Why epic period drama movie The Brutalist was shot on VistaVision

RedShark News

article here

From writer-director Brady Corbet comes the story of László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect who, after surviving the Holocaust, emigrates to the United States to begin a new life while awaiting the arrival of his wife, Erzsébet, trapped in Eastern Europe with their niece following the war.

The Golden Globe winning feature starring Adrien Brody (Tóth), Felicity Jones (Erzsébet) and Guy Pearce (as industrialist and benefactor Van Buren) is likely to feature highly at the Oscars where it would deservedly be judged film of the year. Its sprawling narrative, co-written by Corbet’s wife Mona Fastvold, spans over three decades and runs 215 minutes. It was shot almost entirely on celluloid film in and around Budapest standing in for Pennsylvania, for a remarkable $10m budget.

Here RedShark News talks with editor and regular Corbet collaborator Dávid Jancsó about aspects of the production.

Editing brutally

For Jancsó, László Toth's monumental work in the film became the stylistic reference for how he thought about structuring the film's equally monumental runtime.

“The architectural motifs were also mirrored in the editing style,” he explains. "The clean, geometric precision of brutalist architecture influenced the cutting patterns, with long, unbroken shots interspersed with sharp, abrupt cuts, creating a rhythm that reflected the tensions in László’s life."

It helped that the editor has a family member who studied Bauhaus architecture. “I was already predisposed to Laszlo's artistic vision. There’s a simplicity to Brutalism and so we wanted to stay bold in our cutting all the way through to connect the architecture with our film.”

Brutalist architecture came into fashion in the 1950s, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era and in a style that was predominantly created by immigrants. It emphasises minimalist constructions showcasing bare elements like exposed concrete or brick, over decorative design.

As Corbet puts it in the film’s production notes, “In scope and scale, Brutalist buildings are begging to be seen — but the people who designed or built them were fighting for their right to exist.”

Expansive VistaVision field of view

The Brutalist was filmed on 35mm (2-perf, 3-perf, 4-perf and 8-perf) VistaVision, a format shot horizontally for a higher resolution large screen image.

Originated at Paramount Pictures in 1954 and employed by Alfred Hitchcock on classics including North by Northwest and Vertigo, the VistaVision had become mostly obsolete in the 1960s, as CinemaScope and 70mm rose to prominence as dominant wide-screen formats. The last American production to film entirely in VistaVision was Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks in 1961. But the format was employed in international productions throughout the ‘70s and into the 2000s, on Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses (1976), Shohei Imamura’s Vengeance is Mine (1979), and Kim-Jee Woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), while also being used for special-effects sequences in everything from the original Star Wars movies to Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things in 2023.

Corbet and cinematographer Lol Crawley BSC were drawn to VistaVision both for its mid-century origins, and its expansive field of view, which they studied prior to production by analysing a sequence from Vertigo incorporating a wide expanse of the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Its field of view is extraordinary — you could be right up against the side of a building with a 50mm lens on the camera, what you’d normally shoot a human face with, and you can see from the cement to the sky because the field of view is so immense,” says Corbet. “For architecture it’s great because you can be physically close to the structure you’re filming and experience all the details — you can see the minerality of the concrete and at the same time capture the entire building inside your frame.”

The drawbacks of shooting in VistaVision included very few cameras left in existence — Paul Thomas Anderson used some on his forthcoming feature The Battle of Baktan Cross after The Brutalist wrapped production — not to mention the overwhelming bulk and weight of the remaining cameras.

“It’s a large format, and quite finnicky, which requires technicians who know how to work with it,” says Corbet. “There’s still a culture of shooting on film in Hungary, unlike much of the rest of the world. For us this was a big coup and one of the major reasons why I wanted to film in Hungary again.”

For scenes in the quarries of Carrara, Tuscany, where László and Van Buren travel to source marble, the filmmakers wanted to bring to life the devastating reach of capitalism into every corner of the globe.

“Carrara for me is indicative of the way capitalism has been so harmful to the planet, so the landscape mirrors the characters’ interiority,” Corbet explains. “The whole movie is about my characters’ interiority, which is manifested in the spaces László is creating in the movie, and the spaces he inhabits.”

Processing, postproduction and digital

Not quite all of The Brutalist was shot on VistaVision. An aerial shot of a train crash was captured digitally on Alexa processed with grain to blend into the film’s aesthetic. Parts of the epilogue were shot on Betacam to achieve an authentic 1980s look. All the material was scanned directly to 4K (and 6K for VistaVision) using a DFT Scanity scanner, resulting in an 700TB of data. The film was developed and scanned at the Budapest NFI FilmLab, with the digital dailies processed through Post Office Films, a post-production company Jancsó co-founded over a decade ago.

“When I started out editing I got really tired of having to cut in basements so I banded together with a couple of other editors and we formed a post-production company that now has expanded into dailies and DI,” Jancsó explains “It's become an institution in Hungary. And being a partial owner of it, we could get away with a lot more. I have very good relationships with the film lab here so we got an extremely good deal from them. I mean, they actually asked us not to ever mention the great deal that they gave us for this film because we got everything that you would for a 200 million dollar film budget.”

Jancsó’s deep knowledge of celluloid filmmaking helped Corbet and Crawley develop peace of mind during the film’s 18-month postproduction process.

 “Very few people are as dialled into the analogue postproduction process as David is,” commends Corbet. “David handled everything with expert gloves.”

All of editorial was performed in 4K. Finishing colorist Máté Ternyik applied a 'best light’ grade to the dailies, ensuring a high-quality visual reference during editing.  While the various formats were initially ingested at their native resolutions and aspect ratios, the final film was standardised to a 1.66:1 aspect ratio through a combination of aspect ratio adjustments and matte applications. However, the film’s release was not limited to digital formats. It was also recorded back to 65mm and 35mm film, with tailored masking applied for each specific output format.

Pivotal conversation

For all the beautiful landscapes, and careful positioning of the camera to capture the scope of the architecture, the centrepiece of the story is a monologue from Van Buren to László over a post-dinner brandy. On screen the scene last about 10 minutes.

“That was the scene we went back to the most because that is the pivotal moment of the film. That is what gives you all the clues of what Van Buren is like,” Jancsó says. “It tells you why he's creating this institute, what’s the driving force behind these two characters, and it’s also why we've made this film. Whenever we touched a part of the film, we always went back to see what are the implications of that scene were compared to what comes before or what comes after.”

The previous dinner party scene shows László being grilled for his experiences in the war by guests who couldn’t be more unwittingly gauche if they’d tried.  “Very few people notice that the music we play in the background is by Wagner who, of course, is a totemic composer for the Nazis. Just having that music under László’s dialogue talking about his plight in in the Holocaust, while everyone else is oblivious to any sensitivities they are inflicting, felt pivotal for us too.”

Intermission

If you see this film in the cinema there will be a 15-minute intermission created to give breathing space and to hark back to theatre screening of the ‘50s and ‘60s. It’s a screened intermission too, in which the film still rolls (albeit blank) without the curtains closing.

“We knew the film was going to be long and since Brady and I are hardcore moviegoers we know it's good to allow the audience time to go out,” Jancsó says. “In my case, to have a cigarette. The length of the intermission was a question up until the very end. We discussed, five minutes, seven minutes, 10 minutes and ultimately landed with 15 primarily because that’s the length of a film reel. But we wanted to create an event out of this too. There was talk of having live music for the premiere during the intermission but that never happened. Editorially, the intermission marks a division between two parts of Laszlo's life.”

