“Slumdog,” winner of 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Cinematography, was shot using a digital camera developed by Silicon Imaging, a company started in 2001 at the Rensselaer Incubator, and currently headed by Lally graduate Ari Presler ‘87.
Silicon Imaging’s SI-2K camera was chosen by Anthony Dod Mantle, “Slumdog’s” Director of Photography, for its ergonomic ease of use and portability combined with its high-quality images. Ari Presler, Lally ’87, CEO of Silicon Imaging, said this Award “marks the transition into the digital era. This is the first time that the Academy Awards has chosen a film that was predominantly shot in the digital format.” Presler noted that the SI-2K camera takes moving pictures with film quality, but records images directly to a hard drive, where they can be instantly edited or transmitted. As reported in the Albany Business Review, “Slumdog” filmmakers shot much of the film on location in Mumbai directly to a MacBook laptop computer.