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Avid customers drive creative achievement at Oscar Awards
MUMBAI: Avid Technology has announced that at last week‘s Oscar Awards all of the nominated and award-winning films in the Best Motion Picture, Directing, Film Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects, Documentary Feature and Original Score categories at the 80th Annual Academy Awards® were created using at least one Avid, Digidesign, Sibelius or Softimagesystem.
Nearly two-thirds of these nominees employed workflows consisting of multiple systems from the various Avid brands, and for the eighth-consecutive year, every nominee for a Sound Editing Oscar used Digidesign Pro Tools systems. In addition, the award-winning Animated Feature used both Avid and Digidesign systems, the Visual Effects winner used SoftimageXSI for pre- and post-visualization as well as Avid systems, and the majority of the nominees for Original Song were scored using Sibelius 5.
Christopher Rouse who an Oscar for editing The Bourne Ultimatum says, “The most difficult thing about editing this film was dealing with the overall story and structure. We shot for a fair amount of time, starting in September 2006 and ending in July 2007. We added scenes…we took them out…we cannibalized scenes. We were constantly manipulating the footage – not only as it was originally intended, but often re-inventing the material to tell a stronger story.”
While the editing team remained focussed on the creative aspects of the cut, an Avid editing and shared-storage setup helped them keep pace with more practical concerns such as inputting and organizing the massive amount of footage and keeping track of constant revisions. As many as eight Windows-based Media Composer® Adrenaline systems were connected to a 16-terabyte Avid Unity MediaNetwork shared-storage system at one time.
“An Avid system is far and away the most comfortable tool for me to work with. There are zero barriers between me and the material. That for me makes all the difference,” adds Rouse.
Digidesign Pro Tools was instrumental in the film also being awarded the Sound Editing and Sound Mixing Oscars. Scott Millan, rerecording mixer on The Bourne Ultimatum points out the critical role that Pro Tools played in helping the team meet complex audio demands and a tight production schedule. “I knew how difficult this project was going to be from the beginning so I strongly recommended that we use Pro Tools. It was to our benefit, hugely because the post-production process was very fluid. We had a lot of conforms and a lot of new material coming in frequently. Pro Tools gave us the flexibility to work very quickly and overall we were served very well by it. It was pretty much a prerequisite on this project and key to our creative process.”
Dario Marianelli who won an Oscar for composing the score for Atonement, revealed how Sibelius 5 was used as part of his creative process in composing the score. “I knew that Atonement needed two distinct musical themes. There is the relentlessness of Briony – we called her the girl with faulty brakes, she just can’t stop until she’s wrecked everyone’s lives. And then there’s the intense love story between Keira Knightley’s character, Cecilia, and Robbie played by James McAvoy.”
To create the first of these two themes, Marianelli built up an evolving, percussive composition, and then amplified the tension further by adding the metronomic sound of Briony’s typewriter keys over each beat. “That was just one of those crazy ideas, and it really worked,” he noted.
For the love story theme, the composer used a more traditional, strings-based approach, which matched the mood and also the wartime period of the film. “Panorama view in Sibelius 5 really helped me with arrangements of both these themes because I don’t think in pages, I just think in music. With Panorama, there are no breaks in your thinking, you can think more laterally,” Marianelli added. Panorama view hides page breaks in scores, instead, displaying them on an infinitely wide page. Avid and Digidesign systems were also used in creating Atonement.
Avid Technology CEO Gary Greenfield says, “We congratulate our customers for being recognized as the best in the industry. We’re fully committed to providing them with ground-breaking tools—from music composition, audio editing and mixing to 3D animation, video editing and visual effects—that enable them to unleash their creativity and produce the world’s most compelling content.”
Hindi
GUEST COLUMN: Why film libraries & IPs are the new engines of growth
Unlocking value through catalogue strength and IP synergy
MUMBAI:In a media landscape defined by fragmentation, platform proliferation, and ever-evolving audience behavior, the economics of filmmaking are undergoing a fundamental shift. No longer confined to box office performance, a film’s true value is now measured across an extended lifecycle that spans digital platforms, syndication networks, and global markets. As content consumption becomes increasingly non-linear and algorithm-driven, film libraries and intellectual properties (IPs) are emerging as strategic assets, capable of delivering sustained, long-term returns. For Mohan Gopinath, head – bollywood business at Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd., this transformation signals a decisive move from hit-driven models to portfolio-led value creation. In this piece, Gopinath explores how legacy content, when intelligently repurposed and distributed, can unlock recurring revenue streams, why the interplay between catalogue and original IP is critical, and how media companies can build resilient, future-ready entertainment businesses.
