subject: Rajeev Jain - The Indian Cinematographer - In His Own Words [print this page] Rajeev Jain - The Indian Cinematographer - In His Own Words
The DP at Work
The Director of Photography interprets the director's vision and gives a visual reality to the words that are on the page.
Working with The Director
Setting Up the Shots
I usually do storyboards, but in this feature Kalpvriksh we did each scene. We jumped right in because Manika Sharma knows what she wants. She can express it. She understands the technology and she understands how to tell a story. She knows lenses. She can call out a lens size in millimetres. A lot of directors have problems getting on the other side of a stage line, jumping to the other side of the room during the scene. She has absolutely no problem with that.
Manika has a real visual sense. And since we've been working together for years it's pretty easy for us to get on the same page.
In this case, the play is very different from a film. You don't visually see what's happening. And once we got the film script in our hands, even then it was quite wordy. But even though I didn't see it on the page, I knew she knew what she wanted.
Manika is also a visualizer, so she makes the camera do a lot of things that you don't expect a director to ask for. So we do very long masters [in this case, with the camera on a dolly], and then we go back and clean them up.
On a 4 x 8 piece of plywood the dolly that the camera's on might take twelve different positions [during the dolly move].
Which means sometimes we're moving the camera three inches, sometimes we're moving three feet. We can show the entire room on one 4 x 8 piece of wood!
The Look
Creating the Mood
The whole feeling of warmth I can't take responsibility for. That's something Binod Pradhan started when he made Devdas and made everything sort of amber and warm. That set the tone for every period picture from then on. That's what people expect when you say period now.
Manika and I discussed dramatic tone and mood.
What's wonderful about the approach she takes is we wanted not only a period look but a period feel like the '90s where the camera doesn't cut.
People walk into their close-ups. So we do a lot of coverage without the cut.
Capturing the Period
Kalpvriksh in the '90s is a period that I'm familiar with. I've done a number of period films. I didn't have to do any research because I love the photographs of the period.
I like looking at the '90s, the clothes people wear and things like that. I have lots of books with pictures in them from that time, and I've watched a lot of stock footage.
The Job of Lighting
Leading the Lighting Crew
The essential people that work close to me in order to get my job done are my gaffer, Singh, who's in charge of the lighting.
I basically describe to him what it is I'm looking for. He brings the elements in and we paint the picture. On this Feature, a man named Mahendra is my key grip. He's in charge of the shadow and all the rigging. So I have Gani who brings in the light, Mahendra who brings in the shadows. Gani takes care of all the electrical stuff, Dave takes care of all the rigging, all the flags. Singh works the dimmer board. He takes care of the intensity of the light, working closely with Gani.
Lighting the Scene
I have a gaffer, Singh, who I've been working with for a very long time.
Singh and I can get on the same page rather quickly because we both like paintings. I can say a painter's name and because we've spent late nights looking at different artists we can basically say we want this tree to feel like Caravaggio or we want the kitchen to be like Vermeer in the morning. Or okay, it's late afternoon, let's make this feel like Hopper and make the shadows very definite.
Chopping the Light Up
[A big part of the job is] 'chopping' the light up. Once we put the light in we chop the light away.
Because the name of the game is to put the light where you want people to see and put the shadow where you don't want them to see. And those two things together create the mood of the picture.
The Dimmer Board
We have everything on a dimmer board because being on this schedule we don't have time to re-light anything. We do all our lighting plots in pre-production, and for the most part we try to do as much lighting as we can in advance during the rehearsal. And situations that we can't anticipate we have to light as the situation arises. If we do close-ups we have to tweak them and make them look nice.
The guy in charge of the dimmer board can turn those lights off and on as we need them or bring them down, or change a window from daytime to night time.
The Shoot
Preparing to Shoot
Rehearsals are very important for camera and lighting. During rehearsals, stand-ins are good but we can only make the picture look right when we get the real talent in the frame.
The talent has make-up and wardrobe, the stand-ins don't. One day, for instance, Shabana has a green dress on and the stand-in comes to work in a black dress. So we just threw a green satin around her shoulders.
Taking Advantage of Shadows
A lot of the photography is determined by the geography. There are only so many places that someone can go. And it's amazing how Manika is able to work all the geography into her story. We show the entire tree all the time. We're always pretty much lighting 180 degrees because that dolly / jib is going to go all over that tree.
Fortunately for us, the light comes from one direction and I'm not afraid to let people go into the shadows. I like that. If they go into the shadows for a minute it's nice, that's what happens.
Coordinating the Camera Crew
Besides my lighting crew, the other people essential to me are my camera crew. Pooja, whom I've done a number of pictures with and who I love working with is my focus puller. She makes sure that all the cameras are running all the time, that they are sharp and that the picture is always in focus. Sana has her second assistant that helps her keep all that technology going. Francis works at the colour correction and records everything.
Working With the Jimmy Jib
The camera on the long crane that swooped in and out, that's a jib arm, or jimmy jib. It allows the camera to be operated by monitor as a remote head. It's just a device to replace a crane that requires more than one guy to operate it. It's a one-man machine, and it works quite well with video cameras. It actually allows the camera to be more mobile quickly. We can go up and down very fast. With an operator you can't do that. The other thing is that you can go up very high and go all the way down to the floor with the jib arm. For instance, we used it to bring a certain amount of animation to the pictures that we took outside.
