How Bollywood laps up latest tech

MUMBAI, INDIA: Though film-making is considered an art, it largely depends on technology, equipment and techniques. Globally, Hollywood has always remained at the forefront, especially when it comes to adopting and experimenting with new film-making technology and techniques.

India's Bollywood, which makes more films than anywhere else in the world, is not very far behind to employ new film-making technology and digital processes.

"There has been a rapid progression over the last 4-5 years and almost 90 per cent of film-making processes have gone digital, including digital image capturing, title sequencing, colorization, visual effects and digital intermediate (DI)," says Parminder Singh Chadda, chief of Film Technology & Color Science — India, Prime Focus.

"Film-makers have started to use latest technology and digital cameras, such as Arri Alexa, a still camera with HD and 3D shooting options. Some films are shot entirely using such cameras and latest techniques, while others use it partially or for some scenes," Chadda adds.

According to Nishit Shetty,  head of Operations — Digital Lab, Reliance MediaWorks, when the availability of a new technology for film production is announced, film-makers usually are very quick to tap the resource for their projects.

"This always depends on how the new technology can be a value addition to the film-making process, along with benefits of time and money, for the production house," Shetty says.

When compared to Hollywood, Bollywood has a unique film-making and story-telling style for Indian audiences. Chadda feels that though Bollywood film-makers are willing to adopt visual effects and latest techniques for scene narration to an extent, "they are highly governed by budget constraints".

Shetty explains, "Today, film shootings are done on digital cameras and formats like the Arri Alexa camera, Red Camera, Canon 5D/7D, Hi-Speed cameras like the Phantom are used. For editing, on-set editing tools are used for the digitally-acquired content, while the film shooting is in progress."

"Visual effects are used for complex VFX shots for any period films and action sequences, and 3D models are composited with live action elements, motion capture and other techniques," he adds.

Going the digital way

Bollywood film-makers are not just focusing on the shooting equipment and techniques, but pay a lot attention on film's post-production. Some of the digital Intermediate (DI) processes include 4K DI workflow (with 4K scanners, 4K real-time color grading equipment, and 4K film high-speed recorders), theatre size grading and theatre calibrated to film and digital projection.

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According to Shetty, these DI processes help get a desired look, color consistency across multi-delivery platforms like 35 mm analog, prints, digital cinema and video deliverable.

He points out that media net transfer via a high speed optical fiber channel (OFC) link is used for digital film data download across geographical locations and digital releases.

In fact, it has allowed films to release on the same day across locations digitally rather than prints transported physically, which consumes more time. Overall it has reduced time, effort as well as cost involved in releasing films.

Though cloud computing is being adopted by several industries, it is yet to make inroads into Bollywood. According to Chadda, the file sizes of films are too heavy to get stored on cloud, as it would require very high bandwidth and connectivity.

"As we don't have such infrastructure, cloud-based storage is not practical and feasible. Hence, network storage remains the best option for film industry," he stresses.

Mumbai-based Prime Focus Technologies' CLEAR platform is claimed to be the world's first hybrid cloud, multi-platform content operations infrastructure. It is a global virtual pipeline of digital media processing and delivery services designed for media companies to organize and manage workflows.

From a technology point of view, Bollywood film-makers are aware about the latest trends, are willing to adopt and use it. However, due to high cost of technology and devices procurement, they are largely dependent on media production and services firms. "They rely on technology partners and media services providers like us," Chadda informs.

"As a film and media services group, we have invested in latest technologies in the DI processes, theatre size grading and calibrated to film and digital projection, image processing algorithms, film restoration and image enhancement and film format conversion," Shetty adds.

At large, these services are offered on the “outsourcing” model that enables film makers to get high-quality film media-related services as per requirement at affordable rates.

This shows how Bollywood is undergoing through technology transformations and in future, Indian film-makers will surely make a big mark in the world to match their counterparts in Hollywood.