The Evolution of Cinema and the Birth of a New Art Form

The Evolution of Cinema and the Birth of a New Art Form

National Film Board of Canada’s Tom Perlmutter believes that “as human beings, we are constantly trying to order the world.”
When he was a teenager, he began to see film as an effective and inspiring means to do so. The invention of film changed the way humans told stories. For the first time, they could visually arrange a narrative, telling a story by “organizing an aesthetic experience.”
In recent years, technological advances have made it possible for films to be interactive, putting the power to structure a narrative into audiences’ hands. The ability to navigate a digital landscape allows an audience to be a more intrinsic part of the film.
Perlmutter’s exploration into new modes of storytelling “will lead us to radically different ways of engaging with the world.”

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Anil Mehta on practicing the nuanced Art of Cinematography and his role as the Director of Photography in Yash Chopra’s Jab Tak Hai Jaan


Anil Mehta on practicing the nuanced Art of Cinematography and his role as the Director of Photography in Yash Chopra’s Jab Tak Hai Jaan 



To keep it simple and make it meaningful are two of the toughest things to accomplish in the complicated art of cinematography. More often than not they are the difference between someone who knows his craft and someone who commands it and understands every nuance of it. Filmmaker par excellence, Anil Mehta, speaks to Pandolin about breathing reel life simply into the new Shahrukh Khan starrer, Jab Tak Hai Jaan, and reveals to us how chance dealt him a big hand in the form of his first feature, Khamoshi: The Musical.


What was the principal idea with which you approached the shooting of Jab Tak Hai Jaan?
My first film with the late Mr. Yash Chopra, Veer Zaara, had provided me with a window to the cinematic world of classic Bollywood romance that he inhabited. In as much as its approach to and treatment of its content is concerned, Jab Tak Hai Jaan fits that world perfectly. I went into the JTHJ project with complete knowledge of what would be required of me. As Aditya Chopra had written the story and the screenplay, he wanted to give it a contemporary edge. Therefore, although the film was a classic Bollywood love tale, it assumed newness in its writing, its portrayal of characters, and the narrative development of those characters and their language. Aditya wanted the treatment of contemporary subject matter to be reflected in the style of cinematography too. To a large extent we managed that by going in with available light, hand holding the camera whenever required, and getting into cramped quarters, etc.


Is JTHJ a realistic treatment of its subject matter, or is it a larger-than-life Bollywood romance drama that we have all grown up watching?
I think that JTHJ is within the paradigm of the larger-than-life Bollywood romance drama. Alterations though have been invoked to the ways in which the larger-than-life-romance theme is represented in the film. For example, we have woven in new landscapes with classical romantic settings. One of the love scenes, therefore, goes into an alleyway, and events unfold in the film not only in large havelis and mansions, but also in smaller spaces such as cafes that are emblematic of the new landscape. Still, I wouldn’t go so far as to call its treatment of subject matter realistic.

 Did you introduce camera angles, perspectives, and points of view consciously in your frames for JTHJ?
 Yes, I did. Aditya’s brief had already set me thinking about how to introduce contemporary stylistics into the film’s frames. But that was, to be very candid, for the most part a push and pull process. Sometimes the staging of scenes was very classical. Sometimes the staging expected you to do a big crane shot. It was important to understand that there were certain given ways in which staging of scenes happened with both Aditya and Yash Ji. At times, we tried to be different, and went beyond the conventions of this kind of filmmaking by treating a scene in one shot, or executing a shot on Steadicam, or shooting with the camera handheld, etc. On many occasions, Aditya and Yash Ji themselves suggested that I employ such methods of capture. Therefore, it would be fair to say that together we gave the film’s visual style a slightly contemporary tweak and feel while retaining the soul and the spirit of the classical Bollywood love tale. We’re waiting for the film’s release to find out if our endeavours have borne fruit.

In spite of numerous critical revisions of it, the Bollywood romance drama has continued to live for more than five decades, albeit as iterations of the same basic theme. What in your opinion are the aesthetic elements and conventions that constitute a larger-than-life Bollywood romance drama? What do you do when you approach such films? How did you approach the filming of JTHJ per se within the context raised by this question?
I’m not qualified to talk about the codes that go into the creation of a larger-than-life Bollywood romance drama. To be completely honest, I don’t get a lot of it. But those who make these films function differently and are differently wired in their convictions as filmmakers. Therefore, things that might seem like formulae to you and I appear organically bound cinematic reality to them. They genuinely believe in the significance of their art and are completely and truly invested in them. This integrity makes these larger-than-life films somehow ring real and true for the people who’ve enjoyed such cinema over the last five decades or so. Their work lives in a shared space in which both the filmmaker and the audience have a deep connect and understanding of each other. You could stand on the outside and make an intellectual position of it, but these films have lives of their own.
As I wasn’t born into this specific type of filmmaking, in each such project of mine I first and foremost try to understand how the director is thinking. I’m curious about what’s going on in his descriptions of the story and the screenplay and how he’s pitching the story. Unless and until I get a sense of where and how the story is pitched, I cannot visualise how’s it is going to translate into performance. Once that happens, things start materialising. They become even clearer when I go on reccees of locations. Once you start seeing, relating to, and discussing the spaces you’d be filming in, you start finding out if one thing or another would successfully play out in a given space. On our reccees in London, it became clear to me that we were going to inhabit real spaces, that I was going to let natural light run its course in my frames, and that I was not going to force things onto locations. In keeping with these convictions, I shot extensively on the streets of London, tried to get by with a hidden camera, did some candid stuff, avoided staging everything, and let the crowds play out at the back.

