Still In Motion Interview: Indian Dop / Director Of Photography / Cinematographer, Rajiv Jain Ics Wi

Still in Motion Interview: Indian DOP / Director of Photography / Cinematographer

, Rajiv Jain ICS WICA

Rajeev Jain has traversed the globe as a famous Indian Cinematographer from Bollywood, and as one of the most acclaimed and sought-after best cinematographers in India working in non-fiction filmmaking today.

As is the case with most people I talk with who have been devoted to making independent films for a long time, Rajeev's career trajectory was far from a traditional one. The beginning of his film career was spent living in Mumbai, and then seven years were spent in Dubai and Nairobi, His work has taken him to close to forty countries, and he is fluent in Hindi and English.

Just a week before departing for Kenya and all over Africa to shoot part of Lara's long-form new project, Rajiv and I spent an afternoon chatting together at a caf near his home in Juhu, Mumbai. Here's our conversation:

Sudesh Kumar (S K): I hope youll take my first question about filming in Africa in the right spirit because some people we know and love sort of balk at this subject matter, but youre a an Asian man, and you tend to shoot in locales where, as an Asian person, and one with a camera, you distinctly dont blend in. Youve been doing this for decades now, so Im assuming youve come up with ways to negotiate that. I know for sure, are incredibly open people and it wouldnt appear as if its that difficult for people to trust and open themselves to you. But do you encounter suspicion or mistrust, wariness? And when you do, how do you counteract that?.

Rajeev Jain (R J): Right? Or we will be seen as urban people in rural places. Theres no question: Im 510; I am an Asian; I am someone, in these situations, who can be very communicative, comfortable. I try and engage with a lot of humour. I have a presence; its a big presence in certain ways. Theres no missing me in these contexts. But its also how you behave, what level on which you give people the respect they deserve. One of the things I found early in my life through travelling in African countries is, because of this history of colonialism, as an Asian person you have unexpected privileges, and whether or not you use those privileges, how you use them would be the better thing to say, dictates how things go. Rather than being shut out, youre actually given access to things that are almost inappropriate for you to be given access to. Im constantly reminded of the kind of privilege you experience as an Asian person. It comes back to you, how meaningful that is. I clearly remember being in outskirts of Nairobi and there was a group of people gathered in the central square of this village, all sitting under a tree waiting to meet with us. They had brought out chairs for us and there were a lot of older men and women sitting on the ground. I just gestured to them and gave up my chair. An older man took the chair and I sat on the ground. It wasnt what they expected me to do at all. Who knows really how appropriate it was? I saw a hierarchy I respected and that was the hierarchy of age.

Being attentive to those cues is what makes it possible for any documentary filmmaker, no matter what their skin colour or what country theyre working in, to gauge things. To gain a little respect from the people that are working or living where youre shooting is really important. But you have to earn the respect they, in turn, give you by allowing you to be there, a brown person in a black world. Theres a lot of bad history under the bridge.

S K: Current things being done by filmmakers, however, in the guise of being sensitive, kind of concern me sometimes. Its tricky. People dont realize all the nuance involved, particularly filming peoples stories. The respect definitely comes from the person behind the camera, the person telling the story. Its an innate quality, perhapsin the true sense of that word, they just know how to do it.

R J: There is an innate thing going on. Sometimes, youre in a sophisticated city, like Nairobi, where everybodys making music videos, for example. Or youre in a village where theyve never seen a camera before. Thats one thing people might forget: how technologically fluent the world is now. Cell phones, video cameras, all these things exist in the developing world. Respect for other human beings is just something you keep learning your whole lifetime.

Being the cameraperson really does put you in particular quandaries where your idea of whats respectful is often challenged. Its not so much the apparatus, the camera, that is perceived to be this intermediary between me and the subject; that quickly falls away. For me, its always, Whos holding the camera? How do they move? I feel like Ive done the same kind of work with a ridiculously huge camera and a teeny, tiny one I can hold in the palm of my hand. But you often find yourself in these moments of total ethical confusion.

Lara and I were shooting in Burundi on a project that was to talk about a lack of infrastructure in the country. We were driving and we saw a group of people carrying a screaming woman on a litter. We could see them and hear them from down the hill. Lara quickly realizes that this scene completely conveys our theme and decides also that we are going to help them. There was a silence and I said, "Are we going to film them, too?" [laughing] It was like this little moment. Obviously, if we had stopped the car next to them and said, May we film you?, they would have put the litter down, the woman would have been in pain. We would have had to put her in the car immediately. So we decided that we would pass them, go up the hill. I was going to get out, be with the camera, and film them walking up the hill towards us. I know Im not there as an aid worker; Im not there as a doctor. Im there as a filmmaker. But this thing of having to ask peoples permissiontheyre in an urgent situation, etc. This stuff is just going through your head as youre standing at the top of the hill while people are walking up to you. The woman was in labour and had been for seven hours. We put her in the car and it was another hour and a half to the clinic. She ended up naming the baby after our driver! But there was that moment that wasnt quite right. But I got the shot and that wouldnt have happened if we hadnt done that. That dimension is constantly with you. Those are split-second decisions. As a cameraperson, I feel that you are certainly a collaborator with the director. But, you are also responsible for maintaining your own ethical boundaries.

