look forward to a long career in Bollywood, should she get a break there thanks to the film (far from given). Her best hope is to keep straddling both worlds - these days Aishwarya Rai features largest in the poster for Pink Panther 2. 

Button or Slumdog at the Oscars - tough choice

I am split in my loyalties ahead of the Academy Awards. While I want 'Slumdog Millionaire' to do well for obvious reasons, I am equally happy if 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' walks away with an armful of statuettes, as this was a major project for our sister company Lowry Digital.

Film & Video has a very fact filled Q&A with Alan Silvers that is pre-faced thus:

Lowry Digital is well-known among videophiles as a company that enables cutting-edge digital restorations of significant films for DVD and Blu-ray — modulating grain, repairing damage, and returning important titles to show-print status. But as more and more production moves into the digital realm, Lowry is flexing new muscles. Lowry has worked on 3D features like Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D, where fine image-matching between the left-eye and right-eye pictures becomes crucial to a comfortable viewing experience — Lowry Digital Director of Business Development Alan Silvers notes that founder John Lowry is nurturing a venture, Trioscopics, dedicated to improving digital 3D. But Silvers believes what's known as "the Lowry process" has applications in the traditional feature-film workflow, especially as directors work to incorporate multiple shooting formats into a single, nuanced vision. One of Lowry's most recent projects, director David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, has just been nominated for 13 Academy Awards — including, crucially, a nod for Claudio Miranda's work as cinematographer.

So while I liked Anthony Dod Mantle's camerawork in Slumdog, my vote would go to Claudio Miranda - not least because we've been getting complaints from members of the audience here in our cinemas in Mumbai, objecting to the digital cinema projection because the image is (they say) dark, grainy and pixilated, not realizing that it is not the projection - which was checked by STAR-Fox staff ahead of the films gala screening, that we arranged in digital - but the artistic intention of the filmmakers.

And just so you don't think either I or Lowry have anything against our good friends at 20th Century Fox - Lowry just completed some stellar work on The Robe as well.