Desire, directed by noted actor-director Biplab Chatterjee, has an American actor in the lead role. The film will be initially released in Hollywood.

According to RE chief operating officer Gurudas Sarkar, Desire will be the first full-length feature film to be shot on a digital movie camera in Calcutta.

"The camera has been procured from Japanese company Hitachi by Research Engineers. Hitachi is keenly awaiting the results of this experiment," Sarkar said. The camera, which costs Rs 75-90 lakh, will eventually be acquired by REI.

Sarkar said the digital camera has a hard disk on which up to four hours of work can be stored. The images are then copied to a computer for editing. After the final editing,the movie will be transferred to film.

"This is an experiment by Amrit Das (chairman and chief executive of REI) to see if Tollygunge film makers can slash production costs. These days a film maker has to spend around Rs 5-7 lakh to import the film before production can start," Sarkar said.

"Most Bengali movies are made with a budget of Rs 20-25 lakh. We are trying to set a new trend and cut out the cost too," Sarkar added.

The entire work is scheduled to be completed by August 1999.

RE is investing Rs 15 crore in a tie-up with ICICI Ltd for a digital studio coming up near its office in Salt Lake. There are plans for another digital studio at Tollygunge to serve the local film industry in the second phase.

A lot would depend on the success of the film and the subsequent acceptance of digital technology by the city-based film industry.

Noted film-maker and cameraman Mahendra Kumar, who is also a professor at the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute, said, "this can be a really good thing forthe film industry as it will bring in better technology to films made in Tollygunge."

Kumar said, "even filmmakers like Mrinal Sen used to shoot with a 1:3 shooting ratio for original footage to the final cut. However, later directors insisted on a minimum 1:5 ratio sometimes going up to even 1:10 and 1:15. This trend has been driving up costs."

Sarkar said, "apart from saving on the cost of film, which will be needed at the final stage only, this process will also minimise the cost of converting the film into the DVD format as Hitachi's camera itself has a specific device to generate a DVD format. The cost will come down from around Rs 20 lakh to Rs 5 lakh."

"We have laid out a budget of Rs 1 crore for this project. But the way things are progressing I hope we will be able to keep the costs within a figure much less than that," he added.