Qube Wire comes to Bengaluru, thus easing movie processing in the Kannada film industry

Qube Wire has now set up a transfer unit in the city. Earlier Kannada filmmakers travelled to Chennai to master and process their films for theatrical distribution.

Qube Wire is a web-based service for global theatrical distribution. “We have been writing to Qube for the past few years, requesting them to open the services in Bengaluru.

This will now benefit the producers and directors because they would earlier end up spending about Rs 1.5 lakhs on travel, food and accommodation, but now they will incur almost zero expense,” Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce president M Narasimhalu, told DH.

The three-day to one week long process included sending a hard disk to the Chennai office. It usually took them two days to render and export it. Once it’s ready, either the film’s director, cinematographer or the editor will have to check if the film’s print is in order and in place as regards sync, colour, among other things. Then it gets uploaded to the server for theatre distribution.

“The slots were always at odd hours,” filmmaker Mansore tells DH. “Kannada films, especially the smaller independent productions were never given priority. In case of any mistakes in the render, communicating from here was quite stressful, especially when we also have to handle release pressure,” he adds.

Director Shashank Sohgal too faced similar experiences. He and his team had to watch the final cut of ‘Daredevil Mustafa’ at 3 am. “We have been getting only midnight slots. So the stress was naturally high. In case of any last minute rendering errors, we had to run back to Chennai,” he says.

Although having a Qube transfer system in the city makes life easier for filmmakers here, Mansore says that “just Qube Wire here doesn’t solve many problems”. Apart from Qube, many theatres in Karnataka also use UFO and K-Sera services.

“Only when all service providers have an operation in the city, production houses will fully benefit from it,” Mansore adds. Shashank says: “It’s great if UFO also comes to Bengaluru, but with Qube, we have at least covered most of the main theatres.” Shashank says.

Narasimhalu says KFCC has also spoken to UFO to open their services in the city.

Now, censor cuts can be easily and quickly adjusted and uploaded.