Jaan jab tak hain jaan 


You must have added lights in shots of interiors and in the night. How did you manage those?
Yes, I did add light for shots of interiors and the night, but my principle even in those shots was to supplement what is there rather than to recreate everything from the scratch. That’s where I come from. I think that unless and until a scene is asking specifically for something, there’s no need to introduce that element to it.

We did a night-interior-exterior song in a tunnel and a warehouse in London. Although it was a set, we didn’t use it to represent a real warehouse, but let it serve as an exotic location for the song. Therefore, we heightened the lighting while shooting it. As I wanted to use elements from the cityscape in it, I pitched it at a level from where I could see the city in the background, have ambient light playing in the frame, and yet create the heightened experience of a full-fledged Bollywood dance number with approximately 150 artistes. Those are the kind of manoeuvres that you carry out if you have to be on location for a song of that kind.

Jaan jab tak hain jaan 
How is JTHJ divided between locations and sets?
Most of JTHJ is based on location, and not situated in studios. We had three principal locations in the film: Kashmir, Ladakh, and London. Yash Chopra had a nostalgic connection with Kashmir. So while it was new in terms of it being an active location, which is the trend of the day, it was also old because of Yash Chopra’s undying love for it. Apart from these, there were some sets for interiors of a room and a hospital.
Even in 2008, when Aditya Chopra made Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, his films largely used to be studio-based. For Rab Ne, Aditya had to build streets, a township, houses, gymnasium etc. in Film City. On the contrary, 90 percent of Jab Tak Hai Jaan was shot on location. That is a big step forward and shows the difference in approach between the two films and the times they were made in. That also is probably representative of the shift in emphasis when I think of JTHJ being more real and in sync with the times.

The visuals of the songs of JTHJ have a very spacious feel to them. Their frames are never cluttered, have fixed subjects, and are gilded with large exteriors as background defining these subjects. Why did you choose to give this specific look to these songs?
If you don’t let the beautiful landscape of Kashmir and Ladakh play a part in your frames when you shoot there, you defeat the purpose of being there. Therefore, I used a lot of open lensing (or wide-angle shots) when I shot in Ladakh and Kashmir. Yash Chopra also suggested a lot of it, as he wanted to exploit the concepts of landscape and beauty. These were two of his most favourite words while filming JTHJ. In fact, he was driven by them. On the JTHJ shoot, he was clear about having landscapes in his frames. He was quite vocal about wanting more than just the actor’s faces in the frames when we shot in scenic locales.

Could you please speak about your on-set relationship with JTHJ’s director, the late Mr. Yash Chopra?
For a man of Yash Chopra’s stature, age, experience, and body of work to be open and receptive to all kinds of suggestions from a relatively young cameraman like me was, in my view, a very big thing. The fact that he could trust me and look up to me for approval of shots, performances, locations, camera placements, etc. was itself special. Everything that transpired between the two of us was a give and take experience. That gesture is emblematic of a very special relationship between a director and his cameraman during the process of film production, and I feel that I am fortunate to have been a part of it.  On this film he was more like a friend, cracking jokes, sharing meals and many stories from his past movies. It was like a fun history lesson for me. His leaving suddenly before the release of his film was just bad timing, I’ll miss his crackling wit and warm affection.

Could you please speak about your experiences with Shahrukh Khan, Katrina Kaif, and Anushka Sharma, the actors of the JTHJ?
Yash chopra  Although all of JTHJ’s actors were big stars in their own right, they were extremely professional on set. I never had any issues with any of them. Even though they were temperamentally very different from each other, each of them contributed to the movie both in his or her capacity and as part of a hardworking unit. There were hardly any stand-offs or hang-ups about the work at hand. And I think that that translates into the joy of making movies.
 Shahrukh is an impeccable professional. I really like working with him. I find him to be a cinema technician first and then an actor. The understanding of a shot’s lensing and focus points comes like background information to him. As a collaborator in the filmmaking experience, Shahrukh is there more than a hundred percent with you at all times. He has an extremely clear hold of the entire process of filmmaking. He knows how a shot ought to be taken, what the mechanics of it are going to be, and whether it will require him to make critical focus marks. None of it has to be given to him as information. It comes naturally to him because he’s deeply engrossed in every process of filmmaking that surrounds him. What’s best is that all this assimilated knowledge and experience does not overburden him or hamper his performance as an actor at all. That continues to remain at 110 percent. It was a breeze working with him for JTHJ because he was as efficient as he was proficient.
Katrina is a relatively younger, more inexperienced actor who doesn’t pay much attention to things that are going on behind the camera and with sound. She’s doesn’t inhabit that space, but is on her own. As a person to deal with on set, she was fabulous. She never fussed about anything. We shared a good, equal working relationship with each other.
Anushka is another mindset altogether. She is much younger and much more intuitive as a person. She’s very vibrant. Even her approach to acting is riddled with these qualities. You cannot lock her in your ideas or pin her down with them. As vivaciousness and freedom are her strengths, you keep away from throwing a barrage of directions at her. You let her have her space because that’s how she can contribute her best. As she’s young, keen, and eager to have a go, it pays to have such an approach.

