Hindi
Adlabs to tap international film processing market; gets anti-piracy certification from FACT
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.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
