MUMBAI: Reliance MediaWorks Ltd has expanded and strengthened its international presence with the opening of a dedicated film and media services facility in London, UK that will offer front-end, processing, restoration, 2D to 3D conversion and post-production services to broadcasters and studios.
Reliance MediaWorks has acquired the assets of iLabs UK Ltd., one of only two film processing facilities operating in London’s SOHO. iLabs has been the lab of choice for high end processing for film, television, commercial and shorts productions.
Reliance MediaWorks CEO Anil Arjun said, "Our expansion is growing at a remarkable pace and we are happy to now be offering our services in UK, one of the world’s leading post-production markets. Through Reliance MediaWorks UK we would provide next generation services for the local film makers and broadcasters, while also catering to Hollywood and Hindi film businesses."
"The acquisition of iLabs not only allows us to strengthen our services portfolio in UK, but we are also fortunate to gain talent, experience and local learning that ilabs team brings onboard. We look forward to the creative synergies that integrating of UK operations would bring to the entire film and media services value chain that Reliance MediaWorks has developed across continents," he added.
Reliance MediaWorks UK has already secured image processing and restoration work for two high profile projects from leading UK broadcasters at Reliance MediaWork’s LA-based subsidiary Lowry Digital, Hollywood’s leading film restoration expert. Lowry Digital has handled projects for leading studios like Walt Disney, Paramount Pictures, MGM and 20th Century Fox and entertainment leaders like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron. Also recently, Lowry Digital has handled the restoration of footage sent back to Earth from Apollo 11, as part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of the mission for NASA.
Reliance MediaWorks UK, can both offer high end services within its own facility, as well as tapping into the quality and scale of services available through Reliance MediaWorks’ operations in India and US.
To further enhance the synergy between the services offered by Reliance MediaWorks across three continents, the company has established an optical fibre network, first of its kind, through Reliance Globalcom’s Ethernet Private Line. This network has already been used for close to a year for distributing digital cinema releases of Indian films from Mumbai to the US.
In the past year, ilabs has been the rushes house of choice for the majority of high-end film originated Drama Series for the BBC and offers bespoke, specialist rushes service night and day for the commercials, feature and broadcast market. Apart from tying in with RMW’s lab facility in Mumbai, it will be able to offer lab, rushes and transfer services to the many Indian films that are shot on location in London and UK each year.
