LAHORE: Renowned Karachi-based film director, cinematographer and film producer Saeed Rizvi has remastered his 1994 movie Sar Kata Insaan, which will hit cinemas across the country on Sept 15.

Babra Sharif, Gulam Mohiuddin, Izhar Qazi, Sapna, and Asif Khan starred in the movie.

“In my opinion, widescreen (in the days of analogue) gives us a record of cultural heritage, our working style, and the message to the audience, in the form of art. Do we realise how much of the past cinema has been lost? Still, we can save our heritage for the coming generation by preserving the prints which are OK,” said Mr. Rizvi while talking to Dawn by phone.

Such a move, in the future, will bring about a revolution when it comes to old films having analogue prints, as many other such films can be digitised.

Elaborating on how this process was done, Rizvi said, “The film’s original 35 mm negative was laser scanned into a 6.5k digital transfer. The transfer will be compressed to a 4K digital print for exhibition in cinemas. The film’s soundtrack has also been re-mastered to Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound.”

During the late 1980s, Robert Zemeckis’ film Who Framed Roger Rabbit proved to be a turning point for Hollywood. The movie successfully merged 2D animation into a live-action series. The visual effects of this film also inspired Saeed Rizvi, who later decided to give a new lease of life to the old print of Sar Kata Insaan.

Asked why he chose this particular film to get remastered, Rizvi said, “First, it was a unique film of its time, being horror and science fiction at the same time. Secondly, it was on the polyester print; otherwise, prior to those, mostly plastic prints were used. He took the film prints to the USA where he digitalised the movie.”

To the film director, the young generation should know about the heritage of our qualitative films, and that’s why he took this step.

After releasing the film on Sept 15, he has plans to take it to the OTT platform.

Rizvi is also working on a new film Check Post- Aik Raat Ki Kahani, which is in the early stages; it will be a supernatural action movie. Rizvi regretted that Pakistan did not have a film policy.

Saeed Rizvi is the son of famous film director Rafique Rizvi. He is a graduate of science from Karachi University. Starting as a camera apprentice on the set of his father’s movies, he later joined modern film studios as chief assistant cameraman. “I was getting a salary of Rs90. Simultaneously, I was offered to join the atomic energy commission as an assistant chemist, and the salary was [basic] Rs1,600,” said the film director.

He wanted to learn photography because his aim was to learn VFX, just after watching the Walt Disney movie Mary Poppins.

He then started making television commercials. His company’s name was NOVITAS, where he produced more than 2,000 advertising commercials from 1974-1994. After training in VFX from Hollywood effects and from London, he purchased the equipment and brought it to Pakistan. It merits mentioning that in those days, Indians were far behind in VFX.

Explaining how the idea struck his mind of digitising Sar Kata Insaan, Rizvi said: “I used to travel a lot, and four years ago, I upgraded my knowledge to digital. I observed the process of relaunching classical movies of different countries and the process of preservation.”

He saved the prints of the movie and decided to digitise Sar Kata Insaan whose print was on polyester material. “I did a lot of research on polyester prints. I packed my suitcases with 15,000 feet of material, eight rolls. Due to the time factor, I had to do laser scanning on 6k to get dynamic colour, and I got it. I couldn’t believe the quality of digital. Later the sound I wanted was Digital 5.1 Dolby Surround sound, and the screen of Panavision with 4k resolution. Around the world, the digital projection is 2k or 4k. Therefore, the data of 6k was scaled down to 4k. Later, the complex sound mixing was done, and I got the final data of 4k surround sound with DCP from the USA,” he added.

One of the artists of the film, Ghulam Mohiuddin, told this reporter that Saeed Rizvi had taken a great step by remastering the movie. It will go international through the OTT platform. He regretted that Pakistan lacked any such facility where old prints could be digitised.

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2023