Who were your gaffers, assistants, focus-pullers, and colourists for JTHJ?
When in London, we worked with a completely local team. We did take some light-men from India to London, but not gaffers. We had an English gaffer on set there. As he brought in an English crew to work with, and helped us tide over obstacles, such as cultural difference, language barrier and the difference in the work-cultures of the two units, he was extremely critical for me. I discussed the lighting plan with him and left it to him to execute it on the day of the shoot.
In Ladakh and Kashmir, we didn’t really have a gaffer because almost ninety-nine percent of our shoot was in the exteriors, and in those, I worked principally with natural light. But I did have a focus puller who’s worked with me over the years: Lalit Sahoo. I had a colourist called Tushar Yadav, who’d worked with me earlier in Rockstar. He is from Reliance. And then, of course, there was Ken, who too has been there with me from the Rockstar days. He came in as a senior colourist and supervised and perfected what we’d done.
In Sayak Bhattacharya, a former student of filmmaking at SRFTI, Kolkata, I had my first assistant and second unit cameraman. If I were doing B-camera or second unit work for coverage or songs, I’d let Sayak and Lalit go off and do it. I had faith in them and they knew how I worked. Therefore, eventually, everything came together well.
These were my key people during the JTHJ shoot. We made a pretty compact, cohesive team.

Jaan jab tak hain jaan What were the principal challenges that you encountered during the filming of JTHJ?
London is a city where you get four seasons every day. Therefore, when Aditya told me that we were going to London in two separate seasons, it felt like a bit of a laugh. After all, what difference did it make anyway? The only thing that really changes in London as its seasons advance is the clothing of its people. When it gets overcast in London, it stays overcast for a long time. It is the worst in summers as then overcast conditions can stretch up to two weeks at a go. Yet, on a heavily overcast day, the sun can break through in the afternoon, and the haze can clear out, only for a shower to come rolling back at five in the evening. You can have cold, windy days too.
 The principal problem with shooting on real locations in such places is that you are forced to work with changing light all the time and have to comply with the time stipulated for finishing a scene at the same time. So what did I do to stick to my precious little schedule? I shot pretty much everything in mixed lighting conditions. I didn’t add layers of artificial light at all because it’s very difficult to fight or simulate natural light in a landscape situation. You can never do it perfectly. If you are shooting in Hyde Park and the sun disappears for the entire afternoon, there is no way you can simulate specifically that missing sunlight unless and until you’re some hotshot, Hollywood biggie. And I am not one (Laughs). After finalising the shoot, I did my best in matching it in post during grading and colouring.

Do you have a favourite shot or scene in JTHJ?
I usually don’t have favourite shots or scenes in the films I do. I look at film as a whole. JTHJ pretty much has a certain look that I like. Of course, locations such as Ladakh and Kashmir were very enjoyable.

Which cameras, lenses and perforations did you use for the shoot of JTHJ? What were the digital components to the film?
I’ve used 35mm film from Kodak for the entire project. The digital component came in only after we’d shot the film, scanned the negatives, and done the DI. That’s the only part of the film that’s digital. I shot three perf with spherical lenses. I used a basic set of master primes. Our A-camera was an Arricam Lite (LT). The B-camera, which was used mainly for songs and coverage, was an Arri 435.

How long did the filmmaking process of JTHJ last?
JTHJ was made quite efficiently. Actors’ dates get consolidated with Yash Chopra quite well. So we were able to shoot at a clip. I think we took a total of 80 days for the shoot. We finished the film within a calendar year. We started in January this year. Prep and shoot happened at the beginning of the years.

Your career is laced with variety in filmmaking and quality films. If one just thinks about Rockstar, Saathiya, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Khamoshi, Kal Ho Na Ho, Lagaan, Wake Up Sid, and now JTHJ, one can see you moving between narratives that are intensely personal to those which are modern and interpersonal to those which have political undercurrents to those which are the folklore of popular, blockbuster Hindi cinema. Would you like to comment on that?
Doing different types of films is what a filmmaker aspires for. But you also end up doing 3-4 films that look similar and inhabit similar creative spaces. For example, I did Kal Ho Na Ho and Kabhi Alwida Na Kehna back to back. These are merely coincidences. They’re circumstances that you meet and fall in. All of it depends upon factors such as the people one is in touch with at a particular point of time, the people who have approached one, and the material that is falling into one’s plate as his next project. That is how it works.


Jaan jab tak hain jaan Do you strategise for handling filmmaking projects of different kinds?

I don’t strategise because strategizing and overthinking is not my cup of tea. I have never strategized for anything in my career. From the very beginning, things have always found me. I have never gone out and sought them.
My first feature film, Khamoshi: The Musical (1996), too came to me out of the blue. Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who lived in the same neighbourhood, walked across the street, said that he had a script and a producer, and asked me if I’d be interested in shooting it. After reading the script, I agreed. It’s as coincidental as that. Before that break, I wasn’t doing features. I wasn’t even thinking of doing any. Why Sanjay chose me, why I accepted to do a feature when I was quite settled in advertising, are all questions that I sometimes ask myself but with no clear answers.

How would you articulate the aesthetic that you bring into your work?
See, it’s very difficult to talk about or articulate my work from this perspective. Firstly, it’s not correct for me to do that, and secondly I am not the best guy for that role. However, I do recall something that Salman Khan once told me. After having watched the first copy or the first release of either Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam or Khamoshi: The Musical, he came up to me, and said, “I like your work…. It’s very simple.” So in a sense, my approach is: “keep it simple, silly.”

