Colourization
The idea of colouring Mughal-e-Azam originated when Umar Siddiqui, managing director of the Indian Academy of Arts and Animation (IAAA), met representatives of the Shapoorji Pallonji group; the idea was further supported by Dilip Kumar in 2001. To convince the company about the commercial viability of the project, the IAAA colourized a four-minute clip of the film and showed it to the Sterling Investment Corporation, which liked the result. Shapoorji Pallonji himself supported the idea, regretful of being unable to complete the original film in colour and thinking of the colourization as a tribute to Asif.
However, the first step towards colourization was the restoration of the original negatives, which were in a poor condition due to extensive printing of the negative during the original theatrical release. Major efforts were taken up for this process, since restoration was essential for the colourization. The process involved cleaning the negative of fungal growth, restoring the portions which were damaged with pinholes, and re-instating missing parts in the frames. After the cleaning, each frame of the negative was scanned into a 10 megabytes-sized file, with the total number of frames numbering 300,000. The restoration required significant labour and money to complete.
To undertake the colourization, Siddiqui brought together a team of around 100 individuals, including computer engineers and software professionals, and organized a number of art departments. The entire project was co-ordinated by Deepesh Salgia, who partnered with a number of companies like Iris Interactive and Rajtaru Studios to execute the colourization. The task was controlled and supervised by the producers, who received daily updates and reports about the progress.
The process of colourization was preceded by extensive research. The art departments visited museums and read books to understand the typical colours of clothing worn at that time. Additionally, Siddiqui studied the technology used for the colourization of black-and-white Hollywood classics. The team also approached a number of people for guidance and suggestions, including Dilip Kumar, production designer Nitin Chandrakant Desai and a historian from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
The colourization team spent 18 months to develop a software for colouring the frames, called "Effects Plus", which was designed to accept only those colours whose hue would match the shade of gray present in the original film. This ensured that the colours being added were as close to the real colour as possible; the authenticity of the colouring was later verified when a costume used in the film was retrieved from a warehouse, and its colours were found to match the colourization in the film. Every shot was finally hand-corrected to perfect the look. The actual colourization process took a further 10 months to complete. The exact cost of the colourization is debated, with a wide variety of estimates ranging from 2 crores to 10 crores, or more than the original cost to make the film.
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