PART IV APPENDIX Interviews
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PART IV APPENDIX Interviews Names of Interviewee Page Aloke Dey 3 Anil Radhakrishnan 13 Anup Deb 23 Anup Mukherjee 53 Biswadeep Chatterjee 91 Dileep Subramanian 122 Dipankar Chaki 150 Hitendra Ghosh 181 Hitesh Chaurasia and Jayadevan Chakkadath 204 Jyoti Chatterjee (part I) 243 Jyoti Chatterjee (part II) 269 Kunal Sharma 292 Manas Choudhury and Bobby John 308 Nakul Kamte 337 P M Satheesh 364 Pritam Das 415 Promod Thomas 434 Resul Pookutty 460 Shyam Benegal 504 Subhas Sahoo 520 Sukanta Majumdar 547 Vinod Subramanian 575 Biographies and Filmographies 614 2 Aloke Dey (2014) Duration: 00:30:35 Name Abbreviations: Aloke Dey– A; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay– Q Other Abbreviations: Laughter - LG Q: As a background I would like to ask you about your coming to sound, and subsequently into the film industry. A: as a profession? Q: yes. A: I really didn’t have that kind of a focus as such after my graduation. There was a good studio at that time, a sound recording studio very close to my place, well known in Kolkata at that time. So I used to go there generally, but I never thought that I’ll get into this kind of a profession. So only one thing I don’t know somehow I decided not to join any kind of work like banking and all that stuff. So I just got to know about FTII, that there is a sound engineering course and all that; because I went to technicians’ studio where one of my relatives used to work, Satyen Chatterjee. Q: ok. A: famous sound engineer. Q: hm. A: I just went there to see what normally sound recording is and how they do it. And at that time I think Satyajit Ray’s film was going on, they were recording background score. So I went there. He asked me, “ok you can come and see it inside. See how we work and what we normally do.” Then he said, “If you’re interested then you can contact few people. There is a film institute at Poona”, that was the only institute at that time. So he said, “You go and meet few people here in Calcutta, find out what it is exactly and if you’re interested then you can appear for the exam.” So that is how I met a few seniors in Calcutta and they guided me really very well. And then I appeared for the exam n got in. So that is how it started. But even before joining the FTII it was not decided that what kind of field I’ll be working. Whether it’s the music recording field, or it’s a re-recording field, it’s a dialogue recording field or it’s a location recording field, now there are so many sections. Earlier it was only either studio work or it is recording section or music or dubbing or you go for freelancing which is location recording. At that time there was no concept of sync sound recording for film as such, though it is a very old concept. People at that time were not using it as “sync sound”. It came much later in film I’m talking about. So now there is another profession, that way. 3 Q: but then, after finishing the film school you came to the (film) industry, isn’t it? A: yes. To be very frank my hometown is Calcutta, so I’ve been to those places where I met, I told you, few seniors, one of them was in NFDC, Anup Mukherjee. Q: hm. A: so I met him. I met Sanjay Mukherjee out there. And at that time Anup Mukherjee was in NFDC, with Jyoti Chatterjee and all. I just went there during my tenure in FTII. So I saw them working. I really felt bad. I don’t know whether I should say or not, it was not really a very professional kind of work they were doing - the way they were doing actually. Maybe that’s the way they do it, I had no idea. So that is the time I decided I would not come to Calcutta to do all this work. Q: did you start as a mixing engineer in the industry? A: yeah, assistant mixing engineer. See when I was in the institute I got the offer from one of the studio here. So that was a re-recording set-up basically, Anand recording studio. So I joined as a second assistant. And both of them were also from FTII, chief sound recordist was Kuldeep Sood and first assistant was Anup Deb. So I was the second assistant. I worked there for five years as a recordist. Then I started mixing on my own as well. Then after that I joined Sunny super sound. I was there for ten years. Yes, from ’94 to 2004 I was there. So initially there was no re-recording set up as such and everyone was recording in analog at that time. So the chief recordist was also from FTII, Mr. Suresh Pathuria, he was there. So he offered me to join in Sunny and asked me to start it with a digital platform known as Protools. That was the first commercial use of Protools in India rather. So I started with that and I was doing music recording and song mixing basically. Then we had a big set up for music as well. So that we converted to Dolby Digital mixing set up. It was only a Dolby set up, at that time Dolby digital was not there, it was only Dolby SR. but 5.1 was introduced in India from there. That was the first studio, and rather the first digital console as well in Asia at that time. So I got that opportunity so I utilized that. So any platform basically is not an issue at all for me to understand or to work with. Q: so you started your career with digital technology, right? A: no, not really, in ’89 I joined. Q: ok. A: ’89 to ’94 I was in Sunny; that was completely analog magnetic and rather a mono era. But of course we also did four-track stereo. At that time we used LTRT Ultra stereo. And then Dolby came. The four-track was on film with magnetic coating. We did few films. In fact Maine Pyar Kiya was also in that format and as well as Ultra stereo. Ultra 4 stereo they got it first before Dolby. And then so many films we did after that in that format. Then Dolby came to India with their SR unit, which is a noise reduction unit for music purpose. Then they introduced Dolby SR, then 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 and Atmos. In between S-DTS and DTS also came. Now again it’s Auro. So it’s a different format, different technology rather. Q: what is your impression on this changeover from analog domain to the digital from a more aesthetic point of view? A: see, everything has got advantage and disadvantages. So in digital the way you work now, it’s much faster; everything is user friendly. Earlier if I need to change anything which means that I’ll have to go record that part or maybe get it from somewhere, transfer that on magnetic, put it exactly in sync with that film and then get it. It is a minimum of three to four hours of work, which is now three to four second’s work. So that’s the difference. And since the machine is doing everything today actually we are not using our memory. At that time it was only a ten minutes reel though, it was not twenty minutes reel. But we used to keep every moment of the film of ten minutes in memory and we used to work like a machine. So now the machine is doing everything. So we have got multi-track recording in music set up, which is really good. But people started misusing it. At one point of time for the music director it is like, “I have recorded two hundred tracks for this particular song.” And if you actually calculate out of those two hundred tracks may be twenty tracks are good enough for that particular song. They’re just layering one-sixty track tracks unnecessarily. And they don’t know why they are adding it either without any idea or without any concept. It’s not all of them but very few, you can count them – those people who are sensible, who can use those one sixty tracks as well, they are doing the right thing. But of course the sensible people, they are also not recording two hundred tracks at the same time. They are quite confident about what they want. Q: hm. What they wanted was kind of limited in analogue because probably you didn’t have the choice, didn’t have many options, right? A: yeah, that’s what I am saying. The numbers of tracks have increased now. Earlier we used to do only mono mixing, ok? So dialogue used to come in maximum two tracks. One was the main dialogue track; the other one was the crowd, ok? Now the dialogue tracks are also like hundred tracks, two hundred tracks. Even music, even the songs, it was only one track they used to send. It’s a mixed track and from there only we were doing the final mixing. So now you are handling all the separate tracks as well to balance that, even a song, even background score, even dialogues, even effects - everything.