But Rockstar was not simple by any means.
It was actually. Even though it looks like a very complex film, the approach to shooting it was very simple and direct to the extent of being in your face. As a cinematographer, you get up close with actors and directors who allow you to do such things with a script and with them. During the shoot of Rockstar, I could stick anything in Ranbir’s face without the risk of him getting fazed. I was all over and all around him. He never had any issues with it. His role in Rockstar was of a kind that required the creation of an intense, personal point of view.
To break it up, I’d have to say that fundamentally there are two important things that inform a cinematographer’s aesthetic: a) the material, the subject-matter at hand, and b) the director’s insights and visual ideas on the treatment of the subject matter. These things are absolutely clear in my approach. Once a cinematographer has assimilated and interpreted them, he or she starts churning it around in his or her mind and processes it. Then, certain lived, observed, acquired ideas translate into a specific kind of work and a particular cinematic look. It’s as a consequence of this gradual, differentiating approach that a film like JTHJ looks drastically different from a film like Rockstar which again looks completely different from a film like Cocktail.




 
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Train yourself to see impossible colors

Train yourself to see impossible colors

Train yourself to see impossible colors

Hiding in the shadows between the colors we see everyday are weird, impossible shades, colors that you shouldn't be able to see and generally don't... unless you know how. Here's a simple guide to seeing impossible and imaginary colors.
Image by Cody James.

 Understanding a little about how humans perceive color is crucial to seeing impossible colors. Our eyes use something called opponent process to work more efficiently. This plays upon the fact that the eye's primary light receptors, the cones, have certain overlaps in what light wavelengths they can perceive. To save energy, our eyes measure the differences between the responses of various cones rather than figuring out each cone's individual response.

We long ago found out that there are three opponent channels: red vs. green, blue vs. yellow, and black vs. white. (Technically, black and white aren't colors, and their opponent process has more to do with brightness than anything else.) Now, let's say you stare right at the bluest object you've ever seen. Your cones that primary perceive the blue wavelengths are going to be excited, while the cones responsible for yellow will be inhibited. If you then switched to looking at the yellowest thing you've ever seen, the exact opposite would happen.

It probably isn't all that shocking to point out the cones can't be excited and inhibited at the same time. That means that it's impossible to see an object that's simultaneously blue and yellow or red and green. I'm not talking about what happens when you mix those colors and then look at them - obviously, you'd get green and a sort of murky brown if you did that. No, what I'm talking about here are colors that are equal parts blue and yellow at the exact same time. Can you imagine that? Well, you shouldn't be able to, because that's an impossible color.
 Train yourself to see impossible colors 
 This might all seem a bit abstract, but there's some evidence backing up the existence of such colors. A 1983 experiment featured a special machine which separated the fields of vision of the test subject's eyes. One eye would see a red screen, while the other would see a green screen. Given time, the colors would mix together, but the mixing only occurred in the brain. Without the eye there to mediate the mixing, red and green didn't become brown - they became a new color, a reddish-green color that none of the test subjects had ever seen before, and that includes an artist with an extensive knowledge of different hues and shades.

Admittedly, the methodology of that experiment has since been criticized, and many vision researchers say impossible colors are called that for a reason – they really are impossible. There are, to be sure, a lot of alternative explanations for the colors the people saw: they were just intermediate colors between the two, the experimenters hadn't properly controlled for luminance and that threw off the results, or the test subjects were really just see red, then green, then red, and so on, and never actually viewing them simultaneously.
These are all fair points. However, if I may make a counterpoint, you're ruining all the fun, vision experts. Sure, impossible colors might actually be impossible, but that doesn't change the fact that test subjects saw colors they had never seen before. Impossible colors might not exist, but if it's possible to fool our brains into thinking they do, then I'd say that's still pretty awesome.

 This is one of the least scientific viewpoints I've ever put forward, and I'm not exactly proud of it, but hey...impossible colors are cool. Now relax each eye on these two plus signs and see if you can't make some impossible colors appear. Let your eyes cross so that the two pluses are right on top of each other. I'll say right now that not everyone is going to be able to see these weird colors - I'm almost certain that I can't - but I'd still say it's worth a try.


Train yourself to see impossible colors 
I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention imaginary colors. These are colors that cannot be produced in the physical light spectrum, and yet it's possible to derive them mathematically. The easiest way to understand what an imaginary color is would be to think about the three wavelengths of cones - short, medium, and long. Like I said when talking about the imaginary colors, there's an overlap in the responses of these different wavelengths.

But what if you had a color that only created a response in the medium wavelengths? In real life, this can't happen, as anything that excites the medium wavelengths is going to excite one or both of the other wavelengths. But if you did have a color that only excited the medium, green wavelengths while leave the other two types alone, then you'd be able to see a color greener than any real green.

So that's the theory - here's how you do it. Again, you've to be smart about your opponent processes. If you want to see an imaginary green, you need to find an example of heavily saturated red and one of a heavily saturated green. Stare at the red color for as long as you can, then switch to looking at the green. The red receptors have become too fatigued to do their job and be inhibited by the green color. That means your green receptors are getting excited with nothing to counterbalance them. The result is the greenest color you've ever seen, one that can't exist in the physical world.

Again, this might all seem a bit out there, but America's most lovable evil geniuses have known about this for years. Walt Disney World took advantage of this effect in their design of the EPCOT park, making the pavements a particular shade of pink that tires out the red receptors and forces the park's grass to look greener than it really is. On second thought, I'm not sure that makes this seem any less out there.



