Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Colorization of Mughal-E-Azam

Call it my latest muse, I really wanted to know how are these black and white movies colored and what all effort and time goes in that process. It seems to be a really cumbersome task which not only requires time but also resources and dedication to achieve perfection in colorization. Here are the basic steps involved in colorization of Mughal-E-Azam. (Information source: Mouthshut.com).

Restoration:

"Restoration is an essential process of colorization. Intense restoration was undertaken as the frames were in bad condition. The negative that was being scanned was actually a Dupe negative that was made in early 80s after the original negative had been used for more than twenty years. Restoration included digitizing the 300,000 frames of the film at 2K resolution, gamma correction, contrast correction, scratch removal, pinholes removal, digital stitching of torn frames, stabilisation, fungus correction and various other digital restoration techniques. Each step involved processing 3000 GB of data. The work was done shot-by-shot or frame-by-frame depending on the condition of the negatives. All the above work was performed by a team of restoration and specialists working on high-end computers at Iris Interactive, Chennai. These frames were then made ready for colorization.

Colorization:

"In the west, colourisation has been looked at as an artificial work or as an unethical attempt to touch an artist’s creation. In this case, the purpose was to complete an unfulfilled dream of the creator. The task was undertaken by the original production company, Sterling Investment Corp. Pvt. Ltd. The original music composer re-recorded the music in a digital environment and the original artists always supported the idea. Hence, there is no unethical attempt." The software that was used has a very important feature that accepts only those colors that match the gray shades of the original input. This ensures that the final colors are as close as possible to the original. Since, the kind of colorization required for MUGHAL-E-AZAM was never done before (Mughal-e-Azam has a rich use of exquisite jewelry, fine clothing, grand sets), a special software had to be written to incorporate such features and that too for a 35 mm release. Since the film is an historical film, the color scheme was regularly discussed with historians. History books of medieval times were referred in order to get the essence of the Mughal Era. An in-depth research of 18 months was undertaken before the actual colourisation started in Oct, 2004 at Indian Academy of Arts and Animation, Mumbai. The whole technology development and execution was undertaken in India.

Post Production:

"The whole film (frame-by-frame) was then given a finished product look through colour balancing and was digitally converted to Wide-Screen format and then recorded to make a new negative at Rajtaru Videosonic, Mumbai."


original article

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