S K: It does seem like youre working with filmmakers, for the most part, that have strong ethical boundaries, as well. But there can easily be a sense of confusion when your crew is in the thick of something and you just roll.

R J: It can be confusing. Theres always this moment of, This world makes no sense! when Im filming beside workers that make a dollar a day hauling huge sacks of rice with a camera that costs more than they make in several years.

S K: You trained at Bhartendu Natya Academy, Lucknow, the Indian national drama school in India. Why did you decide to take yourself there? What were you going to get there?

R J: I had kind of a peculiar career trajectory. It wasnt about going to India. I went to West Africa and thats where I started, in Kenya. I was really interested in African filmmakers. It was purely the discovery of filmmaking and I thought, I might want to write about film or be a critic. I really didnt know.

S K: What was it about the filmmaking tradition there that was so enticing for you?

R J: I think it was the pace of it and the world that was being described in it. I had seen couple of Kenyan's films. I saw that there was just a whole other thing going on. I was really curious about it, probably stemming from my focus on race. I wanted to go to West Africa and be on set with filmmakers thereand to Kenya and to Dubai and to India. And think about blackness in all these different places. When I first started shooting, I didnt hear at all; I was so concerned with composition. Little by little, Ive become more and more quiet; I listen more and I realize how much more of the story is in the ear than through the eye. Thats been an evolution for me.

Initially, my instincts certainly werent bad. Especially in relation to people, they were pretty decent. But for a long time, I was moving too fast. I wasnt thinking about how to recognize a scene in the middle of a moment. All those things Ive learned through the back and forth of working and watching other peoples films, and those films that are made with the footage I shoot. Its surprising sometimes [laughs].

I felt that way working on Lara's film, too [The Silence]. She's a director that says, Yes, we have the time. Yes, take the time. Knowing that that kind of care and attention was going to be put into the film was exhilarating. Theres a lot of expediency were dealing with in camerawork a lot of the time. If you do end up working on things that are going to be made into television programs, its about getting the coverage and you may only have one day in a place with a subject.

S K: This is distinctly not in the Indian tradition of how films get edited and pieced together. If the time was taken on the shoot, we cant really ever tell since were given such a rapid series of cuts to take in at any given moment. We arent usually given this luxurious sense of spending long, extended moments with a subject or character. Scenes clip along so rapidly.

R J: There are enough moments where there is actionand by action, I might mean just emotional action happening between people. You can see it all in a wide shot and have a chance to sit and look at whats going on. A lot of times, youre in a space thats so small and youve got one character on one side of the room and one on the other. The camera operator has to make the choice. If were going to see two people in this shot, I have to move, I have to change positions when Im cutting from one person to the next. Thank goodness weve got the continuous sound to make us feel like its all cohesive. But youre still making these choices. The mind space that Im in is going to decide when I choose to move and on whom to put my focus. I try to develop those things with the director of photography in conversations where were discussing what we want. What do we really care about seeing?

S K: Was that the first time you worked together with Lara?

R J: Yes.

S K: She usually has done all the shooting on her films. What was different about this project, about this situation, where she decided to bring on a DP? Making this film was difficult on many levels.

R J: Almost in every way.

S K: Thats really incredible. I didnt know that.

R J: Yes, amazing. So, basically, when I was shooting the exchanges between the cops and the lawyers, I knew, from being in the room that day, what the key moments were.

S K: You had profound contextualization, in other words.

R J: Yes, and very few people would feel confident enough, in both their collaborators and the subject matter, to say the important part of your shooting is for you to sit in a courtroom and listen. That speaks volumes about Lara. It was absolutely engrossing to be a part of that event, the first military commission trial of its type.

S K: Did you experience a good amount of frustration that you couldnt film?

R J: Not being able to shoot in the room? It killed me! I feel like I have this personal vision of Hamden. I was sitting very close to him watching his emotional reactions to all kinds of things. He would say these incredibly cinematic things. At one point, he was describing becoming slightly delusional after being in solitary confinement for so long and he said that he felt like he had eyes all over his body because he was constantly being watched by the guards. What I would have given to have him say that on film, you know?