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There is a choreography between the camera and the actors in the film – Tushar Kanti Ray

There are loads of scenes in the whole film where I haven’t used much of light,” says Tushar Kanti Ray as he elaborates on his shooting style for the upcoming action thriller, D Day. Having shot visually appealing films like Dhobi Ghat and Shor in the city amongst others, Tushar has now lent his expertise to the high-octane entertainer. The ingenious cinematographer speaks to Pandolin about recreating Karachi in India, shooting in the Rann of Kutch, working with Hollywood’s finest action directors and the techniques involved in the making of  D Day.




The artist behind the camera - Tushar Kanti Ray
 The artist with the camera – Tushar Kanti Ray

ow did you approach the shoot of an action thriller like D Day? 
From the first day itself, when I met Nikhil and we discussed the script, the story and the wholesome approach to the film, he wanted the film to have an almost voyeuristic look. When I say voyeuristic I’m trying to say that there is a person who is standing and watching it happening, there is not much of an involvement from the camera, the camera is a viewer. I guess this was something that we started with, but we drifted and we drifted for good while the shooting was happening and we started realizing the style of the film. We had some other films in mind for the referencing, the initial references happened with a documentary called ‘Secret Pakistan’ by BBC. So we watched that and a couple of other films and got the initial design in mind.

How have you incorporated Nikhil Advani’s vision with yours?
When a DoP meets the director, the director is already living with the script for a long time, he has a visual understanding and I would like to take this opportunity to mention that Nikhil is a very visual director, so atleast at the beginning of the film he knew exactly what he was talking about. But again as the collaboration started we both started realizing something else, which was not something completely different but going ahead from that, so we got into that mode. If you see there is a lot of involvement of the camera happening, there is a kind of, I wouldn’t say dancing, but there is a choreography that happens between the camera and the actors throughout the film.

When I say voyeuristic I’m trying to say that there is a person who is standing and watching it happening, there is not much of an involvement from the camera, the camera is a viewer.

Have you employed a specific color palette to distinguish between the various moods and locations in the film?
Most of the film is set in Karachi and there are some portions of India too. For India we have tried to keep it as real as we could and even Karachi so to say. But in Karachi there are different locations and we did a lot of research on it, on how the place should look, so our production designer – Sukant Panigrahy, me and Nikhil, as a team sat on it, exchanged notes and decided what should be the look of the space, what kind of color and so on. There is no particular look and color as there were so many locations and we were concentrating on each location separately and trying to be as naturalistic and realistic as possible to give the real feel of that kind of space. The costumes also happened brilliantly, and I am sure when people watch the film, one will wonder if we have really shot in Pakistan or recreated it in India, I think that’s a great achievement that we managed.

What format have you shot the film on? What kind of angles have largely been used?
We shot on Alexa with a Gemini recorder which gives you ARRIRAW 4:4:4. There is no particular type of framing or lensing, I would say, the scene, the space and the actors were the guiding factor. For example, if you see Arjun, you will get to see a lot of dynamic shots being framed for him. He’s a mercenary, a soldier, a person with lesser emotions though there are some emotional parts in the film, but he is not a family man and basically focuses on the mission and that is his top priority. He has been shot accordingly and we have tried to shoot him as dynamically as we could. While if you see Irrfan, he is a family person, going through a lot of turmoil as he is very concerned about his family. He loves his son and his wife but he is also very concerned about the project to happen, so he is in a state of confusion. So while shooting him you don’t see too much of dynamism, mostly eye level shots, not a lot of wide lensing or too many beautiful things happening on the side of Irrfan.


xyz 
 Driven by the scene, the space and the actors

How much of steadicam and handheld have you used? 
Almost 95 per cent of the film is shot handheld. There are some steadicam shots used for a few hours of a day, where we initially thought that the steadicam would do wonders for the shot that we wanted to have but later realized that it was probably not the best idea to go with but that also worked.  There are some Jib shots, because in some places we wanted the camera to be on a higher side , so these shots had to have immediate operation. Otherwise, 95- 98 per cent is handheld.

The film has largely been shot in Ahmedabad. Can you throw some light on the kind of locations used and why? Have you’ll largely shot exterior or interior?
Around 50 per cent of the film is shot in Gujarat – Ahmedabad and the Rann of Kutch. We had some references for Karachi and different places of Pakistan, so we were trying to get locations that looked like Muslim dominated areas where you get to see skullcaps, a masjid or dargah around, the eateries are of that kind, you get to see a lot of women wearing burkhas and so on. We were trying because if you get those then naturally your production designing starts falling in place. There is a lodge that we shot in as we wanted to have a lodge which is not convenient at all for a person who is living in luxury to go and stay in that place. There is a barber’s shot in Mumbai and a beautiful house, Irrfan’s house that we found in Ahmedabad was very close to a dargah we shot in. It’s an old and beautiful dargah and was fascinating to shoot there. All these locations are very close to the reference pictures we had. We did not have any sets really except for the wedding sequence at the beginning of the film that we had to create. We have shot around 35-40 percent exterior and the rest interior.

Some of the scenes have been shot on challenging terrains. Did you’ll face any challenges while shooting there? What sources of light have you used for these shots?
Those scenes were shot in the Rann of Kutch and there was no lighting used. 90 per cent of the scenes are shot with available light. And it is a beautiful location, you can just go with the camera and start capturing, it is so beautiful. The biggest challenge was to reach there as it is time consuming; the roads were not in best condition, getting things over there was difficult for production. But otherwise shooting was managed quite well.

