KOCHI: Gone are the times when youngsters with dreams to make it big in films and established filmmakers took the ‘Madras Mail’ and got down at Kodambakkam. Now, all the works that go into the making of a Malayalam movie are done in their homeland itself. One of the first persons to herald the change was actor-director Lal, who set up Lal Media at Kaloor in Kochi in 2001.
Lal Media launched operations with a dubbing studio and editing suite, and the first film to mark the its entry into the Malayalam movie landscape was the Dileep-starrer ‘Kalyanaraman.’
Till Lal Media started operation at Kochi, most of the post production work was done from studios in Chennai or Chithranjali in Thriruvananthapuram. By 2005, Lal Media hosted a sound recording studio. Qube Projection was introduced in 2006 and sound recording through Digital Theatre System (DTS) by 2008. The defining moment came three years ago when Digital Intermediate (DI), the technology used for digitising and enhancing the visuals in movies, was introduced. The studio boasts the only facility in the state where DI can be done.
Vinod P Sivaram, a sound engineer and a long-time collaborator with Lal, says Lal Media has all the facilities needed to make a full-length movie, after all the footage is made available. He is now the Head of the Department of Audiography at the newly inaugurated K R Narayanan Film Institute at Kottayam and uses the facilities of Lal Media for his freelance works. “Lal Media is the only studio in the state with DI facility,” he says. He adds that almost 80 per cent of the work on all Malayalam films are presently being done at Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram and some people still depend on Chennai studios for sound mixing.