The film does not use on-screen titles for dates or places so viewers should listen out to auditory cues for changes in time period.

“If you pay attention, a radio that you hear in the background indicates an amount of time has passed. But we didn't want to overdo this either. We were trying to retain the mystery, for you to lean forward and keep being engaged. You should be asking what just happened? and where are we? If certain time has passed, you will find your cue of where we are and even if you don't, there's a scene right after where you will. Even if this approach disengages you for a second, you will be pulled back in. We trust the audience to understand.

“We knew we were making a long film and were very conscious of the pacing of the whole film. The music [by British experimentalist Daniel Blumberg] was recorded prior to filming and was played back on set. So, we’d already sort of choreographed scenes to the music.”

The film ends in an epilogue set in 1980. To create the sound of this new era, Blumberg travelled to New York to collaborate with Vince Clarke of ’80s synthpop fame (Depeche Mode, Yaz, Erasure). Peter Walsh mixed the score and co-produced with Blumberg.

 

Cine literate layers

Consciously or not the film's ambitious, single-minded protagonist and narrative arc has echoes of Citizen Kane though this was one of many references for the cinephile filmmakers.

“Brady is extremely literate in film history and I’m also a film buff. I come from a filmmaker background too. That intrinsically affected how we were going to treat this film.”

Jancsó is the son of lauded filmmaker Miklós Jancsó, who achieved international prominence in the 1960s for his historical allegories featuring long-sequence shots; his mother, Zsuzsa Csákány, edited 1981’s Best Foreign Language Oscar-winning film Mephisto.  
 
“We took from the nouvelle vague and Italian realism (Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist, “with memories and flashbacks woven seamlessly into the present”) and Citizen Kane, The Godfather (“the ability to slowly build tension within quiet, emotionally charged scenes”) and even JFK. We tried to be cognisant about these elements in the film but also allowed the film to breathe on its own.”

Subtle and sensitive use of AI

Much of the film’s dialogue is in Hungarian, the filmmakers went to great lengths to make it as accurate to a native speaker as possible. This included judicious use of AI from the Ukrainian specialist Respeecher.

Jancsó explains, “I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce. Even with Adrien's Hungarian background - (Brody’s mother is a Hungarian refugee who emigrated to the U.S in 1956) - it's not that simple. It’s an extremely unique language. We coached [Brody and Felicity Jones] and they did a fabulous job but we also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference.”

Tweaks were needed to enhance specific letters of their vocal sounds. “If you’re coming from the Anglo-Saxon world certain sounds can be particularly hard to grasp. We first tried to ADR these harder elements with the actors. Then we tried to ADR them completely with other actors but that just didn’t work. So we looked for other options of how to enhance it.”

Brody and Jones were fully onboard with the process guided by Respeecher which started with recording their voices to drive the AI Hungarian delivery. Jancsó also fed his voice into the AI model to finesse the tricky dialect.

“Most of their Hungarian dialogue has a part of me talking in there. We were very careful about keeping their performances. It's mainly just replacing letters here and there. You can do this in ProTools yourself, but we had so much dialogue in Hungarian that we really needed to speed up the process otherwise we'd still be in post.”

GenAI is also used right at the end of the film in a sequence at the Venice Biennale to conjure a series of architectural drawings and finished buildings in the style of the fictional architect.  The overall effect is so impressive you might find yourself headed to Wikipedia to double check that László Tóth existed.

“It is controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn't be,” he acknowledges. “We should be having a very open discussion about what tools AI can provide us with. There’s nothing in the film using AI that hasn't been done before. It just makes the process a lot faster. We use AI to create these tiny little details that we didn't have the money or the time to shoot.”

Architecture and filmmaking compared

The film is about many things, including building a building, but it’s also a movie about making a movie, according to Corbet. “Architecture and filmmaking have a lot in common because it takes roughly the same amount of people to construct a building or make a movie. The Brutalist for me was a way of talking about the more bureaucratic aspect of the artistic process.”

Jancsó concurs, adding, “This is a story of a struggling artist, which you could say is Brady's story too, especially with his experiences on [2018’s musical drama] Vox Lux. He and Mona succeeded in creating a universal character. This is not necessarily just an American story, it's a global story. This is not just an American epic, this happens to immigrants in Europe and Asia in Africa and Australia. It’s about what it is to be an immigrant and what it is to try to be a part of a society that just does not accept you.”

A life-and-death crisis plays out in real time in historical thriller September 5

interview and words written for RED 

article here

On September 5, 1972, details began to emerge that 11 Israeli athletes had been taken hostage while participating at the Olympic Games in Munich. Over the next 22 hours events unfolded that shocked the world, all of it televised live by an ABC Sports team more familiar with calling the play-by-play shots on sports.

A new film, September 5, dramatizes the crisis from the point of view of the broadcast crew who covered the tragedy happening just a few metres away from inside the cramped broadcast control room.

“Our first question was how can we make an audience in a movie theater feel like they are glued to television as people were back in then, watching live and not knowing what's going to happen?” posed Markus Förderer, ASC, BVK. “How can we recreate that real-time journalistic immediacy to keep people hooked.”

Förderer, whose credits include Constellation and Red Notice, previously worked with director Tim Fehlbaum on The Colony and Hell.

“We talked about how we would shoot the action if we were a documentary crew in the control room at the time. In the same way that the ABC crew suddenly get pulled out of the sports world to document world history, we thought a documentary crew would go handheld, probably 16mm, and would just follow the story wherever it took them.”

From this basic idea they tested 35mm and 16mm and compared results to the RED V-RAPTOR, a camera Förderer had used to shoot the AppleTV+ sci-fi series Constellation.

“On Constellation we had some extreme dark scenes filmed in northern Finland where the sun never comes over the horizon. I knew from that experience how sensitive V-RAPTOR is in the blacks and also our set in September 5 would be dark and illuminated largely by television screens. The TV monitors are the window to the outside world for our characters and our audience even if the actual events are happening within yards of the ABC Media Center.

Since the ABC News team mostly experienced events through TV monitors in the control room the DP wanted to make the screens a key light source. “We purposefully had all the characters wear glasses so we'd see the monitors reflecting back from their eyes. If we’d shot film, we would have been forced to add a lot more artificial movie lights to help expose the scene and we didn't want that look.”

“The main reason we went digital was because RED’s V-RAPTOR could shoot at this extreme high 3200 ISO and give us some grain that we wanted for that filmic feel. We added additional grain on top in post but the original image gave us a great start.”

Reviewers have compared the look to films from the seventies which Förderer takes as a compliment but disagrees with the sentiment. “Films in the ’70s, with obvious exception of The Godfather, tended to be over lit with tungsten simply to achieve decent exposure. Here, I wanted to create a hybrid approach of something that feels familiar to the period but is also contemporary, fresh and modern. That's where digital came in.”

Förderer chose Zoomar zoom from the seventies and tuned Apollo anamorphic lenses paired with the 8K VV sensor to create the desired look. Scenes in the control room and in the ABC Media Center were shot at 6K because Förderer felt the full VV sensor lent too shallow a depth of field. “For our purposes that made the image too pretty,” he says. “I wanted a certain harshness. We shot half of the time with spherical Super 35 lenses switching to anamorphic whenever the story gets particularly tense. This felt closer to 16mm.”

