The real fun of being a film buff!

India’s first 70 mm screen, and currently the only one compatible with high-definition resolution colour-grading at Chennai’s landmark Prasad Labs. Pic/Mayank Shekhar

The first film review of Farhan Akhtar's Dil Chahta Hai (DCH, 2001) came from Mani Ratnam, its cinematographer Ravi K Chandran told me once.

Ravi was at Chennai's Prasad Labs, colour-grading DCH. That's how Ratnam saw the film; called and told Akhtar not to change a frame!

What's colour-grading, exactly, I thought, when I heard this. It's the enhancement of colours, starting with primaries (red, green blue), so the frames look more like film than life itself. The latter is what audiences wish to escape from, anyway!

Also, it's the final process, executed by the colourist, approved by the cinematographer, before the film reaches your eyes. The ears part gets taken care of with the ‘audio mix', merging background and foreground sounds of a film.

Which, for Aditya Chopra's Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), was done at Prasad Labs, its general manager Jayalakshmi Vasant tells me, when I'm in front of India's first 70 mm screen, where it happened - as she takes me around a nine-acre campus in the lungs of Chennai's film industry aka Kollywood (from Kodambakkam neighbourhood).

Frankly, I'm doing the opposite of what a film buff should - going from a classified door into another, navigating a maze.

While it's amaze, it takes the magic off the movies, as you experience before-after images, with hundreds of workhorses rotating three shifts a day on computer screens, restoring old films, upgrading latest films, introducing visual effects (fire, temple, crowds), touching up movie-stars' faces, "mainly hairlines, eyebags, wrinkles on foreheads…"

The place feels like a secret-service HQ. Certain spaces are off-limits. Especially for international projects, there are non-disclosure clauses. I take care not to click pix.

Abhishek Prasad, chief tech officer of Prasad Labs tells me, "Since, as an audience, we love the same movie-stars, and wish to see them at their prime, forever - VFX budgets for a regular film (including titling, etc) could go up to 10 to 15 per cent of the budget."

By average, he means, obviously, not the DC/Marvel universes.

Abhishek's great-grandfather, Dadasaheb Phalke awardee, LV Prasad (1907-1994), who set up the lab back in 1956, is history himself. In 1930, he ran away to Bombay from his Andhra village to become an actor - landing minor parts in several films, including India's first talkie (Alam Ara); also, first Tamil, Telugu talkies (Kalidas, Baktha Prahlada). Among odd jobs in Bombay, besides working with Prithviraj Kapoor's theatre troupe, LV was the doorkeeper at Grant Road's Dreamland cinema.

That 70 mm screen I'm gobsmacked by, also India's only high-definition resolution screen for colour-grading, Jayalakshmi says, was built by LV from earnings of his super-hit film, Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981).

Not too far away is the shooting floor where Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan canned the promo of their forthcoming film together, couple of days ago.

Jayalakshmi points to a wall on the campus where Kamal shot Apoorva Sagodharargal/Appu Raja (1989), playing a dwarf. It made sense to shoot it there. They could instantly process the footage to check if the camera tricks worked, and carry on.

Over time, Prasad Labs became the capital of film post-production for the global south, with films from Egypt, Malaysia, Sri Lanka et al getting processed. As it continues to.

I see scanning equipment getting shipped to Saudi Arabia, since they've newly found love for films; restoration included.

I'm sure you've noticed Prasad Labs in closing credits of movies that nobody waits for. You appreciate those names in that never-ending scroll, only when you watch them in action. VFX supervisors, usually, don't make it to opening credits. They literally make the film! I observe Felix struggling on his computer to switch a shot from mono to stereo, which is the term to go from 2D to 3D.

It's a simple job of separating foreground (woman), mid-ground (land), and background (forest), in an image. It's taken him 21 days for 29 frames, that is barely a blink-and-miss onscreen (24 frames equal a second in film). "We call this a monster shot," Felix says, for scenes that require serious grunt work.

I wonder if AI could dramatically decrease this workload. "It depends on the deliverables. Also, the accuracy asked for, which changes between media (phones, OTT, big screen)," Abhishek says.

For instance, he adds, "You could be cleaning up an old film, and the AI might erase rain from a scene deeming it as dust!" Humans still make all the art. Machines merely execute.

Given how constant tech-upgradations render old digital formats incompatible - the best way to preserve film still is in its traditional analogue negative form, that disintegrates into foul smell of vinegar, if not frozen at -4°C.

That OG negative is our best bet to restore old movies - adding to it other available prints for scenes that may have got damaged in the original. I see Hollywood classics, likewise, getting cleaned, restored, colourised, shot by shot.

This is before cinema-encyclopedia Jayalakshmi walks me to a hall, with 60 supervisors, restoring an old film, a week, from the library of the National Film Archives of India.

She says, "Until he had to vacate - for decades, this was Ilaiyaraaja's recording room, with a screen, 100 violinists, SP Balasubrahmanyam singing in that corner…" Jaw-drop.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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