250 artists worked to convert Sholay into 3D – Ketan Mehta

When Sasha Sippy decided to make a 3D version of the iconic film ‘Sholay’, the major challenge that lay before him was converting the reels of this 38-year old 2D movie into its 3D version which was certainly not going to be a cakewalk. And instead of hiring experts from the western shores, Sasha roped in director Ketan Mehta for the same whose state of art digital studio called ‘Maya Digital Studios’ is today considered a pioneer in animation and visual effects in India. But even for Ketan the task was not easy. Reportedly, 250 artists of Maya Digital Studio worked on the movie to convert a mind boggling 285120 frames of the 2D version of Sholay into 3D. Says Ketan, “The first and the most important challenge which the team faced was restoration and colour correction of the movie’s negative. The film had to be scanned; several portions had to be painted and touched-up using various softwares and many manual processes. It was after this restoration process that the film was ready for 3D conversion.” And the result, we should say, looks fantastic. The 3D effect has been so spectacularly done that when bullets are fired in the movie, you will see and sense one stray bullet coming your way which will make you duck. Talking about how the effect was created, Ketan says, “We created a depth map, which indicates what is near the screen and what is far away. With the help of the depth map, a 3D environment was created, and the third dimension was given to the image.” The entire procedure however, was a tedious and time-consuming one for Ketan and his team. Avers Ketan, “The processes like adding of colours, placement of objects in frame was a time-consuming one. The technical process requires a lot of precision along with creative insights. In fact one second of filmed footage is 24 frames, and the length of the film is 198 minutes. So essentially, the 2D to 3D conversion of Sholay meant conversion of 285120 frames.” Sholay 3D is slated to hit theaters on 3 January, 2014.