04/04/2012
Quite a lot was said about the making of the 3D version of " Sholay". The latest doing the rounds is that the 3D movie will be released on August 15.
Confirming the news, Shaan Uttam Singh, the grandson of GP Sippy and one of copyright owners of movie, says, "We are coming up with the 3D version of "Sholay". The project is almost complete and will release on August 15. The movie is a classic and people will love to watch it with the technological augmentation."
Some months back, there were reports on how Mukta Arts which had been working with Ketan Mehta's Maya Digital on turning this project into a reality, had washed its hands off the project because of the legal hassles that the Sippy family had been currently embroiled in.
Says Jayanti Lal Gada, CMD at Pen India Private Ltd, the 3D house now involved in making of this version of the movie, "We are planning to release the movie on Aug 15 because it was released on the same day in 1975. The idea of the 3D version came from copyright owners of the movie. I believe, it is the best movie to augment with special effects. After 20 years of its release when the movie was first screened on DD national, it registered a TRP of 65. That is the highest TRP of any movie showcased on Indian television. We hope, people will like its 3D form as well."Talking about Sholay 3D, Foster says that the entire film was a challenge for him and his team. "After getting the requisite permission from the Sippys, we realised what a task it was. When you convert a movie from 2D to 3D, the source material is the most important thing. Recreating a 35 year old movie that is not colour-corrected was a definite challenge," Foster said. He also said that the film being over three hours long means that this is one of the biggest films to be converted in the world to 3D. "A normal Hollywood film contains about 2000 shots but Sholay has almost 5000 shots. We have worked hard on each of those 5000-odd shots by identifying objects in these shots that need to be colour-corrected and enhanced for better visual appeal. There were between 100 to 2000 objects in each shot for the team to work on. It was quite tough," Foster recalled.
The visual effects supervisor, however, is all praises for Ramesh Sippy and calls him India's Orson Welles. "His movies are obviously inspired by Clint Eastwood's Westerners. For him, Sholay was as much a labour of torture as it was a labour of love. You must give him credit for introducing stereo in Indian films and action stuntmen from the UK," he said.
For the 3D version, Foster said that his team has developed a proprietary conversion software on which almost 90 per cent of the film has been worked. The team also used Rotoscopy, a technique in which animators create a new trajectory over live action film frame by frame to a great extent. Essentially, this means positioning 40 to 50 dancers used in a Holi sequence in a way that the 3D effect blends in with the shot. To do this, each dancer and his/ her movements have to be digitally-enhanced so that the transition to 3D looks smooth. Foster said that most of the 3D will be used in the action sequences. One computer-generated shot has also been introduced in the film. Early in the film, during the train sequence when both Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan are battling bandits, Dharmendra's character Veeru throws a few coal chunks over barrels of oil that explode instantaneously. "In the CG shot, we have given the explosion red colour instead of the original black because Sholay in English means embers and we wanted to show that," Foster said. According to him, many films can be remade for the younger audience but not Sholay. The memorable dialogues, unforgettable characters and the thrill of watching the now-deceased Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh are as relevant today as they were 35 years ago, he said.