“It's such a big story, that in reality was watched by 900 million people around the globe, so I didn't want it to feel like true 16mm. However, whenever the story gets really tense we switched to anamorphic and used the full height of the sensor in 8K anamorphic mode. When we recreated some of the archival shots we switched to the true Super 16mm sensor format.”

While original footage was available to the production, almost everything on the television screens in the movie, save for some shots of ABC host Jim McKay, was recreated by the production.

“One reason was because we decided not to show any of the real hostages out of respect for their families,” Förderer explains. “Even the opening swimming race featuring Mark Spitz was recreated in the actual Olympic pool in Munich. While preserved as a historic site it has also been modernized, so we had to take particular care over camera placement.”

Some of the archival pieces were shot on RED HELIUM using Super 35mm lenses in a Super 16 crop which the HELIUM’s smaller sensor helped capture.

“We shot with the highest ISO and used the highest compression ratio in order to soften the image in camera as much as possible. RED has these amazing compression algorithms which are usually invisible when you compress the image. Usually if you shoot the full 8K sensor with high compression you get away with it because you down sample from 8K to 4K, but we wanted a really small sensor crop on HELIUM so the resolution was around 2K and then we pushed it with high ISO and used the highest compression to take a lot of detail out. It looked quite analog in a way which is what we wanted.”

Applying a LUT in camera further distorted the colors to appear like an authentic analog TV picture. Some of those archive shots were fed live onto the monitor wall in the newsroom gallery so the actors could better react to events.

“With our A camera V-RAPTOR and anamorphic lens we covered the actors in the gallery and when we pan to the monitor in a close-up or a zoom we see ‘live’ on screen the interviews and presentation in the TV studio.”

They discussed shooting the entire 90-minute feature as a single uninterrupted take or as a series of long takes joined by seamless cuts like Birdman.

“The film’s theme is also about media and therefore the importance of editing so the approach we took was to shoot long takes always knowing it would be tightened up in the edit,” he says. “I think that's what makes September 5 unique. Hopefully, you feel an energy from the camera.

“For example, when Peter Sarsgaard’s character (ABC Sports President Roone Arledge) storms into the control room with a piece of information, I whip pan to John Magaro's character (ABC Sports producer Geoffrey Mason) then zoom in on the television screen to show what happens there. We knew we wanted to hit certain moments like that as precisely as possible but it was also important to Tim and I that it feels nonchalant. We pan into it, tag it for a beat and then the next character wipes through the frame that takes you to the next beat. We always knew shots were going to be tightened up and fast paced in editing, but the longer takes in which we never linger on one moment for too long, still impart an energy which you wouldn’t get if we’d set up and composed each shot for coverage.”

At Bavaria Studios in Munich, they built sets that faithfully recreated the claustrophobic space of the original ABC Newsroom facility. “It was important to us not to cheat. We didn't want to have floating studio walls where we could have had more space for the camera. It needed to be confined and claustrophobic.”

In a further attempt to capture the freshness of a live event, there were no rehearsals. Förderer and B-cam / Steadicam operator Stefan Sosna positioned themselves in the room as if they had only one chance to record.

“We did do several takes and sometimes we’d make a short pickup of somebody pushing a button or grabbing a microphone but the scene was always captured as a oner with two cameras.

”At the end of each scene, when we thought we had it, Tim would do what he called ‘wild style’ in which the actors could move or perform any way they wanted. The same goes for the cameras. We could go in for a close-up of an eye in the middle of the scene, or just be really bold, because we knew we already have the scene in the can. That created some interesting moments for editor Hansjörg Weißbrich to fold in. It’s how we were able to create shots that you couldn’t necessarily conceive with storyboarding.”

The lighting tone for each scene varies according to the mood of the story and is driven by the content on the monitors. As the news team count down the clock to go live on air Förderer timed certain lights in the background to turn off then raised the tension further by increasing the strobing frequencies of the television screens.

“On most Hollywood movies depicting TV screens you’d spend a lot of time and effort to sync the TV image with the camera to reduce flicker. Here, we embraced that.”

Forderer’s inspiration was the documentary film Apollo 11 which features rows of monitors in NASA’s command center “flickering like crazy and creating this sensation of urgency and high adrenaline which is exactly what we wanted.

“We synched the camera shutter with the screen to allow a certain level of flicker and had an additional row of LED lights above the TV wall to push more light into the actor's eyes. The color of these lights was synched to match the content on the TV wall.”

From neuroscience studies he learned how different light pulses can impact people in different ways causing a state of heightened alertness. In pre-production, Förderer tested flicker frequencies with an Astera tube.

“I didn’t want to make the audience feel sick but we did pre-program different frequencies,” he explains. “Whenever the tension is low in the control room we have a little bit of flicker to get the audience used to the effect. When the tension is high, such as when a masked man is shown on screen for the first time, we dynamically ramp up from 25 hertz to 50 hertz. If you go too fast, it disappears and you don't see it. If it's too slow, it's very obvious and annoying. Get it right and it’s almost like when you hear drums, it affects your heartbeat, especially if you watch it on a big screen in a dark room.

“That’s what I find so fascinating about my work as a cinematographer. Working with light is so invisible and immaterial to the audience because hopefully they’re immersed in the story and don’t pay attention to the lighting. But subliminally it does have an emotional effect.

“On this set the strobing was so extreme I had producers coming up to me and asking, ‘Markus, what's going on, are your lights broken?’ I said, ‘Trust me it's going to make sense. Just watch my monitor. Don’t use your naked eyes.’”

For a scene showing how ABC’s secretly shot 16mm footage of the terrorists was developed, Förderer visited FotoKem in Burbank who generously permitted him to shoot the scene there.

“We wanted to create this sensation of a pitch-black environment in the dark room. FotoKem were gracious enough to let me film there but they said it had to be me alone, no crew, and no film lights. At the time they were developing Oppenheimer IMAX prints and couldn’t let anything risk that. So, I brought two little battery powered LED lights with magnets that I could attach and dim down. We dialled in this special dark green -yellow color that they use in labs sometimes when they change the film. And then used the V-RAPTOR at the edge of exposure to create this sensation of no light. You can just feel them handling the film. It intercut seamlessly with inserts of our actor’s hands shot in Munich. It was great to have FotoKem involved for this scene so it feels like the processing was done by professionals.”

 

Ed Lachman, ASC

British Cinematographer 

Three time Oscar nominated and recipient of the 2024 Camerimage Lifetime Achievement Award, Ed Lachman talks to British Cinematographer about an extraordinary career.

article here

If filmmaking is a never-ending education, as Ed Lachman believes, then he is a professor. His extraordinary career overlaps and intersects with so many filmmaking greats – and he has extended the artform with defining work himself.

When Lachman mentions Robert Altman, Bernado Bertolucci, Paul Schrader, Nic Roeg, Werner Herzog, Dennis Hopper, Wim Wenders or Steven Soderbergh, these are filmmakers he has worked with. For many DPs, Vittorio Storaro, Sven Nykvist and Robby Müller are three of the greatest cinematographers to have lived. Lachman actually learned at their feet.

“The greatest film school I could have ever gone to was the opportunity to work with Sven, Robby and Vittorio,” he says.

