Reliance Mediaworks, the owner of Soho’s iLab, is expanding its visual effects capability in London with a view to post converting 2D features and TV projects into stereo 3D.

The move comes after iLab’s parent, the Indian communications giant Reliance ADA, lost a high profile deal with LA based conversion company In-Three to establish, in India, what the companies said would be the world’s largest facility dedicated to 2D-3D conversion.

The In-Three and Reliance partnership, announced last December was expected to cater for converting 15-25 feature film projects per year. In-Three technology was used to post-convert Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.

“Inthree has terrific technology and we’re keen to contine the cooperation but we came to a mutial agreement to end that part of the relationship and we are in talks now about licensing their technology,” said Patrick von Sychowski, head of strategy for Reliance MediaWorks, London.

Reliance’s Soho offices will expand to include at least 20 additional seats for conversion work. Tom Horton, former Molinare VFX producer, will head the VFX operation. David Fowler, formerly at MPC, joins as the new head of technology.

The outfit will also deploy the image processing and restoration tools developed at Lowry Digital, an LA-based digital restoration specialist owned by Reliance.

“It makes sense to have twinned beach heads in London and LA although much of the conversion work will be funneled back to Mumbai,” said Horton. “We are targeting both feature film and broadcast work.”

Reliance Mediaworks also owns processing and post production facility iLab whose work includes the film processing of Spooks and Waking the Dead.

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