May the fourth be with you

Situated within Mumbai’s sprawling film city complex, Whistling Woods International (WWI) is one of Asia’s leading centres for film, communication and creative arts education. Founded in 2006 by filmmaker Subhash Ghai, the institute immerses students in the same technologies, workflows and environments used across the entertainment industry, incorporating all aspects of professional filmmaking.

WWI has been responding to the fast-developing immersive environment over the past decade, recognising it as the fourth major content experience platform after cinema, television and OTT, transitioning audiences from passive viewers to active participants. And there have been some exciting developments to reflect this.

One of these stems from WWI’s close partnership with Sony, which includes serving as a beta-testing site for new releases. The campus houses the first few Spatial Reality Display (SRD) units in India, featuring Sony’s stereoscopy technology which reproduces spatial images in 3D without the need for special headsets or glasses. Sony was the first major partnership that WWI CTO Chaitanya Chinchlikar arranged back in 2011, giving students the opportunity to work with 4K HD and 3D stereoscopic content creation while providing the manufacturer with extensive user feedback and access to the next generation. Kickstarting the partnership 15 years ago and inaugurated by Sony Corporation president Sir Howard Stringer, the Sony Media Technology Centre (SMTC) at WWI became only the third in the world after similar centres in Hollywood and the UK. SMTC is now in its fourth incarnation, incorporating the Sony Cinema Line of high-end cinema cameras.

WWI is not only keeping up with the rapid pace of technological innovation, it actively participates in its development, operating as both as a technology incubator and an educational institute. Students – currently a total campus strength of around 1,100 – collaborate across disciplines, gaining hands-on experience with professional cameras, lighting systems, audio consoles and postproduction software while working on projects that mirror real-world workflows.

“The key is merging rather than looking at things in individuality,” Chinchlikar concludes. “When you look at a discipline as part of a whole, it enhances the learning process: how photogrammetry is linked to VR is linked to virtual production and from there to 3D printing, or how production design is linked to gaming and how both can be enhanced by spatial reality displays. Students now have an immersive workflow and can see how their education can be enhanced.”

The result is an environment where emerging talent can experiment with cutting-edge technologies while developing the collaborative skills demanded by today’s film, broadcast and immersive media industries.

Another example is a workflow development partnership with motion capture (mocap) specialist Qualisys, leading to the company’s first commercial deployment of mocap in a Hindi feature film, Munjya. The institute is also a beta-testing partner for Sennheiser and Neumann. Recently, Chinchlikar became one of a few people outside of Sennheiser to beta-test its in-headset Apple Vision Pro sound mixing tool which allows engineers to mix multichannel and spatial formats on headphones, eliminating the need for a physical studio. And, in 2024, a collaboration with Intel and Samsung facilitated an 8K livestream of the Paris Summer Olympics at WWI. “We worked closely with Intel, which had built out the entire workflow and created a new codec for media coding,” explains Chinchlikar. “The workflow entailed taking in raw 8K, compressing and encrypting it, sending it over the open internet for decryption at WWI’s end and playing it back on an 8K Samsung display.”

Stressing that WWI is not a production house, Chinchlikar explains that these mutually beneficial tie-ins provide manufacturers with valuable feedback while enabling staff and students to try out new and emerging technology without major investment. “We’re a private establishment, without government funding,” he explains. “So, for example, when we wanted to work in VR, [telecommunications giant] Jio came in to fund the Whistling Woods Jio VR lab, and out of that emerged our entire cinematic VR workflow and a VR livestreaming workflow – which was deployed at the IPL cricket tournament – leading us naturally to an immersive ecosystem working with technologies such as volumetric capture and photogrammetry.”

Other real-world projects that have given students valuable experience include a seven-year project with the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) to produce a series of 360° VR documentaries detailing the construction of the Mumbai Metro Line 3. “We looked at how you shoot non-fiction in India, creating a docuseries on an ongoing project: how do you plan your shoots; how regularly do you go and film; what do you shoot; and so on,” says Chinchlikar. Such collaborative projects also allow WWI to develop high-quality workflows indigenously: “Rather than rely on expensive technology brands like Stype or Mo-Sys for elements like camera tracking and lens tracking, one of our faculty built a virtual production workflow with a metadata transfer protocol at its base. This allowed us to build out a camera tracking system, a lens encoder, treadmill and turntable encoders and integrate them with mocap to create a universal virtual production/mocap workflow. An understanding of immersive workflows then enabled us to build out a photogrammetry pipeline as well as a 3D printing pipeline.”

