Crest House, Worli, Mumbai. From his white-carpeted ivory tower, Juno Malhotra, vice president - operations, not only has a breath-taking view of the bustling megapolis, but, thanks to the closed circuit TV monitor on his desk, also keeps a tab on the regular bee-hive that is Crest Communications. In the absence of Crest’s first couple, Shyam and Seema Ramanna, the former adman and adfilm maker tells us what's new with the company...

Crest is one of the pioneers in the line, yet you’ve kept a low profile while the competition, all Johnnys come lately, have been bragging about the advances they’ve made...
Agreed, we definitely haven’t been blowing our horns, while the fly-by-night entrepreneurs have been painting the town red over every new acquisition. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve been lying low, or were on the brink of insolvency, as some bright sparks suggested. And though we’ve been playing our cards close to our chest, we’ve been picky and choosy about the work we do.

But we’d rather let our work speak for itself. We’ve been working on several ambitious, prestigious projects, like Devi, the Tamil-Hindi bilingual for producer MS Raju, which will soon be released. Our work in the film should suffice to silence our most vehement soothsayers, so there's little point in working up steam now.

There were reports in the financial newspapers that you were on the verge of a sell-out, that Warner was likely to pick up a 10 per cent stake in Crest...
Seema Ramanna, who looks after the financial aspects at Crest, should be able to answer that one better. But for my part, I can assure it was all hot air, canards raised by vested interests. In fact we have issued a press release to hush these market rumours.

It was suggested that Crest was looking for foreign players in equity participation because it would enhance the company’s image abroad. Comment.
Believe it or not, we have no dearth for big international projects right now. How many of our so-called competitors can claim to have prised open the foreign market? Well, we can and have. We’ve been tested and approved by Hollywood’s biggest production houses. So we don’t need a face-lift now, certainly not in the round-about way you mention.

Among our big international projects is an animation film based on the life and times of Beethoven, now close to completion, for Rich Animation which is to be aired on Home Box Office. We also have a smaller project for Disney. Our work for it has already been approved and appreciated. And coming from Disney, it certainly speaks volumes about the quality of our work.

How has the falling value of the rupee against the US greenback helped Crest?

Well, at Crest we have a department devoted entirely to 2-D animation, which is meant entirely for US consumption. Apart from the Beethoven and Disney projects I told you about, we have three more in various stages of completion.

The falling value of the rupee has helped us to a certain extent, as we get paid in dollars. But let’s not forget that the currency situation in South East Asia is far worse. Take the case of the Korean Won, for instance, which fares so badly vis a vis the dollar, that American companies have found it far cheaper to get animation or graphics done in Korea, although they can’t match us for quality.

Your ad-producing wing has been going great guns, lately. Tell us about it.

I guess we could claim to be the biggest ad-producing house in the country, with eight to 15 ads being released each month on an average. Nobody else matches us either for quality or quantity. Our technical whiz, Shyam Ramanna’s been looking after the ad films wing. That is entirely his baby.

The same, apparently, cannot be said for your TV software wing, which has had no success to crow about since Purush Kshetra?

Not true. We may have phased out of TV for a while, because the market was pretty unstable, but we haven’t been sitting on our haunches. Purush Kshetra wasn’t taken off air, it went the full course, and completed the stipulated number of episodes. The talk show may have been controversial to a certain extent, but it cleaned up on all the major awards, including the SCREEN-Videocon, if you can remember. We could well do so again with Aisa Hona Hi Tha, a forthcoming 52-episode show.

Where do you think Crest figures among graphics and special effects houses? A lot of new companies claim to offer facilities that are light years ahead of your kind of technology?

Do they? I’d like to know who does. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Crest has no competitor in India. We’re totally on our own in the range of services we offer, and in terms of quality. We’re not just a post-production house, though most people seem to think so, and though our first floor (at Crest House, Worli, Mumbai) is devoted entirely to post-production.

Our special effects can match the best in the world. We could have produced the Terminator II kind of special effects two years ago, just as we could have morphed Michael Jackson ten years ago with our kind of technology. If anybody says they’re light years ahead of us in terms of technology, I can only say, don’t believe them. Anyone can make claims like that. We’re the pioneers in compugraphics, both in hardware and software. Most of the machines we used when we first set up shop may now be obsolete, yet we could produce the same results even that the best in US special effects houses could.

But what about claims by other compugraphic houses, that they can provide the same services for far less?

Wrong again. Their services may come cheap, but the difference does show in the final analysis, if you ask me. We’re not prepared to slash our prices because we put in that little extra that other people don’t. Nothing goes out of Crest House, unless it’s been approved by the people at the top, who, I can assure you, are among the hardest people to please. And we know from experience that producers are willing to cough up that little extra, if they can be sure their films would look like a million bucks.

How has Crest’s wing, Inflight, devoted to on-board entertainment, been doing lately?

We’re flying high, with seven international airlines approaching us for videotapes devoted to on-board entertainment. It’s a market which has been growing tremendously, and the returns are good. We also cater to Air India, for which we produce film magazines on video.

Crest has been rumoured to be considering entering the music video segment. What makes you think you can do well where others have burnt their fingers?

Well, for one thing, we’re not hemmed in by the restrictions other music labels are bound by. Take HAL, for instance, which affords us the kind of footage flexibility that lets us mount 99 live images one on top of the other without losing out on clarity. We can have that kind of facility for our videos, and we can do it in-house. So, don’t readily assume we shan’t do well, just because other music houses have burnt their fingers.