There are many smaller locations that we had to choose because they were giving us the right feel and I was very happy to shoot in those locations without using much light.

Can you tell us about the lighting design of the film? 
There are loads of scenes in the whole film where I haven’t used much of light be it exterior, night exterior, day interior etc. I had a light package including a couple of 6ks, 4ks, 9 bank Dino, and lots of smaller lights which I could place anywhere I wanted. If you see Irrfan’s house it is a very tiny location, even the barber’s shop and the lodge are all small locations. There are many smaller locations that we had to choose because they were giving us the right feel and I was very happy to shoot in those locations without using much light.


With Arjun Rampal 
With Arjun Rampal

What was the thought process employed while shooting the songs of the film? Which was the most challenging or interesting song to shoot?
We were extremely adamant as a team that we didn’t want to shoot a song which didn’t make sense to the film. Those days are gone in Bollywood, fortunately. Most of the films today are using songs in a nicer way. We need to agree that we cannot really chuck all the songs out of a film because we have a history behind it, our audiences love to hear songs and songs form an integral part of any film in Indian history. But we really wanted all the songs to work for the film, to take the story ahead.
There is a portion where Arjun is falling in love with Shruti. The discussion about this love aspect in the film started from the beginning and I didn’t want to drift away from my style of shooting and lighting from the rest of the film, this part couldn’t just look very different from the rest of the film. So we had to get into a design which looks as a part of the film and still looks beautiful as we wanted to see moments between two lovers. It was fantastic production designing done by Sukant and his team for the particular place and there was a lot of lighting involved for this bit.

How was the association with the action coordinator? Since there are various stunts in the film, could you tell us about the kind of rigs you have used? Any special rigs that you’ll fabricated?
We haven’t really used any special rigs. Tom Struthers was there and we had all become his students and learnt a lot from him. We all knew that to begin with it is going to be a handheld film, and it cannot happen like any Hollywood film action as we didn’t want that. We wanted the action to be as normal and naturalistic as possible. Irrfan is a barber for the last 9-10 years and Arjun is a soldier, so they can’t fight alike. Irrfan couldn’t have fought as well as Arjun. There was a training happening with Irrfan but Tom and Irrfan too didn’t want to fight as a soldier. If I started shooting that with the understanding of a classic Hollywood action film it would have actually fallen in a different space. The camera angles were different and Tom was continuously telling me what angle would help to capture a particular action. Those things were kept in mind, otherwise it was all very organic.

The multi-camera set up used to capture the blasts is something you cannot avoid. I normally don’t like using multi-cameras but in such scenes, you need to use multi-cameras to capture as many angles as you can.

What technique have you used to show the various bomb blasts in the film? 
Most of the blasts that you see have been done in real locations. Tom and the entire team worked really hard to create realistic blasts. We were capturing it on more than a single camera most of the time and in VFX we would try and enhance it sometimes. There is a car blast happening and it has not been touched by VFX, it was beautifully done on location. There are some blasts that have been enhanced by VFX but some haven’t been touched at all. The multi-camera set up used to capture the blasts is something you cannot avoid. I normally don’t like using multi-cameras but in such scenes, you need to use multi-cameras to capture as many angles as you can.

What was the most challenging aspect of the film and how did you overcome it?
Initially it was a little challenging because you want to give the actors a free hand and don’t want to tell them to hit a particular mark. I really appreciate when Nikhil told me that this is a very important part for our film.  So in the beginning it was a little challenging for me and my focus puller as well as it was a handheld film and I chose to shoot full open, chose to shoot with as minimum lights as possible. But then we started growing with it, I started realizing that it is also helping me as the camera is on my shoulder and I can do whatever I want to do. So they were doing their thing and I was doing my thing and at the end, it was fantastically jammed together.


xyz 
 Creating a visual choreography

How was the overall experience of working with the cast of the film?
I think it was a great learning experience. Sharing the same space with Rishi Kapoor Sir is amazing because of the experience that he comes with. An actor of Irrfan’s caliber teaches you so many things. Being the DoP, you are the first person who is watching the film and you get to see a person who is doing absolutely nothing and giving you all the emotions. It was fascinating to work with Arjun too who has a great physique and has done some brilliant action. Working with everybody for that matter was a great experience all together.

What was the shooting schedule like? Where has the post production been done and who was your team?
We shot around 58-59 days. The post production was done at Prime Focus. Sunny Singh was the colorist and he is absolutely brilliant to work with. He added to the film amazingly, without him, the look would have been totally different. Merzin Tavaria is the VFX head at Prime Focus and there were lots of other people involved. I didn’t have a gaffer per say. I had a great team which included Jignet Wangchuk who was the first AC. We are working together for some time now and he is a delight to work with. Rangoli Agarwal was the second AC, Rais Ansari was pulling the focus, Pradeep who was the best boy from Monalisa was promoted to the gaffer by the middle of the schedule and he did a good job at it.

Photo Courtesy: Emmay Entertainment
Posted July 18, 2013 by Esha Verma in E-Zine.




Category:

How to Use Leading Lines for Better Compositions.......

How to Use Leading Lines for Better Compositions

How to Use Leading Lines for Better Compositions

Leading lines are like visual roadways that guide the viewer's eye through the frame. I'll show you how to identify and utilize a scene's naturally occurring lines and I hope you come away with another compositional tool for your tool box.
A leading line paves an easy path for the eye to follow through different elements of a photo. Usually they start at the bottom of the frame and guide the eye upwards and inwards, from the foreground of the image to the background, typically leading toward the main subject.
The easiest place to find a leading line is on a road. Roadways are inherently leading because they go somewhere, give us a feeling of motion, and the lines often point so far inwards that they reach a vanishing point – the place where two or more lines converge into theoretical infinity.
Avenue of Oaks, South Carolina, by Anne McKinnell 
The leading lines of the road converge to create a sense of infinity.


When leading lines, such as roads, connect the foreground to the background of a scene, they help to create depth and dimensionality which draws the viewer into the image.
Leading lines are all around us in cities and in nature. Your job as the photographer is to find them and arrange them in your photograph so that they lead towards something, even if that something is infinity.

Sunset at Ross Bay, Victoria, British Columbia, by Anne McKinnell 
The logs on the beach draw the viewer’s eye into the frame and lead up to the house.

When you’re setting up a shot, take a moment to examine the scene for its prominent lines. Clear your mind, relax your eyes, and notice where they are naturally drawn to.

Pay special attention to man-made things such as:

    roads
    fences
    boardwalks
    bridges
    bricks
    anything in a row such as lamp posts
    buildings
    doorways
    window panes

    In nature, pay particular attention to:

    rivers
    shorelines
    waves
    sand dunes
    trees
    tall grass
    cliffs
    rocks
    sun rays
Boquillas Canyon by Anne McKinnell 
The soft leading line of the river’s edge creates depth in the image.

Once you’ve identified your strongest lines, consider how you can use them to enhance your composition. Depending on your intention, you might:
  • create depth and perspective by positioning a strong line leading from the foreground to the background;
  • create a visual journey from one part of your image to another;
  • place your subject where the lines converge to give the subject more importance in the frame and draw the viewer’s attention directly to it; or
  • make a cyclical composition, with the lines leading the eye in a circular motion and never out of the frame.
Arranging the elements in the frame may involve the use of different lenses to change perspective, but usually you can accomplish it simply by moving yourself so that the point of view you choose is purposeful.




Japanese Garden by Anne McKinnell
The leading line of the path leads the eye directly to the maple tree.

Leading lines are the key compositional element that carries our eye through the photograph. They can be used to tell a story, to place emphasis, and to draw a connection between two objects.
Use them creatively and with expressive purpose to help you tell your unique photographic tale.




Category:

Using a Crane: Educating your Audience on Geography & the Art of Discovery

This week we go into another motion tool of storytelling, THE CRANE. This device has been around for decades. Allan Dwan has been credited with the first dolly shot and the first crane shot. He devised a system for D.W. Griffith on Intolerance (1916).
Allan Dwan
Allan Dwan

I have used cranes that I ride, like the Apollo and the Zeus from Chapman, as well as ones that are operated remotely. Bob Richardson, ASC actually prefers to ride his crane and has done so for many years. He loves being one with the camera, as well as the feel of the fixed arm.

Bob Richardson, ASC on Inglourious Basterds
Bob Richardson, ASC on Inglourious Basterds

Apollo
                                                       Apollo


Zeus
                                                                                   Zeus


“Fixed arm vs. Telescopic arm”

The arsenal of cranes can be overwhelming at times. Every month in American Cinematographer, there is a new crane that goes 50’, no 80’, no now 100’ and it is motion controlled, repeatable. So many options! Another one can go underwater. It’s the HydroCrane, daunting to navigate.
FIXED: I remember when the Louma crane first came out.


 Louma
                                                                        Louma

It was basically a 20’ aluminum tube that had a remote head at the end that could take the full weight of a film camera and a zoom lens. WOW! This was the go to device on music videos in the late 80’s and early nineties. I was flinging it all around. Then one day a 21’ Technocrane showed up on a music video I was Key Gripping and I knew this would change the way we used the crane.

 Techno 21'
                                                             Techno 21′

If the DSLR was a game changer, then the Technocrane was a crane changer. What made it so unique? Up to this point, the crane arm was fixed, meaning it did not move in and out. To accomplish this, you had to put your crane base on track, then have your dolly grip move the base as you boom up or down to get compound moves. What is a compound move? It is a move that requires the camera to boom up or down, swing left or right and dolly in and out. Let’s say you start directly overhead and you want to boom down to a close up of an actor and keep him or her in the center of the frame. You will need to have your fixed arm on track like I described and push to the end of its track. When you boom down, you will have to track back to take the arc out of the straight arm, then push in again to land on the close up. There are many fixed arm cranes. Kessler makes the V3 with a Revolution head that I used recently on Need for Speed for our splinter unit. Benefits of this crane were the price and that you could carry it up stairs and narrow hallways because it is so light and compact.
  Kessler Revolution Head
                           Kessler Revolution Head

V3 Crane
                                     V3 Crane

 Kessler on Need For Speed
                                                        Kessler on Need For Speed


The Jimmy Jib is another one that I use when we cannot afford a Techno or Giraffe.
 Jimmy Jib 
                                           Jimmy Jib

I always like the Giraffe. It looks archaic, but it got the job done on The Rat Pack, The Skulls and Drumline.