When he quotes Jean-Luc Godard, know that the revolutionary auteur invited Lachman to collaborate with him (on Passion, 1982).

“For Godard, images were always about the idea behind the image, rather than just some abstract aesthetic concept,” Lachman says. “Once you can start thinking about what they represent, you will create images that transcend their own clichés.”

All those filmmakers share an indie pedigree and they all either helped birth or were influenced by groundbreaking European film-art movements of the 1960s and ‘70s.

What was it that attracted a New York native to seek out artists across the Atlantic? The same approach to storytelling that kept him within their orbit.

“I was studying painting and art history at Ohio University and discovered Dadaists and German Expressionism which dealt with the psychology of the subject matter to express an idea,” Lachman relates. “It was a natural progression for me to want to look to Europe.”

In the wake of neorealists Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, young turks like Bertolucci, Herzog and Wenders proved inspirational in their freedom to explore ideas, styles and period.

Lachman says, “Hollywood had a system of how to create images to be used in the editing room. That’s not a pejorative. It’s just that that was the form. But in Europe each filmmaker found their own language to tell the stories that were personal to them.”

By extension, the cinematographer and director were co-authors of the film in a way that American cinema at that time was not. “For the directors I was attracted to filmmaking was more of a complete process inclusive of writing, shooting and editing. It wasn't compartmentalised like making a car on an assembly line.”

In the early 1970s American independent film was about to have its renaissance but Lachman went to the source.

“I really learned about American Cinema through the French Nouvelle Vague because [fabled film journal] Cahiers du cinéma was referencing Sam Fuller, Nicholas Ray and other American auteur voices.” Lachman worked with on Ray’s final film Lightning Over Water in 1980 with co-directed by Wenders.

During college Lachman made films in Super 8 and 16mm—"simple portraits of people I met. As I was shooting them, I was always thinking about various artists and their different schools of painting.”

In 1972 while editing his post-graduate film (about a therapeutic community for drug addicts) at a suite also used by the brothers Maysles he impressed the documentarians enough to get invited to shoot camera for them. Lachman attributes the experience they gave him of treating even narrative films as docs; “No performances are exactly the same.”

Filmmakers like Herzog and Wenders whose work has constantly blurred the boundaries between real and realism agreed. Herzog become friends after meeting at a screening of the director’s 1968 film Signs of Life in Berlin. A little later “without looking at a frame of my films” Herzog hired Lachman to work alongside German DP Thomas Mauch. In short succession he worked on Herzog’s How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1975), Stroszek (1976), La Soufrière (1976), and Huie’s Sermon (1980).

He is indebted to Herzog for an introduction to Wenders “a librarian of imagery” through whom Lachman got to meet Müller. “I befriended Robby and his entire crew when I helped them on American Friend (1976) and they ended up staying in my New York loft – where we also shot the hospital scene.” Lachman lives there still. “It was an honour to operate for Robby but more importantly to learn and to be inspired by him,” he says.

He operated for Müller on They All Laughed (1981) directed by Peter Bogdanovich, and Body Rock (1984) and shot Wenders doc Tokyo-Ga about Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu.

When Bertolucci came to New York to shoot La Luna in 1979 “he was generous enough to ask me to assist him and Vittorio.”

Years previously in New York, Lachman had been wowed by Bertolucci’s 1964 drama Prima della rivoluzione, without fully comprehending its politics.

“It’s about a young man who couldn't resolve his leftist beliefs and I didn’t understand the social context of bourgeois middle class or what that conflict was about. I wasn't part of that world.”

His films seem to have become increasingly political since. Think Mira Nair’s interracial romance Mississippi Masala (1991), Steven Soderbergh’s whistleblower drama Erin Brockovich (2000), and another true life environmental cover-up in Dark Waters (2019). His black and white depiction of General Pinochet and Margaret Thatcher as vampires in Pablo Larraín’s satire El Conde (2023) won Lachman a third Oscar nomination.

“I think all films are political. Even if its conservative. As it happens, I work with filmmakers that have the intellect and interest to look at society through their art. It’s just more interesting to work with people that are questioning the values that surround us and who use their work to express their ideas with it.”

A student of cultural history he notes that when social economic conditions are uprooted new artistic movements emerge as with New German Cinema’s response to the Cold War. Does that mean there might be a cultural eruption in response to the rise of the far right?

“There will always be a reaction when the economic and social conditions are there,” Lachman says. “If you look at where films are being made now that seem to have a conscience you can see lots of interesting work from India.”

While he is drawn to the political subtext of projects he is equally taken by the way directors choose to visualise those stories. Larraín, for example, presented Chile’s dark history as a gothic noir featuring vampires “a mash-up I felt impelled to help create.”

He says, “Some directors have a strong visual sense and some don't but it's the ones with the strongest visuals I've been lucky enough to work with. I plug into their world and try to implement something of myself.”

Lachman’s commercial breakthrough as solo cinematographer was for Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) introducing German expression into Madonna’s feature debut.

“New York was kind of depressed. It was being gentrified. The housing was pretty rough. So I thought about a heightened reality that was foreboding and dangerous. I was influenced by how Adam Holender had presented an impression of the city in Midnight Cowboy and thought the feeling of the downtown streets could be a stylized German expressionist vernacular for Madonna while Rosanna Arquette’s world was a pastel mundane suburban environment.”

He says, “A cinematographer is like another actor. You're giving a performance, to a degree.  You're reacting to what's in front of you. That's why I think a lot of directors want to be on the camera because they're the first audience. I certainly like to be operating because I like the immediacy of the moment in telling a story visually.”

Above anything, though, it's the passion of the director that excites Lachman. “Their passion in why they want to tell this story and also their passion for finding a visual language to tell the story. It's not about close-up, medium, long shot and coverage of dialogue.

“When I read the script, I develop many visual ideas of how to approach a story. At home I have a library of hundreds of photography and art books filled with images that I find inspiring. Each painter has their own aesthetic about why and what they paint. It should be the same criteria for a film director.”

Oscar-nominated for his camera work on Far From Heaven and Carol, Lachman says Haynes is one of the most prepared directors. “He has an extensive shot list but is always open to responding to the immediacy of the moment. When we research a film, he creates a ‘look-book’ illustrating the cultural history, politics, demographics, art, fashion as well as the cinematic language of the film’s time period that provides the emotional structure of the film for me.”

Lachman has been in the director’s chair himself on projects including Ken Park (2002) which he co-directed with Larry Clark from a Harmony Korine script.

“There are certain projects I like to direct because I feel I have more control over the image but I'm very happy to be just a cinematographer. Then I can just be in that world and not have to deal with everybody else's problems. Plus, we have a crew to help us. When you're a director, everybody comes to you to solve the problem.”

Each craft also requires a different mentality he says. “Put it this way, cinematographers may know how to tell the story but do they have a story to tell? That to me is the difference between a director and a cinematographer. Directors have to have a burning passion to tell the story.”

“When you're a cinematographer you know how to tell the story and you have to come up with a solution to tell the story. You have a crew to help you solve the problem. There are many ways to tell the story. It's a different mindset.”

Songs for Drella, a 1990 concert film Lachman directed and photographed with Lou Reed and John Cale, was an attempt to immerse the viewer in their performance.

