FEATURES: POSTPRODUCTION
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A dubbing session underway in studio C’s control room
The Dolby Atmos mix room has a 7.1.4 system of JBL 708is and an ASB6115 sub
Studio Aradhana’s Ashim Samanta
Doubled dubbing
As demand for OTT content grows in India, one of its oldest facilities has branched out, adding new dubbing suites and a Dolby Atmos HE studio. Caroline Moss reports on Studio Aradhana THE ORIGINS OF THE NEW STUDIO ARADHANA, WHICH has just opened in Mumbai’s Andheri West, lie with the late, celebrated film director, Shakti Samanta. Setting up Shakti Films in 1958, Samanta’s first feature film as a director, Howrah Bridge, became an instant hit. He went on to direct many more successful movies including China Town, Kashmir Ki Kali, An Evening in Paris and Aradhana. It was the latter film, released in 1969, which became one of the director’s biggest hits and provided his son, Ashim Samanta, with a name for his dubbing studio, Aradhana Sound Service, which he set up in 1985. Aradhana has always been on the cutting edge of technological developments in film sound on the subcontinent, making the move to digital in 1995 before most other studios and installing a Euphonix console in 2005, moving into software-based mixing and postproduction rather than working on the traditional hardware still being used by most Indian studios of that era. Samanta junior joined his father in the Bollywood movie industry after graduating from college in 1976. Alongside his own career directing nine feature films and 350 TV episodes, he moved into the world of audio postproduction, mixing films and dubbing foreign content into local languages. “In 1994, we started localisation of Hollywood films into Hindi and other Indian languages with Jurassic Park,” recalls Samanta. This was the first Hollywood film to be dubbed in the Hindi, Tamil and Telugu languages, and led to Aradhana working with leading film studios including Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Marvel, Disney and others. “Almost all of the films released in India from these studios have been dubbed by us,” continues Samanta, with understandable pride. As Amazon Prime, Netflix, SonyLIV and Disney+ joined the client list, more capacity was
Munro Acoustics’ Aashique Hussain needed to bolster the output of Aradhana Sound Service’s 420m2 facility in Andheri East, which houses three dubbing suites, one 7.1 theatrical mixing suite and a 5.1 OTT mix suite.
Accordingly, Samanta purchased a 200m2 unit in a commercial building located in the studio hub of Andheri West, around 15 minutes away from the original premises, which will operate alongside the existing facilities. “There used to be a recording studio here, but we had to start from scratch, tearing down all the walls to construct three dubbing suites and a Dolby Atmos HE mix studio,” he explains. With careful acoustic design needed to isolate the four studios, which will all operate simultaneously, Samanta brought in Munro Acoustics to design and reconfigure the space. “Kapil Thirwani of Munro Acoustics is the best in the field and we have known him for several years, so obviously we engaged the company for our new venture,” he says. Discussions about plans for the new studio began in mid2019, before a suitable premises had been found. Once Samanta had secured the business unit, Munro Acoustics carried out a feasibility test and started design work which was finalised in January 2020, with construction starting immediately. As the pandemic hit, Mumbai went into a strict lockdown between March and July 2020, and work came to a complete halt due to the government-imposed restrictions. “When the restrictions started to ease off, there were guidelines formed by the government and the building management regarding working and transportation hours, which in turn increased the timeline,” explains Munro’s acoustic designer, Aashique Hussain, who worked on the project along with the company’s acoustic engineer Cyril Thomas, as well as Thirwani. “There was a rise in the cost of the raw materials by almost 10% and the contractor also faced a labour shortage initially. To overcome this and reduce the
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