While Rajinikanth’s fans cheered his avatar as a don in his latest release ‘Kabali’, the big precedent — his titular role in the 1995 movie ‘Baasha’ — is soon set to grace the silver screen.
Speaking to The Hindu , Thangaraj Veerappan, who is overseeing the digitisation process for Sathya movies, said that work was progressing on the digitisation with a special team of technicians concentrating on the visual and sound aspects. “We haven't finalised on a release date yet but it will be soon,” he said.
With the actor’s 66th birthday falling on December 12, there has been a lot of speculation among fans about the possibility of the movie releasing on that day.
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“A team from Prasad EFX is working on the visual effects and A.S. Laxmi Narayanan, who has worked on the sound for a host of movies, including the recent “I” and ‘24,’ is handling the sound department,” he said.
Stating that they were taking a lot of effort towards enhancing the viewing experience, Mr. Thangaraj said music director Deva, who had composed the songs in the original movie, is working on the music for the digitised version in DTS Surround Sound.
The film starred Nagma and the late Raghuvaran alongside Rajinikanth and was a blockbuster at the time of its release. When asked about the re-release, Director Suresh Krissna said that it would definitely be well received as the movie had a cult status among the fans of the actor who were eagerly looking forward to seeing the movie on screen again.
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Digitisation has steadily been picking up in Kollywood, with a host of movies including those of the late M.G. Ramachandran and Sivaji Ganesan being restored and re-released. Sivaji Ganesan starrer ‘Karnan,’ which was digitised and re-released in 2012, had been very well received in theatres in the city and ran for nearly 100 days.
Explaining the process behind digitisation, Muktha S. Ravi from Muktha Films and Vidya Movies said that most old films had to be converted from the 35 mm to 70 mm formats.
“The negatives are initially scanned and a team of technicians then work on restoring the print. For films which released nearly five decades ago, there is usually a lot of fog, grains and noise in the print after they are scanned and all the dust is removed first. The technicians then usually work on colour correction and adjusting the size of the frames when a print is digitised from 35 mm to 70 mm,” he explained.
The large film reels take the shape of a hard disk which is then given to digital cinema server companies that help screen the movies in theatres.
Suryagandhi, directed by Muktha Srinivasan starring R.Muthuraman and Jayalalithaa and produced by Vidya Movies, had been re-released earlier this year after digitisation.
“Digitisation helps preserve a movie in the long run and release it effectively as well,” Mr. Ravi added.
‘Rickshawkaran’ is reported to re-release in January 2017.