Maniratnam's Abhishek Bachchan - Aiswarya starrer Guru, which premiered at Elgin Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto, Canada on January 11, has become the first Indian movie to be premiered in digital format. It has also become the first Indian film in Hollywood specified DCI JPEG 2000 format.
Nowadays, all the films undergo a process called digital intermediate (DI), where the film's negative is scanned into a system, where they carry out colour correction, compositing and special effects, if any, digitally. Once completed, it is copied back into a conventional film mode, which leads to loss of quality of the works carried out in digital mode. Instead of copying it back to the conventional mode, if digital mastering is done, it helps in retaining 100% of the works carried out during the DI process. A digital premier thus enhances the movie watching experience to the viewers.
The worldwide premier of Guru was powered by Qube Cinema, the US subsidiary floated by the Chennai-based Real Image Media Technologies, to spearhead the international rollout of the digital cinema technology developed by the latter.
The Qube basket of products has already been installed in the US with Landmark theatre chain for independent cinema. Prior to that, Qube entered the Portugal market, where its technology and servers have been installed in about 32 theatres. It has also now made its presence felt in three theatres in the Czech Republic. Of course, Maniratnam is known for his perfection and quality. This led him to evaluate digital cinema technologies and the quality that can be achieved with high quality digital projection and digital mastering for his Guru. "JPEG2K is not just as good as print, it is better," says Maniratnam from Toronto.
"When he cut his first trailer for the film, we took the DI film and digitally mastered it and showed Maniratnam the difference in quality in digital mode, as against the conventional film mode. Instantly, he decided to opt for the digital format for the entire film," says Jayendra Panchapakesan, director, Real Image Media Technologies.