Whats so interesting, and I think is often true with documentaries, is that your constraints are part of the story. The more you have to find a way to embody them filmic ally, the better off you are. Its a great thing in the case of The Silence that you dont ever see Hamden except in that footage at the very beginning.

S K: What falls flat so many times about capturing vrit? A lot of times it really has very little dimension. The fanciest cutting and other production values are not going to hide the fact that one has captured less than compelling footage.

R J: Its an incredibly challenging job to be tuned into what matters and to find the way to film it. Its exhausting. Often, youre in for eight, ten, twelve hours in a day. You can get in a mode of shooting too much, obviously. But staying on point and staying focused on what really matters in the story takes a huge amount of concentration, a physical flexibility in space. Its a thing that a director of photography gives you. They give you what you need. I need twelve bottles of water a day [laughs]. They give you what you need in order to stay in that zone, able to film. If a director of photography gives you the support and allows you to stay in the zone, then sometimes, you can actually start watching the film while its being made. It doesnt happen very often but when it does, its extraordinary.

S K: And when a director is, distinctly, not giving you what you need, or any of the other crew for that matter? You also take on the role of director and have a whole body of work youve directed. How does that inform the way you handle yourself on set?

R J: Thats something I bring to a shoot, my experience as a director of photography, my thinking as a director of photography. I do think about what happens in the editing room. Im a really active partner in the whole collaboration. I almost never would say to a director of photography, in the moment, that things arent okay, that they arent working. Theres too much going on. But every night, Ill come back with my input, letting him or her know that we needed more support in this regard; something was great in the way it was executed; were not giving this character enough time, etc. Sometimes, I really will push directors in terms of blind spots I feel they have. We all have them. I expect to be pushed on mine. Once in a while, I will encounter someone whos not interested in the elephant in the room and for whatever reasons, its scary territory for them and they start putting up all these subconscious obstacles to actually getting at it. Im definitely not a silent partner at the end of the day. I will do what I can do in the course of a filming day and wont call into question any of the directors choices. But at night, over dinner, I will talk about missed opportunities and want to know why. A lot of director of photography's dont really realize what you might be going through unless you speak up. People forget about the physicality of holding the camera, shooting. Its the obligation of the crew to tell the director of photography what they need and how and when they need it.

I like to talk about themes with the director so I can watch more for those elements that speak to those themes. That way when were filming something relatively interesting but I see something going on that really is the embodiment of what were trying to capture, I can just say it and be able to turn and start shooting what should be shot. They get what Im doing because weve discussed it. Thats the art of catching things on the fly. There should be a good amount of preparation so you can do that. You have to know what youre looking for and you have to have the freedom to get it. Not communicating well about these things can be disastrous, both for the film and the relationship. Hopefully, it becomes an unspoken thing after a while. Thats how you become really alive and light on your feet.

S K: With your background, your training and these locales that keep drawing youcan you talk about light and texture in the way you see things? Theres a luminous quality to your work thats very particular. In those places you shoot, in Africa, for instance, theres a particular light that doesnt exist anywhere else. Is that part of what draws you subconsciously, perhaps? This is more a curious question more than anything since Im obsessed with light and reflection and how those things can cause emotional resonance just on their own, doesnt matter really what the image is. Is that something you think about?

R J: Yes, its something Im absolutely interested in. Its hard to tease it out in some ways. Senegal was the place I went as a young person. It was the first place I was truly free, in many different ways. I have a strong, nostalgic engagement in that particular environment and it speaks to why I love West Africa so much. Absolutely Im turned on by the madness of colour there and the quality of light on the equator.

Admittedly, though Ive been slow in my developmental relationship to what light can do. I understood composition much more. Again, my teachers were extraordinaryI had an opportunity to learn from Late K K Mahajan on a documentary that he did here in Mumbai. It was a transcendent experience. It was an essay film called Loss [2000] set in New Delhi, Calcutta and Mumbai. He had planned to go to many different places in Mumbai to express these different ideas. Wed go somewhere and nothing would be happening with the light and hed say, Were out of here. Id never experienced that before from a documentary filmmaker. He had been a taxi driver and he took over from the AP who was driving slowly through Mumbai traffic and he drove us up and down the city chasing the light. He went where the light was. Something changed in me from that experience. He also has an incredible compositional eye. We had a lot of locked-off shots and hed have me set something up, come and look at it and he would just move the lens incrementally, just a smidge and that would be it, so much better. It became my quest to set up as many shots as possible to please his aesthetic, shots would keep. Certain things really matter to me from that experience; I was so inspired by him.

S K: This is when you realize there are two director of photographical mindsthat of the director and that of the cinematographer. Its a distinct advantage, especially

by: Sudesh Kumar

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