Chinchlikar, a man who wears multiple hats and is simultaneously vice president and business head of WWI and CTO and head of emerging media, is all too aware that WWI has to be five years ahead of the commercial industry, well before mainstream adoption. “Our students need to know what is coming next,” he continues. “We incubate companies that are owned by our alumni; for example, we’ve built a strong markerless mocap workflow using visual AI and pose estimation out of the lab, and a 3D printing company which looks at uses outside of the typical applications.”

WWI is also heavily invested in ambisonics 360° surround sound and spatial audio recording and mixing, both for VR and for integration into traditional film and entertainment audio workflows, investigating how multidirectional audio can elevate narrative storytelling. A major inspiration is the Sphere in Las Vegas, which Chinchlikar has visited on extensive travels to expand his technical knowledge: “We have much to learn from workflows like the one deployed at the Sphere – technologies such as beamforming and beam steering and vectorised audio. While we’re working with first-order ambisonics in depth already, we are also studying second-order ambisonics to understand how it can work, even though it’s not at our doorstep yet.”

WWI’s pioneering of immersive audio really took off in 2013 when it designed and built India’s first Auro-3D mix theatre, the 5th Veda auditorium. While the format enjoyed significant popularity, particularly in the South Indian cinema market, the global standardisation of Dolby Atmos eventually demanded a pivot. In 2025, WWI restructured the room alignment and converted the room to a certified Dolby Atmos mix stage. The system has been upgraded with Pulz Audio CSX110, CSX12 and CSX15 models for the surround, rear and overhead channels. There is also a new FOH system of five-per-side Meyer Sound Tigra-W line array speakers, with two more for centre fills and four 600-HP active subwoofers, and an Allen & Heath Avantis console. “We have a music production, composition and performance programme and students perform here all the time, so they need to be heard in the best-possible quality,” explains Chinchlikar. The room is also installed with a Harkness silver screen and Sony SXRD projector for stereoscopic 3D projection.

Rather than identically equipping all five of its 5.1 DAW studios, WWI has varied the hardware to reflect India’s real-world postproduction industry. Avid work surfaces are ubiquitous, but one of the rooms boasts a new Audient ASP 4816 analogue recording console and another is equipped with a Yamaha 02R. Students also encounter different monitor brands from room to room, including Genelec, PreSonus, Adam Audio and JBL. This deliberate lack of uniformity encourages students to rely on their ears and an understanding of signal flow. “We want them to get comfortable with the brands and recognise a difference between the monitors,” explains Chinchlikar. All DAW studios can access isolation booths for solo instrumentalists, vocalists and small ensembles as well as a dedicated Foley suite. Students also have access to a Dolby mix studio installed with a Martin Audio surround sound system and a Harrison Series 12 digitally controlled analogue film console.

When WWI opened in 2006, its main focus was to educate India’s next-generation filmmakers in the latest technology that was becoming available in the world’s most prolific film industry. “We started with film because that’s our core, but the goal was always to diversify into the four verticals: narrative arts, communication and management, creative arts and performing arts,” says Chinchlikar, reeling off the available programmes on the undergraduate and master’s degree pathways, which include acting, music, composition, cinematography, direction, editing, producing, screenwriting, sound, visual FX, production design, animation, video games, fashion, visual communication design, advertising, journalism, events, PR, sports and esports. Also in the pipeline is a one-year diploma created in conjunction with AVIXA, encompassing pro audio, AV, operations and engineering for location-based experiences. “This is aimed at people who want to look at a structured pathway for permanent installations such as museums,” he continues. “There are 50-plus museums and location-based immersive AV experiences being planned in India so the opportunities are immense.”

Head of sound recording and sound design Rakesh Ranjan, who’s been at WWI since the beginning, explains another recent development sparked by a downturn in the music recording industry. “We’ve introduced a location music production module for our master’s degree students, teaching production sound for indoor concerts and outdoor events,” he explains. This is another area WWI is exploring in partnership with AVIXA. “There are now so many people working on live events with sound and lighting, visual imagery for LED walls and projection mapping,” continues Chinchlikar. “We want to develop these disciplines, and AVIXA provides the perfect channel to get things going.”