The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Selvaraghavan's <I>Pudhupettai</I> creates history

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 02, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Selvaraghavan's Pudhupettai creates history

Staff Reporter

Movie mastered and encoded in Qubemaster

TEAM PUDHUPETTAI: From left, director Selvaraghavan, cameraman Arvind Krishna and Managing Director of Sathyam Cinemas Kiran Reddy at the press launch on Thursday.

CHENNAI: Director Selvaraghavan's latest movie, Pudhupettai, has created history of sorts.

The movie was completely mastered and encoded in Qubemaster to be released digitally in cinema houses that are equipped with Qube technology and digital cinema servers.

Pudhupettai was released in this form at Sathyam Cinemas, which has a digital projector.

At the formal launch of the film in D-cinema, Kiran Reddy, Managing Director, Sathyam Cinemas, explained that he was happy to install Qube, the D-cinema server from Real Image built to meet international standards.

Jayendra Panchapakesan, Director, Real Image, said that they wanted to meet the expectations of every cinematographer and director.

Red letter day

"The release of Selvaragavan's film in D-cinema is a red letter day for the Indian film industry. One must know that D-cinema is the standard defined by Hollywood for digital cinema servers and digital cinema projectors with defined security standards, compression formats, contrast ratios, brightness on the screen and colour gamut.

"Digital Cinema Initiatives was created in March 2002, as a joint venture by Disney, Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros Studios, only to ensure a uniform and high level of technical performance, reliability and quality control.

This combats piracy. Qube can play different formats — JPEG 2000, MPEG-2, H.264 and VCI compression — using the same box. Real Image media technologies has signed up with 72 theatres across Tamil Nadu, of which 52 are in use and 20 are under installation."

Mohan Krishnan of Prasad EFX said his company had digitally converted the first super 35mm Tamil feature film into cinemascope format. "This was done through the digital intermediate process and helped to get the exciting and vibrant colour grading required by cinematographer Aravind Krishna."

Predictably, director Selvaraghavan, lead players in the movie Dhanush and Sonia Agarwal, and cinematographer Arvind Krishna, who were present on the occasion, were happy about the technology used. But, the artists also said that the movie could be a success on its own.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail