Amit Pritam Dutta with Resul Pookutty

Jorhat, Oct. 18: Amrit Pritam Dutta, Assam’s connection to the Oscars vis-à-vis Slumdog Millionaire, is set to take sound designing to the masses.

He is planning to cut an audio-visual disc in Assamese along with a Jorhat-based organisation, The Event, which will initiate people into the finer nuances of the art.

Dutta told The Telegraph that people had very little knowledge about sound designing.

“Very few people can imagine the enormous amount of work required to create a soundscape. We have to take into cognisance the minute details of the scene before creating the sound effects,” he said.

Citing the example of Rajnikant’s mega grosser and the country’s costliest film till date, Endhiran The Robot, where Dutta has worked along with Resul Pookutty, the designer said each body movement of the robot — finger, neck, eye, hand, legs, eyebrow — required a different sound.

“The mood and ambience of the scene — good, sinister, comic, happy — has to be recreated. More sound requirements came on as the robot was humanised as Rajnikant, when it turned destructive from good. We used about 800 soundtracks to replicate sounds which included the generation and degeneration of magnetic energy to make the robot look and feel real,” Dutta said.

He said anyone who wants to shine in this field not only had to have a depth of knowledge but would also have to have an artistic bent of mind and an ear for music.

Samir Roy, founder of The Event, a socio-cultural organisation in Jorhat, said the DVD has been planned since there was a general feeling among youths in Assam post the Slumdog Millionaire Oscar award for sound mixing which Dutta got for assisting Resul Pookutty, that sound designing had a great scope as a career option, especially in Mumbai.

“Post Amrit Pritam Dutta’s achievement, there were many people wanting to know what sound designing was all about and got no answers. Keeping this in view, we have decided to make the audio-visual disc in Assamese with the help of the designer. The DVD is being designed by Pankaj Gayan in Guwahati,” Roy said.

Roy said the disc would be released in Mumbai in December.

Dutta, who was in his hometown Jorhat for the Puja holidays, said the toughest movie he had made till date was the Malayalam film, Pazashi Raja, where sounds of warfare — of bows and arrows, guns and swords dating back to the 17th century — had to be recreated.

The film has got the President’s award for best sound designing. Dutta, along with Pookutty, will receive the award from President Pratibha Patil on October 22.

Two other films in which Dutta and Pookutty worked together are Ghajini, which got the Idea IIFA award at Macau for sound designing in 2009, and Blue, which got the Apsara Film and Television Producers’ Guild award for Best Sound Designing in 2010.

After Dutta returns to Mumbai, the duo will work on Shah Rukh Khan’s RA. One, the agreement for which has been signed.