“When I first met Lou he said, ‘I don’t want any fucking camera between me and the audience. They paid for the show and want to see my performance.’ I went home wondering how I could possibly shoot the concert without cameras obstructing the audience.

“I came back the next day and proposed to shoot their rehearsals for two days without an audience with just my camera on stage creating an intimacy of the camera’s movements to the music, and one day with the audience and cameras off stage. They agreed. Lou’s challenge to me resulted in the viewer being closer to Lou and John’s performance.” 

In his 77th year Lachman is still going strong, having completed Maria with Larrain with another biopic (of Peggy Lee) in development for Haynes. At MoMa he’s helped curate a retrospective of photographer Robert Frank, an influential force and a friend.

“He imbued every image with his own personal experience and demonstrated how one can impart poetry, psychology and vision in images. Frank showed us how to instil realistic or found images with the experience and subjectivity of the photographer.”

Lachman is not concerned that the sugar rush of AI and virtual cine technologies will damage the future of the craft. “Film has the ability for us to experience what is seen and hidden at the same time. It can reveal the depth of our own reality and open us to a fuller sense of ourselves. Cinema is little over a century old it will always evolve new visual grammar as filmmakers explore new languages to tell their stories.

“It doesn't matter if we do it on an iPhone, or in 8K or Super 8. We will always need people to understand the world that we are living in and tell stories in a way that we can all relate to.”

Digital Catapult: AI innovations to supercharge the creative industries

IBC

Accelerated VFX workflows, video game characters you can converse with, and auto-generated visual experiences from sound for XR headsets are just some of the AI innovations devised by start-ups as part of a recent Digital Catapult programme. 

article here

Government-backed deep tech innovation organisation Digital Catapult partners with industry and academia to find advanced technological solutions that benefit businesses UK-wide. In a recent scheme, Digital Catapult allocated funding to help explore how AI could be leveraged by start-ups to boost the creative economy in the South West of England.

The BBC, AWS and Nvidia are some of the external partners in the scheme which also hooks up entrepreneurs with the latest academic research.

“We design programs that are specifically going to work to address the most cutting-edge challenges for the sector and that play to the strengths of individual businesses,” explains Sarah Addezio, Senior Innovation Partner and Programme Lead at Digital Catapult. “Because this is public funding, our selection of projects is a very rigorous process.”

To date, 18 projects spread over two rounds have received £50k of funding each and the opportunity to participate in a 16-week accelerator which offers technical and business support to build a new product or develop an existing prototype. A second funding mechanism for R&D projects in collaboration with academia delivers up to £200k.

“We’ve cascaded £2.9m worth of funding to 29 businesses in the South West region,” says Addezio. “As a result, we've seen new jobs created and £800k of investment achieved by the businesses we’ve supported in follow-on funding.”

The first round of funding was around tooling for the creative industries and the second more specifically themed on AI.

Lux Aeterna puts GenAI through its paces

Bristol-based VFX shop Lux Aeterna has explored the capabilities and pitfalls of GenAI models for a variety of VFX processes. As the company’s Creative Technologist/VFX Artist James Pollock explains: “If you’re doing huge photoreal scenes with lots of volumetrics like cloudscapes this has huge computational costs to the company. We’ve devised a process using Intel Open Image Denoise that is able to reduce render times to four hours per frame whereas previously it was four times that.”

The facility has also explored ways of using GenAI to increase detail on 2D aerial maps that can be used to create 3D landscapes such as alien planets and ancient Earth settings and to quickly generate room interiors for 3D models of buildings.

“If you had a 3D building with a thousand windows, you could put a unique interior in each of those windows and change the perspective on them as we move past the windows, just as in real life, but without the need for modelling that interior space,” he adds. “You can do that through GenAI.”

Such practical applications of GenAI are being researched in tandem with whether their use on a commercial project is ethical and legal.

“Digital Catapult ran workshops on responsible innovation which was a really great way of thinking about ethics because sometimes that topic can appear a bit high level,” says Pollock. “Many GenAI tools have been trained on images scraped from the internet with significant legal and ethical question marks over their use in a professional commercial environment.”

As such, LAVFX does not currently use GenAI models like Stable Diffusion in the creation and delivery of its work and it declares what AI tools have been used in projects for clients including the BBC.

Pollock says: “It’s about providing a consistent framework for responsible use based on the realities of these technologies and the real risks, rather than guesswork.”

They made the sci-fi short film Reno as a case study into both the creative and legal implications of working with GenAI. Paul Silcox, VFX Director at Lux Aeterna, says: “With Reno, we are describing every piece of every AI model that we’ve used along the way, how we’ve used it and what our experience has been with it. A lot of this education that we’re learning is going to be fed back into the industry.”

The education process has also changed the perception of AI as a job threat to one of assisting VFX artists.

“We can use AI to generate interiors and change them at the drop of a hat, say, from a Chinese design to a Victorian architecture,” Silcox says. “The ability to do that adds a huge amount of options for a VFX pipeline and before it just wouldn’t have been possible. It wouldn’t matter how many people you employ, you wouldn’t have been able to do some of the things we can now with generated techniques.”

In another example, a shot that would normally take four days to rotoscope was done in a day with AI. “That didn't take four days of work away from a rotoscoping artist,” he adds. “The shot would not have been achievable or cost-effective any other way.”

Lux Aeterna’s research is tuned to building synthetic data sets in order to train models in-house for applications like denoising or upscaling.

“Using machine learning to drive efficiencies in the creative process within Houdini is of interest to us and to [Houdini developer] SideFX themselves. Another focus is on using AI and data sets to maximise the unique skillset we have in creating digital twins for visual effects.”

Meaning Machine’s game-conscious characters

Experimental games studio Meaning Machine is developing natural language models to enable game players to converse with characters in more meaningful ways. It won funding in 2023 from Digital Catapult to explore the concept and with it, created a game demo called Dead Meat in which the gameplay involves talking to characters to solve a murder mystery.

“You literally have the freedom to say anything, which is pretty much unheard of in games up until now,” says Ben Ackland, Co-Founder and Tech Lead at Meaning Machine. “It’s an example of what is possible today.”

Out of this emerged the concept of ‘game-conscious characters’, terminology which Meaning Machine uses to describe how characters understand what's going on in the game.

“They are conscious of the way the narrative unfolds; for example, of who has been killed, what events have happened, where every player is,” Ackland says. “It combines game data with AI to ensure that non-playing characters can adapt their script to anything the player does, even when the player does something totally unexpected.”

This year, the company received a larger grant to develop the technology in partnership with teams at Bristol University. It is also continuing a mentor and business relationship with Nvidia which was initiated by contacts at Digital Catapult.

“We have a deeper working relationship with Nvidia and are working on something which they’ll be sharing in the new year,” says Ackland. Digital Catapult has also guided the nascent business on investor readiness and commercialisation ahead of plans to license the technology to game developers.

Ackland explains that the advent of AI has the potential to kickstart a golden age of creative experimentation, as long as creative people remain at the helm. “The conversations you can have with players in games now have not really kept up with other aspects of gameplay. You’ve got very complex physics systems creating free-to-roam worlds but the narrative that you can have with characters has remained static. Even role-playing games like Baldur’s Gate 3 which has a very deep narrative experience, are still pre-scripted and not that reactive to what’s actually going on in the game.

