Cinema Sentinels

Some of them deliquescing and others waiting in dark vaults of collector's closet for their turn to gradually get decayed...

Some of them deliquescing and others waiting in dark vaults of collector8217;s closet for their turn to gradually get decayed, putting an end to a story that once touched the hearts of multitudes. Preserving these photochemical relics, which considering the fact that only one classic, till now in Bollywood, got the opportunity to get restored and colourised in true sense, appeared a far-fetched dream till the time Purab Gujar came up with his film restoration studio and technique in the year 2007.

8220;There are two aspects of preserving a film, one is conservation and another is restoration. Conservation is what we have been practicing in India till now to preserve films. The need now is to take a step ahead,8221; shares Gujar .

Gujar8217;s claim to the fact that the technology is completely aboriginal comes loud and clear as he goes about explaining the ratio of foreign support he took in developing the technology. 8220;People and friends specially NRIs in the Silicon Valley have contributed towards the making of this technology in their specific areas of expertise. But the full time developers and technologists working on this were from India, mainly Pune. Thus Cameo is clearly indigenous technology, states Gujar 8220;

Gujar, a graduate in engineering from VIT College came up with concept of developing an affordable film restoration software and studio when he was in college. 8220;The requirement of film restoration was found out when we were studying imaging. We talked to people concerned, who endorsed the grave problem the industry was facing already. We went ahead built a few prototypes of what we thought could be done for the problem, and demonstrated it to various people in the film industry. And then we got down to the task of building the entire software required to put up a full fledged restoration studio, 8220;elaborates Gujar.8221;

The technology allows tens or hundreds of computer-servers to work together, along with human assisted computers to remove damages from films. 8220;It took us more than a year for the research and close to a year to build the technology. Pune, being a primary IT hub allowed us to find most of the required talent locally. We had IIT graduates and experts from imaging, computer vision, Linux and computer software coming together to make this first generation of the technology. This was largely possible due to the contribution of Aditya Godbole, the CTO who has immense knowledge and network in open source groups, shares Gujar8221;

In the thinly populated list of film restoration studios in India, Cameo carves an altogether different section for itself because of the fact that the technology has been completely developed in India. Where Da Vinci 2k plus, an American software is used by some restoration companies others use European software to restore films. 8221; Where Shemaroo in Mumbai imports its technology from USA, Prasad studio in Chennai uses European software to restore films. Ours is the only software that has been developed in India and that8217;s why the service we provide our patrons with is so cheap,8221; shares Gujar.

The current team of Cameo comprises of 40 restorers trained exclusively on the Cameo technology, are from various backgrounds including Art graduates, animation students, creative design, engineers, BSC graduates. 8221; We have restored Chetan Anand8217;s Haqeeqat, Jag Mohan Mundra8217;s Kamla and right now we are working on the restoration of Jag Mohan Mundra8217;s Surag,8221; informs Gujar who remains hopeful about signing a contract with NFAI to restore the classics.