Business - Adlabs to tap international film processing market

MUMBAI: Adlabs Films, the entertainment arm of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, is stepping up to tap the international film processing markets, specifically the US, UK and Europe.
Already one of the biggest end-to-end digital post-production services provider in India, Adlabs feels there is potential to have a strong outsourcing model for Hollywood studios due to a low-cost advantage.
As a first step towards achieving this ambition, Adlabs has got "International Anti-Piracy Certification" by the UK body - FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft). With the accreditation in place, Adlabs is hopeful of getting the foreign projects outsourced to its Film City premises in Mumbai.
"In the US, UK and other European countries, studios do not outsource processing because of piracy. Now after getting a certificate from an international body like FACT, studios and film-makers will know that they are dealing with a secure facility and we will be able to market ourselves better," Adlabs motion picture processing and allied services president Shankar Dutta tells Indiantelevision.com.
The Adlabs facility in Mumbai has digital intermediate (DI), theatrical and video promo packaging, film scanning and film recording, visual effects and graphics, visual effects supervision, title design, HD and SD Telecine, HD and SD broadcast video tape mastering, DCI (digital cinema initiatives) compliant digital cinema encoding and mastering.
Also, there is a cost difference of at least 20-30 per cent between the US and Indian film processing market. "In India, the cost of film processing is substantially cheaper than it is in US. We will approach the studios in US and other countries to expand our operations," Dutta adds.
Adlabs boasts of a state-of-art infrastructure and high production capacity. Dutta further adds, "We are working on 150 odd films. Our DI alone has a capacity of 100 films at a time. For us capacity is not a constraint and we are hoping to get all kind of projects."
Although a large number of film service companies in the UK and Europe are accredited by FACT, this is the first time in FACT's 25-year history that it has accredited a company outside the UK or Europe.
Apart from Mumbai, Adlabs also has digital labs in Chennai and Kolkata.