Coloring the Mughal Splendor

This Diwali, love took over the silver screen as Mughal-e-Azam, the 1960 epic
chronicling the love story of Prince Salim (later Emperor Jahangir) and commoner
Anarkali, reincarnated in life-like colors and sound serenading in glory
befitting a Mughal emperor.

Director K Asif's Rs 1.5 crore magnum opus, starring Dilip Kumar as Salim,
the beautiful Madhubala as Anarkali and Prithviraj Kapoor as Emperor Akbar, took
nine years in the making and was one of the most expensive Hindi films when it
was released way back in 1961. However, this masterpiece, considered by most
cineastes to be one of the most evocative dramas in the history of Indian
cinema, was mostly in black and white, barring 22 minutes of color footage that
included the memorable dance number "Pyar Kiya to Darna Kya."

Sterling
Investment Corporation, a Shapoorji Pallonji group company, the producers of
Mughal-e-Azam, decided to re-release the entire film in color and roped in
Mumbai-based India Academy of Arts and Animation (IAAA) for the purpose.

Enter Rajeev Dwivedi, technical director, IAAA. Considered by many to be the
real hero of this new Mughal-e-Azam, this former software engineer from C-DAC in
Pune had formed IAAA along with his friend Umer Siddiqui in 2002. By then, he
had developed an indigenous software called Effect Plus, which can perform
colorization at a high resolution in the film format.

Amidst all the brouhaha around Mughal-e-Azam, every one seems to have
forgotten that Effect Plus is the first software to perform colorization in film
format. "Lots of Hollywood movies have been colorized, but all for DVD
formats, where you require a lower resolution as compared to CinemaScope. Effect
Plus ensures colorization at a high resolution and so even when you blow it up
for the 35mm film format, no pixelation happens," says Dwivedi.

Lot of Hollywood movies have been colorized, but all for DVD formats where it requires a lower resolution as compared to CinemaScope

When Dwivedi and his team started working on this project in September 2003,
they first did a one-minute colorization pilot working on reel numbers 13 and
14. "At that time, we found the negatives in very poor shape. Other than
fungus and dust, there were lots of sprockets because of which shakes were
happening in these negatives." Chennai-based IRIS Interactive was employed
to complete the restoration work, following which the project started in full
earnest.

Lot of Hollywood movies have been colorized, but all for DVD formats where it requires a lower resolution as compared to CinemaScope

The entire colorization was completed in a year's time at a cost of about
Rs 2.5 crore, much lower than Rs 10-15 crore quoted by some Hollywood studios.
Of the existing 22 minutes of color footage, only the "Pyar Kiya" song
sequence was kept as it was, while the rest got a fresh coat of hue. Even the
color scale was degraded to match with this song sequence, otherwise the jump
would have been visible.

Informs Dwivedi, "To get the colors accurate, for example, in the battle
scene, the colors of the flags of the warring factions, I even consulted noted
historians like Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib." A total of 85 people
including 68 technical staff was involved in this labor of love. Even the sound
was digitized and re-recorded and was made to sync with the new colored version.

In the face of other big releases at the same time, Mughal-e-Azam has
definitely not set the box-office on fire. Some purists are even complaining
about the aesthetics of re-coloring black-and-white masterpieces like this.
While this argument definitely holds some logic, one should appreciate the
technological expertise of an Indian company developing its own software. This
might also start a trend of what can be called a sort of "visual
re-mixes"-while Sholay's sound track has already been digitized,
Dwivedi informs that Ravi Chopra is looking at colorization of Naya Daur.

Other black-and-white movies that might go for color soon include Afsana, Ek
Hi Raasta, Sadhana, Dhool Ka Phool, Kanoon and Gumraah.

One unsavory footnote was Sterling Corporation ignoring IAAA's contribution
during a Mughal-e-Azam felicitation function and subsequently IAAA boycotting
the movie premiere. Notwithstanding such fracas, IAAA is set to go all out with
plans to expand into a large studio in Navi Mumbai. Other than Naya Daur,
Dwivedi has bagged a Sherlock Holmes film from Hollywood with 20 other Holmes
movies likely to come in the next two to three years. And not only colorization,
IAAA has developed another software that would help art directors improve the
light and color effects. And Dwivedi also plans to move into animation-he has
already bagged a Japanese cartoon movie Legend of Dragons.

Rajneesh De in mumbai