 Giraffe
                                                               Giraffe

Giraffe with remote head
                                                       Giraffe with remote head

 Lenny Arm II Plus and Lenny Arm III
                                                  Lenny Arm II Plus and Lenny Arm III


Fischer 23
                                                                        Fischer 23


Fischer 23 build out chart
                                            Fischer 23 build out chart

 Pegasus
                                              Pegasus

Pegasus
                                             Pegasus

Fixed arm movement
These are all fixed crane moves on crane track.



TELESCOPIC: A telescopic arm gives you ultimate freedom to dream. You set the base in one location and you use the telescopic feature of the crane to remove the arc that I talked about above as well as the freedom to try many more moves that would be limited on a fixed arm crane.
I love the 50’ Technocrane the most. Why? Well, it seems to be the perfect length to get your moves to tell the story without having to lay track, which takes time. I have only laid track with the 50’ Techno four times in my career.
 Techno 15'
                                                             Techno 15′

 Techno 22'
                                                                              Techno 22′

Techno 30'
                                                            Techno 30′

Techno 50'
                                                                  Techno 50′


Techno 100'
                                                                  Techno 100′


Why the 40’ Movie Bird?

 MovieBird 45'
                                                                    MovieBird 45′

The reason for this beauty is that it is half the weight of a 50’ and one third of the width. This is incredibly important on boats, locations that have weight and space restrictions, etc. You get the same telescopic arm abilities as the Techno, just in a smaller package.


Why the Scorpio Crane?
Scorpio Crane 30/37
                                                       Scorpio Crane 30/37
Scorpio Diagram

                                                                    Scorpio Diagram
This crane is the mother of all cranes. The creators really took the best assets of both the Movie Bird and the 50’ Technocrane and added some key features to take the guess work out of creating complex compound moves. It has the ability to program soft stops as well as taking the arc out of a move without relying on your operator to do it. A crane can be an amazing tool, but WHY do you use a crane is probably a better question to ask. RIGHT??


“Geography, Geography, Geography”

I go to so many movies and I find that I have no idea where characters are in a scene. The coverage is so tight that you lose the sense of space. A good cinematographer educates an audience on the space in which the characters live, their possible peril, their sanctuary, their happiness, their sadness, and the emotions that they are feeling. Using a crane can do just that. The fundamentals of moviemaking. Wide shot, medium shot, close up. Simple, right? It is important not to lose sight of these core building blocks.
Let’s take this shot from Terminator Salvation. We wanted to educate the audience on the setting, the tone, the peril, the horror of what these innocent people are about to witness, experience. What kind of shot would help deliver these emotions? How about one that views the peril of people on the ground who are being pushed by this wall with spikes and bright lights, and then we push past their faces in fear and boom up? Not only to see their transporter but another one landing in the distance. How does this make you feel? Small and insignificant. What else does this simple move achieve? It shows scope, that these machines are ruthless, controlling and winning this war. What else does it tell you? It shows the space that the poor humans are now in, and this is one scary place. It shows that this group is just one of a 100 ships that are entering this huge processing facility.
This is all done with one simple push and boom up. See how powerful the WHY is? I know that many of you want to go out, get your hands on a camera and all this cool stuff, and create. But it is so important to understand the theory about storytelling. THE WHY. I know that people throw this word around like it is hot dogs and peanuts at a baseball game, but understand why you are doing it first. How it can take your actors and your story that much higher is the power and the art of cinematography. Knowing that you are not just doing a crane move because it looks cool, but that it is specifically there to help the audience feel the emotions of your characters, is paramount.

“The Art of Discovery” Let’s take two more crane shots from Terminator. We talked about geography and educating the audience on where our characters are, but you can also use a crane to discover and build a feeling. How do you educate an audience that the world has just been blown up by a nuclear holocaust? Slowly and methodically. In the first crane shot, we see the expanse of a destroyed Los Angeles in the distance while our hero-in-the-making works on a Jeep to get out of Dodge. Soon after we use a boom down and sweep across a 7 Eleven sign which has a DNA double helix spray painted on it. What could that mean? Is it the sign of the Resistance? But the sign is destroyed. We continue to discover that the gas island is caved in, demolished, abandoned, desolate. What are the emotions of the characters? They are on the run, chased by machines, on edge. I employ handheld camera as well as crane to make you all in the audience nervous, just like they are. We need to see that no matter how far they drive, the same destruction they left in LA is worldwide; it is everywhere. This simple move shows destruction; it cements that they are alone. Where is everybody? How could we (humans) have let the machines take over?
“Keep the Emotions Coming” On We Are Marshall, I wanted to use a crane boom up to evoke the emotions of absolute horror and loss. We follow our teammates who were on the injured, reserve list and were not able to fly with their football team. They hear about the crash, hop in a truck, travel to the site, run to the hillside, slip, fall in the mud on a rainy, foggy night to discover that their teammates, coaches and supporters have all perished in a tragic plane crash. We start with the emotions on their faces after this journey from town to the countryside. They look in horror, fire reflecting on their faces. We fly with the crane up and over their backs to reveal the devastation. We wanted to make sure that the tail section was still evident and that the fire was everywhere. I feel this gave the scene so much more emotional punch because you see that it is a plane, you see windows, and fire. You quickly put two and two together that no one survived. They are all dead!! Sons, daughters, fathers and mothers.

These crane moves I have described are not able to do all of this emotional heavy lifting by themselves, but with the help of great actors, a good story and additional coverage that puts you there, they can give you scope, geography and the sense of discovery. How do you like to use different cranes on your shoots?

By Shane Hurlbut, ASC
Category:

Film vs. Digital


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