Prasanth Raveendran is taken aback when we request him for an interview, after seeing his superlative frames in Ranjith’s Leela , his first independent feature as cinematographer. He hems and haws and dodges calls for quite a few days on the pretext of “preparing” himself for the interview before finally agreeing to open up about his love for cinema and cinematography, in particular. Once he starts talking though, it’s easy enough to get the picture. He was not deliberately being difficult. Instead, he is one of those reticent kinds who actually prefer to be behind the camera than in front of it, to let his work do the talking.
Leela might not have captured everyone’s fancy but even its naysayers acknowledge its technical brilliance, particularly Prasanth’s camerawork, which doesn’t just talk, it sings. “All credit goes to director Ranjith. A cinematographer is only ever as good as the director. It’s the director’s vision and the scriptwriter’s words that I have attempted to merge on screen. Ranjith sir had travelled with the story of the impotent Kuttiyappan [Biju Menon] and his flights of fantasy, for a long time and he was very clear about everything, right down to the mood of each shot. I was only ever following his lead,” says a happy Prasanth.
Even then, the 38-year-old made good use of his creativity with the Alexa XT camera whenever possible – for example, the scenes in Kuttiyappan’s bedroom where shadows fill reel and real spaces, suggesting a troubled mind; in the panoramic shots and unusual angles of the hills and forests of Wayanad as the protagonist makes his way to emotional liberation… “Kuttiyappan is his real self only in his room and for that we needed to artificially create shadowing. Otherwise, wherever possible, I’ve followed the natural. Outside, he puts on the façade of a playboy and that’s reflected in the crazy camera angles,” explains Prasanth. Do the shots involve much preparation? “Actually, the shot comes spontaneously to me, once the director explains his vision for it,” he adds.
The confidence to be spontaneous, he says, comes from honing his skills under one of the country’s top cinematographer’s – S. Kumar. Prasanth has worked with the veteran first as an assistant and then an associate, in 12 films in Malayalam and Hindi, beginning with Rathrimazha , then Vinodayatra , Calcutta News , Bodyguard , and Indian Rupee , to name a few. It was his friend, Kunjunni S. Kumar, the veteran’s son and now a cinematographer himself, who got Prasanth in as an assistant, after several futile attempts to get a foothold in the industry. There he was a complete greenhorn with dreams of being a cinematographer but no knowhow. “The first thing that Kumar sir told me was that ‘you have to understand that cinema is not as beautiful from the inside as it is from the outside. All that I know about cinematography comes from my guru. Everything that I have learnt, I learnt on the job. He is such a perfectionist and that had rubbed off on me. Such is our relationship that I can call him up for guidance. Knowing my reticent nature, he often calls me up to remind me to fight for my craft,” says Prasanth.
He was the second unit cameraman on Ranjith’s previous film Loham (shot by Kunjunni) and that put him in the director’s purview. “Out of the blue, I got an SMS from him saying ‘you are the cinematographer of my next film.’ This is all I ever wanted, really. I had always been in love with images and I used to spend all my waking hours watching films in my uncle’s theatre in Vattiyoorkavu, Thiruvananthapuram. Since the time I was 16, cinematography is all I have ever dreamt about, thought about. If not cinematography, there was no other option for me; it was something I just had to do for myself as vital to my existence as breathing. I have to thank my family and friends for allowing me to follow my dreams,” he says.
