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| Rituparno Ghosh supervises the dubbing of Aarekti Premer Golpo in Studio A; Anjan Dutt previews Byomkesh Bakshi in Studio B. Pictures by Aranya Sen |
This is where Pradeep Parineeta Sarkar was cooped up for a whole evening with an ad film a fortnight ago. This is where the likes of Rituparno Ghosh, Anjan Dutt, Suman Mukhopadhyay and Kaushik Ganguly are often seen camping for long hours.
Dream Digital Inc., in Keyatola Road off Southern Avenue, has emerged as the hotspot for all audio ventures in Tollywood. The state-of-the-art sound studio has given the city’s filmmakers and musicians several reasons to not fly off to Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. t2 finds out how...
The prelude
Dream Digital took off as a sound recording studio in February 2006 when Dipankar Chaki and Anirban Sengupta teamed up to set up a “well-equipped, professionally-run studio”.
“We wanted to move out of freelancing to a more organised structure. People would usually record their songs here and run off to Mumbai for the mixing and post-production work. We wanted to offer the best equipment and software to check that tendency,” says Dipankar (Jojo to friends).
Dipankar was the founder member of city band Fahrenheit before turning audio engineer, while Anirban (better known as Potla) worked as an in-house sound engineer for recording studios like Glamsham, Trinity and Joshua Inc (on films like Chandni Bar, Satta, Fida and Na Tum Jano Na Hum).
Dream Digital graduated from sound recording to sound designing in 2008, with audio post-production facilities for television and films. Now, the studio boasts individual recording, post-production and backend audio set-ups steered by a team of six sound engineers, spread over a 1,200sqft area.
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| Dipankar & Anirban |
The cutting edge
The set-up has two major units. Studio A accommodates all kinds of recordings, including group violins and other acoustic instruments. One thing that’s coming in really handy for the Tolly brigade is Studio B, which serves as a mix room for post-production with softwares and virtual instruments adapted to Dolby and DTS technology. It allows directors to sit through an entire film for a feel of the final audio output.
“We set up Studio B with surround last year to take up films. Dream Digital now offers a complete experience, starting with dubbing and mixing to sound design and Dolby mastering. It’s a boutique concept as we work one-on-one with directors. We also do creative planning and consultation for them,” says Dipankar. The first finished film to roll out of Dream Digital was Anjan Dutt’s Chalo Let’s Go...
Dream Digital has tied up with well-known sound studios, like Sterling Sound in New York and Edensound Mastering in Melbourne, to facilitate stereo mastering of tracks after the final mixing.
This apart, Anirban and Dipankar (both 34 years old) have assembled a large sound effects library over the past 10 years, with a major chunk recorded and coded by themselves. “We have our own search engine software which helps manage and categorise 1,000GB of sound effects in the library,” adds Anirban.
The duo have also devised a server set-up that allows them to exchange digital files of any size with studios all over the world.
“The need could range from a sitar piece to pure vocals, which we get done at our studio and send across. It has opened us up to musicians and TV channels in France, USA and England,” says Dipankar, who along with Anirban has recently finished a three-week course on advanced post-production technology in films in San Francisco. “We have learnt different techniques that now help us complete a 400-hour job in 200 hours,” he adds.
Save time, save money
One of the latest additions to the studio’s tech tool pool is “remote recording” done with the help of a video conferencing software. “It’s new and cost-effective. It saves both time and money. For instance, people can hire a studio in Mumbai and direct the recording from there instead of coming down all the way to Calcutta. It’s useful when sound effects or music mixing work from Mumbai gets outsourced to us or when we work on ads with Mumbai-based production houses,” says Dipankar.
The entire facility is linked with a chronological data back-up system. There are CCTVs for round-the-clock surveillance; it helps monitor work-in-progress as well as keep tabs on piracy.
The way ahead
The enterprising pair plans to get into creating sounds for gaming and animation. “We want to reach a point where we can produce both audio and visual content for films and TV,” says Anirban.
What: Dream Digital Inc.
Where: 6J Keyatola Road
Films (audio) under production: Adim Ripu, Aarekti Premer Golpo, Ekti Tarar Khonje...
Past projects (film): Shob Charitra Kalponik, Chaturanga, Chalo Let’s Go..., BBD, Khela, Via Darjeeling, Dharm, The Last Lear, Ramchand Pakistani, Antaheen...
Band albums: Bindaas Bangla, Chandrabindoo, Lakkhichhara, Fossils, Shilajit, Neil Mukherjee...
Music directors who’ve worked here: Shantanu Moitra, Pritam, Debajyoti Mishra, Prabuddha Banerjee, Indradeep Dasgupta, Jeet Gannguli...
Tech tools: Protools HD 8, a highly advanced “audio creation and production software” for recording and editing sound; Genelec for active studio monitoring; Neumann, AKG and Shure microphones.
Pocket pinch: The rates can vary from Rs 850 per hour for a song to Rs 15 lakh for a complete audio post-production package for a film.
Voiceover: “Till Bong Connection I'd spend 20 days in Mumbai working on the sound for my films. Calcutta did not have any facility for the laying of tracks with 5.1 Dolby sound. Dream Digital now allows me to do that here.... The recordists in Dream Digital are young, dynamic and not old fashioned about their ideas on sound design. That’s very important,” said Anjan Dutt.