“The more conscious the characters are of what’s going on in the game, the more opportunities there are through their dialogue to actually relate and react and reflect what’s going on,” he says. “As AI enters our lives with things like AI voice assistants, players are going to expect games to become more intelligent and more wrapped around their experience, more targeted at them and more personalised.”

In doing so, the player gains control over the game narrative with implications for storytelling that extend beyond the video game industry.

“AI is only as powerful as the humans driving it,” Ackland concludes. “And those humans could well be the writers or the game designers, but also the players. One of the key things we found on Dead Meat was that the more the player is willing to give to the game, the more they get out of it. The player helps the emergent narrative evolve and the game gives back in the sense it has more to work with to deliver that experience.”

New wave AI

The current wave of Digital Catapult funding is focused squarely on AI-driven innovations for the creative industries. The nine start-ups in the programme include Fictioneers which is a division of WPP-owned agency AKQA. It is using the BBC Archives and building a prototyping tool for interactive podcasts.

Octopus Immersive Lab is already using AI to create responsive and generative visualisations of audio in real-time for experiencing in XR headsets. It is working to tailor this for the BBC.

Audio design and technology outfit Black Goblin is developing a platform that uses machine learning to allow content creators to design sound alongside audio professionals. It will automate the generation of sound effects from visual content, also in conjunction with BBC engineers.

Finishing and remastering specialist Nulight Studios says it will use generative AI for video and audio production. Its first tool will automate the identification and replacement of unwanted objects (such as lens dirt, street lights, and radio collars on animals) in video and says this will be particularly beneficial for the region’s natural history filmmakers.

Outcomes from these projects are expected later this year.

 

Clean, natural and modern: Phillip Mansfield captures the Vuori lifestyle in motion

interview and copy written for RED

article here

Southern Californian performance lifestyle brand Vuori has bucked the trends of traditional sports and leisure wear with a clean, contemporary and earthy aesthetic reflected in its marketing and in its surging commercial success.

“What sets us apart from our competitors is our authenticity with the active California lifestyle,” says Phillip Mansfield, who is responsible for consistently conveying the brand in dozens of video campaigns for the Carlsbad-based fashion label which are shot, managed and finished in-house.

“It depends on the project, the product and on the fabrics that are being featured, but we try to keep the work consistent and to promote the brand’s connection to the outdoors,” says Mansfield. “Vuori has clothes for lifestyle, training, active sports and for surfing. In each case, we try to incorporate a component of nature, which could be sky, ocean, clouds or mountains.

Mansfield, lead cinematographer, editor and senior Motion Content Manager, collaborates with Vuori’s outstanding in-house team on marketing campaigns and sophisticated advertising initiatives, which run the gamut from premium TV commercials to digital ads and social media reels

Mansfield started at Vuori in 2020 and has witnessed the brand’s stellar growth. It has opened more than 70 retail stores across the US and international flagships in Shanghai and London with more expansion planned.

“When I started it was just me on the video team, shooting and editing most projects. It seems like in the last five years it went from startup to high-profile brand. Demand for branded video content hasn’t stopped, nor have the learnings and opportunities. Since then, we’ve added two cinematographer & editors to the team and another editor that is really focused on the post-production side. We also regularly partner with external production and post-production partners and vendors.

Mansfield began his career at creative agencies in New York City and San Diego, and later worked as a freelance cinematographer and editor on commercial productions. During that time, he bought his first RED.

“RED SCARLET-W 5K took my work to the next level,” he says. “It was the perfect camera for me because I was doing a lot of lifestyle and fashion and action sports work. I loved the versatility of being able to shoot beautiful slow-motion sequences or quickly turn it into more of a docu type camera. It just really elevated my work and the brands that I was working with were like, ‘Whoa, this looks so much better than what we've been used to.’ Things evolved from there over a few years, so, when I went to Vuori I took all that experience with me.”

He upgraded to a GEMINI 5K S35 sensor and added a KOMODO, both cameras which Mansfield owns and operates as A cam and B cam on most projects for Vuori.

“I love the versatility of being able to pick up a RED to capture a stunning sunset on the spur of the moment as an Individual operator, break it down to be super small, or to fit it out to be more of a documentary style camera, you can put it in a water-housing, put all the bells and whistles on it and have it be a great studio rig, or put a big zoom lens which would require a full camera department to get the shots that we need. The best part is that anything is possible with these cameras depending on the project.

Mansfield loves creating work that provokes an emotion, which he did with a Vuori documentary,”The Body Follows the Mind with Taylor Knox.” The nearly 20-minute film delves into the pro surfers daily training and meditation. “We sourced some recent surf clips and archival footage of Taylor, but all the material our team shot with him was RED.”

His team is also especially proud of a Vuori BlissBlend™ commercial featuring professional rhythmic gymnast Nastasya Generalova because they were able to combine different aesthetics. “It had beautiful clean images shot on RED, some shot in slow-motion mixed with 16mm film. It added a grittier and more artistic feeling for apparel designed for flow-based workouts, which complimented her dance movements.

The team primarily edit and prep color grades in Adobe Premiere. “The control in being able to edit the R3D files is really helpful. It's such a time saver because it eliminates the extra step of having to create proxies in the post-production process.”

For a current Vuori campaign for outdoor wear, they shot around Lake Tahoe and Reno with a V-RAPTOR and blended the 8K footage with KOMODO.

“The ability to shoot RAW is huge. We have projects where things are a little bit more controlled, but the versatility of being able to shoot in a bright sunny space, then go into a shadowed area and be able to quickly change your ISO after the fact is incredibly helpful.

”You’ve captured all the data in the negative and just knowing you are able to bring it back if you need or turn it down if you over exposed a touch, is definitely a game changer.”

RED’s compatibility with lenses is another big plus for Mansfield. “I've really loved getting to experiment with different cinema lenses over the years, from Master Primes to various vintage lenses, creating a unique look for each piece. I also love the ability to shoot on EF or RF stills lenses, which can keep things light, especially if we’re shooting with a water housing in the surf.

”Being able to take a RED camera for a swim and get beautiful cinematic images from the ocean is definitely one of my favorite things that I’ve gotten to do in my career so far.”

 

Warner Bros Discovery the big loser in Disney’s Fubo TV sports move

Streaming Media

article here

Perhaps this was David Gandler’s plan all along. The CEO and co-founder of sports centric streamer FuboTV has executed a play that not only appears to consign proposed mega-rival Venu Sports permanently to the sidelines but gives his company a chance to grow with the almighty backing of Disney.

The agreement to merge Disney's Hulu + Live TV with FuboTV will not only see Fubo dropping its anti-trust lawsuit against Venu but appears to cast Venu’s other main partner, Warner Bros Discovery, out in the cold.

After the deal announced today receives shareholder confirmation, Disney will hold a 70% stake in Fubo with Gandler continuing to lead the company, offering consumers the existing services of both FuboTV and Hulu + Live TV as both combined and separate products.

A combined service would unite FuboTV’s 1.6 million U.S customers with the 4.5 million of Hulu + Live TV to create the second largest live TV streaming service on the market, behind only YouTube TV which amassed over 8 million subscribers early in 2024.

Significantly, the deal also includes a new carriage agreement which will enable Fubo to launch a Sports & Broadcast service featuring Disney's top sports and broadcast networks, reportedly to include ESPN+.

