Dr Ambedkar comes alive, thanks to C-DAC & Mammooty

Much debated And awaited film ‘Dr. Ambedkar’which is expected to release any time depicts life and work of Dr. Ambedkar. It also tries to put historical facts with a perspective and scholars like Dr. Y. D. Phadake have put in 8 years research for the same.

A special show of the film held recently stunned almost everybody to find Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar on the screen and it was herd to believe for many of them that it was Mamooti.

The director of the film and noted director Dr. Jabbar Patel was looking for a suitable face for the lead role. He was having Mamooti at the back of his mind and Patel was convinced about his resemblence with Dr. Ambedkar.

Keeping Mamooti in the dark, Patel send his photographs to C-DAC for pre-visualization and Dinesh S. Katre, Team Coordinator, Multimedia Creation Team within eight days confirmed the suitability of Mamooti’s face for the role.

It was a challenging job to confirm weather Mamooti can look like Dr. Ambedkar, told Katre, that too without distorting Mamooti’s original features was a tough job.

Through computer visualization one can transform a person completely but here without disturbing the features was a challenge. The photograph was used to create six chronological images of Mamooti, every progressive frame making him a little balder, a little older.

By the time of the fifth frame, he was wearing a pair of glasses and the hairline had receded considerably. The transformation wa scomplete in the sixth frame wherein he was also donning a suit and a necktie – a virtual Dr Ambedkar !He was Zapped to see those images and accpted the role. The rest on the sets was taken care by internationally famous make up artiste Vikram Gaikwad who actually created what Dinesh Katre had done the computer screen.

Vikram Gaikwad prior to going in for Mamooti’s make-up, had a discussion with Katre. Gaikwad also went through the six computer visualized images and acclaimed Katre’s work for not distorting basic features of the actor-star.

The highlights of the face were retained which Gaikwad studied thoroughly to recreate Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar.

— (Courtesy Loksatta)