A 3D holographic show — the first of its kind in the city — will soon be on view at Apur Sansar Park where the person after whom the park has been named will virtually come alive.
“It will be a short holographic experience in which Apu will be seen to move and speak. You get to see light-and-sound shows elsewhere but 3D holographic shows are quite rare. So we thought of doing one here,” said a senior NKDA official.
The projection will be done on the inner walls of the two-storeyed structure named Apur Bari (Apu’s house) that stands at the centre of the park.
A company that had experimentally created a holographic image of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose for the Alipore Museum has been commissioned to do the job. “At the museum, they had created a figure of Netaji where he was seen delivering an address in a recorded voice. His lip movements were in sync with the spoken word. This was on display for three months at the museum but has now been withdrawn,” the NKDA official said.
The company promises to “bring the actor in Apur Sansar alive as a hologram”. “He will narrate some incident or a story from his life. The script is still in the works. The holographic experience will take place in one of the two ground floor rooms in the two-storeyed structure in the park as it needs to happen indoors. We will use a holographic stage for that for which we are importing holographic silk from Australia. Saumitra Chatterjee as Apu will appear as a ‘holo’ persona as if he is standing in front of you in thin air,” said Abhishek Modi, a partner at OpEzee, a creative digital technology company based out of Bangalore.
“In the waiting area, we will run a 2D experience with film clips that will entertain and educate visitors about the character,” he added.
The company has created an experience at the EK Nayanar Memorial Museum in Kannur where visitors can communicate with a holographic image of the former chief minister of Kerala. One can ask him questions and his responses come in his own voice based on Artificial Intelligence. “But the Apur Sansar Park experience will not be interactive as that will limit the experience to one person at a time. Here the character will speak on his own,” Modi said.
The community park in Action Area 1B, behind Snehodiya, was opened in November in tribute to Soumitra Chatterjee on his second death anniversary. Chatterjee had starred as the grown-up Apu in the concluding part of Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy, based on Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay’s novel Pather Panchali.
The holographic experience is expected to be ready in three months. It will not be a ticketed event, an NKDA official said.
saltlake@abp.in