For all these years, we thought that a film is successful if it performs well in theatres. There are opening weekend numbers, box office milestones, and distribution footprints that gave a good picture of how the movie has done commercially and also tell us about its cultural impact. However, there are multiple platforms today, always-on content ecosystem, which has caused a shift. Today, the theatrical performance is not the culmination of a film’s journey but merely the beginning of a much longer and more dynamic lifecycle.
Film libraries today are emerging as high-value, constantly evolving assets that deliver sustained returns well beyond initial release cycles. This becomes a point of great advantage for legacy content owners with diverse catalogues, to shape long-term business outcomes.
According to FICCI-EY, the media and entertainment industry of India achieved a valuation of Rs 2.78 trillion in 2025 which is expected to reach Rs 3.3 trillion by 2028 through a compound annual growth rate of approximately 7 per cent and digital media will bring in more than Rs 1 trillion to become the biggest sector which generates about 36 per cent of overall market revenues.
This shift is the expansion of distribution endpoints. We know how satellite television was once the primary secondary window but today, it coexists with YouTube, OTT platforms, Connected TV, and FAST channels. Each of these platforms caters to distinct audience demographics and consumption behaviors, helping content owners to obtain more value from the same asset across multiple formats.
For instance, films that had great reruns, now find continuous engagement across digital platforms. On YouTube, classic Hindi cinema continues to attract significant viewership, reaching audiences across generations and geographies with remarkable consistency. At Shemaroo Entertainment, this is reflected in our film library shaped over decades as part of a long association with Indian entertainment. From classics such as Amar Akbar Anthony to much-loved entertainers like Jab We Met, Welcome, Dhamaal, Phir Hera Pheri, Dhol, Golmaal, and Bhagam Bhag, many of these titles continue finding new audiences while retaining their place in popular memory. Their enduring appeal reflects how culturally resonant stories can continue creating value over time. Similarly, FAST channels have created curated, always-on environments where catalogue content can continue to thrive through star-led and genre-based programming.
This multi-platform approach has very well transformed films into long-tail IP assets which are capable of generating recurring revenue across advertising, subscription, and syndication models.
The evolution of audience behavior is equally important. Nowadays, it’s more important to find what’s more relative than what’s recent as viewers are more influenced by mood, memories, and algorithmic suggestions than by release schedules. Even if a movie was released decades ago, it can trend alongside a newly released movie, if surfaced in the right context. Thoughtful packaging, whether through festival-based playlists, actor-driven collections, or genre clusters, allows catalogue content to remain dynamic and continuously discoverable. Shemaroo Entertainment has built extensive film libraries over decades and its focus has mostly been on recontextualizing content for the consumption of newer environments. This process doesn’t just include digitization and restoration, but also re-packaging of films as per platforms.
Syndication itself has evolved into a key growth driver. In perspective, when looking at the domestic market, curated content packages continue to find strong demand across broadcast and digital platforms. Meanwhile, in the international market, especially in markets like Middle East, North America and Southeast Asia, the appetite for Indian content is opening up new monetization avenues. Here, the ability to package and position catalogue content effectively becomes as important as the content itself.
Importantly, the need to re-package catalogue content does not diminish the role of new content. In fact, originals and fresh IP are essential to sustaining the long-term value of a film library because they act as discovery engines that bring audiences into the ecosystem, while catalogue content drives depth, retention, and repeat engagement.
This interplay between the “new” and the “known” is what defines a robust content strategy today. While new films generate spikes in consumption, catalogue titles offer familiarity and comfort. These are factors that are increasingly valuable in an era of content abundance and decision fatigue. This is also shaping our strategy, drawing value from both a deep catalogue assets and a growing focus on original IPs to strengthen long-term audience engagement and build more predictable revenue streams.
There is growing recognition that long-term value in entertainment will be shaped not only by how intelligently existing content continues to live, travel and find relevance, but also by how consistently new stories are created to renew that ecosystem. In that sense, film libraries and original IP are not parallel bets, but reinforcing engines of growth. For media companies, the opportunity lies in making these two forces work together, because that is increasingly where more resilient and predictable businesses are being shaped.
Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect our own.