Fubo already carries packages including MLB Network, NBA TV, NFL Network, NFL RedZone, NHL Network, and beIN Sports while Disney’s other premier sports and broadcast networks including ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN and ESPNEWS.

About the only missing major sport is NBA which until recently was a lock-in for WBD’s TNT Sports. However, the new eleven year $77bn deal signed by the league until 2035-36 locks-out WBD in favor of Amazon, Comcast’s Peacock and Disney.

With a new Disney-led Sports & Broadcast service and with NBA already covered what need would Disney have now to ally with WBD to launch Venu?

As part of the settlement, Disney, Fox, and WBD will collectively pay Fubo $220 million while Fubo agrees to end litigation that would have dragged on for months, and may well have resulted in a win for Fubo.

When Venu was proposed last February, FuboTV immediately slapped the venture with an antitrust suit which was upheld by a New York judge in August. At the time Gandler argued that Disney, WBD and Fox aimed to “monopolize the market, stifle any form of competition, create higher pricing for subscribers and cheat consumers from deserved choice.”

“Simply put, this sports cartel blocked our playbook for many years and now they are effectively stealing it for themselves,” he added.

Now, in a joint release with Disney, Gandler says, “We are thrilled to collaborate with Disney to create a consumer-first streaming company that combines the strengths of the Fubo and Hulu + Live TV brands. This combination enables us to deliver on our promise to provide consumers with greater choice and flexibility. Additionally, this agreement allows us to scale effectively, strengthens Fubo’s balance sheet and positions us for positive cash flow. It’s a win for consumers, our shareholders, and the entire streaming industry.”

For Disney, Justin Warbrooke, EVP and Head of Corporate Development, added, “We have confidence in the Fubo management team and their ability to grow the business, delivering high-quality offerings that serve subscribers with the content they want and offering great value.”

Disney’s major move in sports is the fall launch of a standalone SVOD, informally called ESPN Flagship. The new DTC, with no publicly announced price, could mark a spinoff of the cable giant. The company laid the groundwork to lasso new viewers by offering ESPN content as part of larger Disney entertainment bundle.

New York-based FuboTV was founded in Jan 2015 by Gandler, Alberto Horihuela, and Sung Ho Choi.  The platform operates in the US, Canada, and Spain and aggregates over 300 live sports, news, and entertainment networks.

Before the deal, FuboTV’s major shareholders included BlackRock, Vanguard Group and State Street Corp. Gandler owned 0.9%, according to a diligent report at Business Strategy Hub which also noted that the company is not yet profitable but posted a 28% year-over-year increase in revenue growth and a 9% surge in subscribers in 2023.

 

Pro AV India: A land of diversity and contrasts

AV Magazine

article here

A decade ago, the Indian government kickstarted ‘Make in India’ aimed at reducing dependency on imports, while elevating its role in the global economy.

It’s on track to achieve USD1 trillion in exports by 2028. Boeing, for example, placed its largest aerospace engineering facility outside the US in Bangalore where Cyviz recently completed a collaboration installation integrated with Boeing’s existing Cisco infrastructure.

A related Digital India programme launched in 2015 is also reaping dividends. With more than half a billion internet subscribers, India is second only to China as the largest market for digital consumers. As connectivity becomes omnipresent, consultancy McKinsey predicts it will create significant economic value and change the nature of work for tens of millions of Indians.

A national smart cities initiative aims to digitise everything from traffic management to law and order to water supply and waste management, all monitored through command centres.

Naturally, all of this means the country is full of potential AV business. AVIXA ranks India as the fastest-growing pro AV market globally with annual revenue projected to reach $11.8 billion in 2029.

“There are several things going for India this decade,” says Prashant Govindan, director, Generation AV at TiMax APAC. “That the bulk of the population is aged between twenty five and forty creates a unique demographic dividend both from a market and a growth perspective. Within this macro market, there are unique opportunities in Tier One, Tier Two and even Tier Three cities and towns. Industries that cater to this demographic are seeing rapid growth and will continue to do so for the next decade or so.”

Local offices in the western and northern territories
The majority of new business comes from multi-nationals as more organisations set up local offices in the western and northern territories, reports Justin Joy for Peerless-AV: “The most significant change in recent years has been the acceptance of quality brands across verticals, demonstrating that the value propositions of a product are becoming more important, not just price.”

Simon Roehrs at Ross Video says domestic pro AV is showing substantial growth. “India’s commitment to becoming a digital-first economy has encouraged businesses to invest in AV technologies to improve operational efficiency and customer experiences,” he adds.

Hans Chia of Clear-Com notes a spike in demand for live events in conferences, trade shows, and entertainment attributing the market’s rapid growth to digital transformation.

Datapath’s Andy Lee has seen the market go from strength to strength. “That’s not to say it doesn’t have its challenges, but we’ve seen year on year growth and are set for our record year there in 2024-25 with some prestigious projects hopefully closing in the next few months.”

Infrastructure investment
Major infrastructure investment spans control rooms, unified organisational communications, and public safety as well as sports stadiums: The 132,000 seat Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad is touted as the world’s biggest (and will be full for cricket).

“On the enterprise side, companies including Reliance Industries, Indian Oil, State Bank of India, Bharat Petroleum, Tata Motors, and Rajesh Exports are part of the global economy with a global supply chain and customer base making modern corporate communications infrastructure indispensable,” notes Samuel Recine at Matrox Video. “India also ranks fourth in global defence spending, behind Russia. In summary, the climate for pro AV in India is strong with strong forward prospects.”

“Even in government and public sectors such as state funded universities where traditionally technology adoption has been slowest, a rapid digitisation wave is fuelling AV adoption,” says Govindan who cites a recent tender for digitisation of courtrooms right down to district level with over 10,000 rooms, saying more such initiatives are underway.

Hospitality is undergoing an AV surge as hotel chains remodel and create new customer experiences. With 80-plus hotels under construction Marriott plans to operate over 250 hotels and 50,000 rooms in India by 2030. The IHG group, Accor, and Taj (Indian luxury hotel group), plans another 500 properties.

“With such explosive growth, in domestic travel and stays, hospitality chains are investing in AV tech as a differentiator to add to the overall customer experience, with specialty restaurants, bars, lounges, spas and conferencing and ball rooms,” says Govindan. “The wedding season is another growth driver in micro markets such as Jaipur, Udaipur, Agra, Goa and Kerala with even domestic customers seeking out exclusive experiences.”

Evolving AV culture
Rapid growth into digital and IP/IT solutions has, however, left something of a lag in skills and buying perceptions.

“Many organisations are now prioritising high quality video workflows to support content production and streaming, including large manufacturers, social media companies, and corporations,” says Straker Coniglio of AJA Video Systems. “However, volunteers are often asked to run these production workflows, despite having little to no technical expertise. As a result, we’re seeing more pronounced demand across the region for reliable technologies that provide high quality AV and user-friendliness, as well as affordability.”

While there is regional diversity in terms of spending power Govindan describes the overall outlook as “highly aspirational with a desire to associate with high quality (or perceived high quality) brands. This is reflected in the choice of apparel brands, shoes, and cars. This generation is more image conscious and will pay a premium for being different.”

On the other hand, there’s a price-conscious India that still values a good bargain. Says Govindan: “Older generations will shop around for a deal. They still have considerable influence and buying power. In the AV world we encounter purchase managers from this generation who tend to look for a bargain, though a vast majority now choose value for money over pure price.”

