Enjoy ‘Sholay’ now in 3D

“Just the feeling of seeing my name along with the likes of Amitabh Bachchan,Dharmendra,RD Burman and Javed Akhtar in the title credits thrilled me,” he says,in between trying to fix a demo show-reel of all the projects his company has undertaken. Inside the conference room of its office at Film City,Mumbai,is a giant television screen,to showcase 3D films. It is here that Dhumne,along with colleague Hemant Shinde would examine every reworked frame till it satisfied his aesthetic standards.

“Being a 3-hour film,there are some 2,85,000 frames in it. We knew we couldn’t miss out on even the tiniest details because people have already watched the film a countless number of times,” he says.

Maya,headed by filmmaker Ketan Mehta along with Deepa Sahi,was founded in the mid-90s for animation and visual effects. Some of its recent films are the animated Ramayana,Sons of Ram,and television shows such as Motu Patlu and ‘Vir: The Robot Boy’.

But three years ago,when the chance to work on Sholay came,it was unlike anything the company had undertaken.

“Sholay is a legendary film,we couldn’t be intrusive and same time it had be an enhanced experience. Moreover,the film being 35 years old,We had to restore the original first,do the colour corrections before we could proceed. I think it’s the most complex 2D to 3D conversion that has happened anywhere in the world,” says Mehta,director and chairman of Maya.

At the heart of the conversion process are primarily three stages: “rotoscopy” involves digitally cutting each element of the frame — characters,props and so on. To figure out their appropriate depth is “depth mapping”,3D essentially being largely about depth. Depending on this,colours are added and objects in frame are placed at a measured distance to give the illusion of a three dimensional life on the big screen. It is a time-consuming,technical process that requires a lot of precision,but equally important are the creative insights,says Mehta.

The team asserts that even to those who have watched it many times,Sholay 3D,which releases on January 3,will have new things to offer. Computer-generated graphics have been introduced in certain sequences to give the impression of “popping out of the screen”: such as the collision between the train and a pile of logs; Thakur’s bullet racing towards the handcuffs worn by Jai and Veeru; the bomb blast sequence with Bachchan where the debris will sprinkle out from the screen.

All this is enabled through its supremely trained staff of 250 who worked for over a year on this film seated in a dark,air-conditioned hall resembling a computer-centre. Every desk is lit by the rays of an ultra equipped Mac or Dell computer. The people at the academy frequently visit colleges to scout for young talent,at the same time,trying to spread awareness and knowledge pertaining to animation. While some like the 25-year-old Sachin Mane and Satyapal Mayekar are students of science who got intrigued by the prospects of animation,people such as Dhumne have come from a fine arts background,bringing their sense of aesthetics to the craft.

But what improved in the current 3D scene in India? Mehta says that digitisation has made it a level-playing field,with homegrown talent matching with the rest of the World. “Normally there is eye strain that the Indian audience face while watching 3D films here. With Sholay,we have checked in theatres at every stage of the conversion so that it matches up to its legendary status,” says Dheeraj Berry,Head of Production at Maya.