India is a big software development talent pool
Recine suggests India boasts one of the world’s richest software development talent pools. “Yet India exhibits some frugality versus some Western counterparts when it comes to technology asset classes spanning diverse price ranges,” he says. “The economy for pro AV customer personalisation and system integration services overall isn’t as fully developed as some Western countries. Most of the country’s most noteworthy networking talent is still primarily tied up in rapidly growing government and corporate infrastructure leaving a gap in the media networking talent pool.”

On the plus side, the Indian population has a very strong English capability which allows them to access training information for topics like AV-over-IP.
Sidharth Chhibber, director of Acoustic Arts concurs: “Traditionally, cost effectiveness has been a key consideration. However, as AV solutions are becoming far more sophisticated all the brands that we distribute for (including Powersoft, Biamp, Cloud Electronics and Audix) have shown strong growth.

“A key vertical driving AV demand is education, specifically for digital learning and smart classrooms. The education sector offers a clear example of how AV technology is becoming indispensable, especially post-pandemic.”

Joy finds product knowledge is grasped quickly by local consultants and integrators. “There’s a good level of awareness that each brand provides, which is apparent during discussions at major expos such as InfoComm India and AV-ICN. Having a local presence is extremely important here, as are frequent visits to conduct training and maintain relationships to ensure brand acceptance.”

 

Displaying growth
Research firm, DSCC predicts that India is set to become the next big flat panel manufacturing nation. A younger growing population, compared to China’s which has peaked and falling, is a contributory factor. As is that India’s domestic TV market - the third largest after China and the US - continues to grow.

The India Cellular & Electronics Association projects domestic display manufacturing will grow 29 per cent a year due to a surge in demand for phones, TVs and IT hardware.

“Retail is another fast adopter of AV but price consciousness remains,” says Joy. “Hospitality and healthcare are sectors where we still see growth potential. Since the government is pushing for new airports, shopping malls and smart cities we’ll only see the number of DooH screens rise.”

Indeed, the transport sector, both air and rail, is poised to double in the next couple of years in terms of traffic and reach. New airports in regional cities connected by the government’s incentive for regional airlines (UDAN) and the rapid growth in air traffic between Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai is driving this growth.

“New airports and terminals to existing airports are being added in Mumbai and Bangalore, while a new greenfield airport is being built in Noida in the National Capital Region,” Govindan adds. “Additional airports in Goa, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat have been built leading to growth in many Tier Two and Three cities.”

The government’s ambitious push for high-speed rail transportation with the new Vande Bharat trains across the country is also developing the overall connectivity to smaller cities. “Notable is the public-private partnership which aims at international standards of train termini with state of the art PA and digital signage,” says Govindan.

Audio developments
In terms of sound, most of the technology developments are in performing arenas and convention centres. “Two large convention spaces have recently opened up in Delhi (the Bharat Mandapam, the Yashobhoomi ICC) and the Jio CC in Mumbai, with many more in the pipeline. This sector is seeing major growth,” says Govindan.

In August, Avocor opened the first of two Experience Centres in partnership with regional distributor, Mindstec as part of plans to “significantly expand our footprint” in the market, explains Avocor sales director, Rohit AK.

He reports that overall office leasing in India is “shooting through the roof.” From 74.4 million sq ft in 2023 leasing is expected to hit 80 million sq ft this year and projected to cross 100 million in 2025 of which domestic firms are expected to contribute to 60-65 per cent of the total acreage.

“These figures have kept us excited and are keeping us on our toes,” says Rohit. “Hybrid collaboration is the key product category today and it is seen across verticals, from offices to government organisations to class rooms to hospitality and to every industry that needs collaboration.”

Central government has concentrated on digitising thousands of public schools over the last decade through the Digital India programme which is projected to spend $1.7 billion between 2021-2026. In the latest budget, 6.6 per cent of overall GDP is to be spent on education alone.

“This push on from digital education has been a catalyst for our industry,” says Rohit. “Those companies who are manufacturing in India with the ‘Make in India’ tag are getting preference over non-Indian OEMs in government tenders. This is creating ecosystems for local AV manufacturing which will help the overall customer experience in the longer run.”

 

Immersive experiences
One of the most notable aspects of AV applications in India is the trend for projection mapping and architectural lighting. Similarly, immersive galleries and interactive museum exhibits are being developed to enhance cultural engagement, making art and history more accessible.

“Cities and states are increasingly focused on creating captivating experiences for visitors through immersive displays,” confirms Narendra Kumar Rai at Eyeviz Digital Solutions (Dataton’s partner). “This trend is spreading beyond major tourist destinations, with regions nationwide recognising the potential of these technologies to attract and engage tourists.”

Eyeviz blended projection mapping with the natural beauty of the Ganges River to create a unique attraction that celebrates the cultural heritage of religious sites.
“AV culture in India is shifting from the inner sanctum to a more integrated approach that emphasises innovation, interactivity, and audience engagement,” says Rai. “India is positioning itself as a key player in the global AV landscape, with unique applications that reflect its diverse cultural heritage and forward-looking aspirations.”

Regional variations
The corporate business is largely driven by Bangalore, known as India’s Silicon Valley, closely followed by Hyderabad and Chennai. New Delhi sees a higher volume of government-related projects.

“The west of India drives banking, financial services, and insurance with the majority of financial institutions having their HQs in Mumbai,” reports Rohit. “East of the country is largely driven by state government spending for AV.

“Hyderabad has emerged as a growing hub for corporate activities, presenting exceptional opportunities for high-end AV solutions,” confirms Chhibber. “Goa’s hospitality sector has been buzzing, with numerous new restaurants and nightlife venues opening up over the past two to three years, further driving demand for advanced AV installations.”

Lee highlights “thriving tech cities such as Bengaluru and Pune which have an abundance of large corporations with brand new facilities.” Datapath products have been sold into CCTV rooms, reception areas and desks showing dashboards of company data.

Peerless’ dvLED mounts were recently specified for a large museum project and its kiosks and outdoor displays are being installed in developing smart cities such as Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat, and the city of Gurgaon - India’s second largest IT hub and third largest financial and banking hub.

“Southern India is where the multi-nationals are and where the majority of office fit-outs are happening,” says Joy. “The west of the country is known as a retail, museum and entertainment hub and the North is predominantly a government hotspot.”

Diverse regions and cultures
Engaging with India’s AV market requires a nuanced understanding of its geographic and cultural diversity.

“Our key piece of advice is to focus on local collaboration and customisation,” shares Rai. “Given India’s vastness, different regions have unique preferences, challenges, and cultural contexts. By partnering with local vendors, artists, or cultural organisations you can gain invaluable insights. This collaboration not only helps in tailoring solutions to meet specific needs but also fosters trust and credibility within the community.”

Ross Video’s top advice for engaging with the market is also to focus on localisation. “Tailor your products, services, and marketing strategies to suit the specific needs, preferences, and cultural nuances of each region,” urges Roehrs. “India’s market is highly varied, with differences in language, consumer behaviour, and business practices across states. By adopting a localised approach, whether through regional language options, customised marketing efforts, or understanding local business norms, you can connect more deeply and effectively with your target audience.”

Lee agrees: “If you’re not based there yourself get a good partner(s) and work with them by visiting regularly.”