Trust a film institute graduate to leave you astonished. Cinematographer Sivakumar Vijayan’s inspirations, he says, range from Andrei Tarkovsky and Ansel Adams to a coffee shop that made him capture Srirangam in hues of brown. For this lensman, who shot Vidiyum Munn and the upcoming Tamil-Hindi bilingual Irudhi Suttru (Saala Khadoos), the magic is in moving images, unlike photography, which is about the decisive moment.
“Cinematography shouldn’t be noticeable. It’s not about flamboyant frames that distract viewers from the story. Good cinematography works subconsciously and one of the hardest things to do is look away from that beautiful frame, just a click away,” he says, delighted that Vidiyum Munn is the only Indian film being screened at the 21st International Film Festival of Asian Cinema in Vesoul, France.
Siva has adopted a baroque lighting style for Vidiyum Munn, which best recreates the old-world charm of Calcutta. Shot entirely in Chennai, even Srirangam scenes were replicated in Chennai to cut costs. “My friends thought I was making a big mistake beginning my career with a film set predominantly at night,” he says, as he shows me the hundreds of lighting sketches he made during the shoot of Vidiyum Munn.
A cinematography graduate from the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Sivakumar speaks of his student days in Calcutta as being the place where he attained ‘cinematic enlightenment’. “From dozing over books in the library to smuggling reels of classics into the Steenbeck editing suite, captivated by the beauty of a single frame, it was a period where passion preceded everything,” he recalls.
Besides formal learning, he says it is important to assist a cameraman before going solo. “When you assist a cinematographer, you learn how to handle production, people and to finish work on time,” says Siva, who assisted P.C. Sreeram on Paa (Hindi) and Ishq (Telugu). In fact, it was Sreeram’s Alaipayuthey that inspired him to pursue cinematography instead of engineering. “The first few days on the sets of Irudhi Suttru were all about being awed by Madhavan and asking for anecdotes about the Alaipayuthey shoot,” he says, laughing. “Trying to capture Chennai as well as PC sir did in Alaipayuthey for Irudhi Suttru was a challenge I cherished.”
Siva entered the industry when cinematography was moving from film to digital. Would he shoot in film again? “In a heartbeat,” he exclaims, “I’ve shot in digital and it allows you to experiment, but there is something spiritual about shooting in film. Film gives you results that are closest to what you see with the naked eye.”
“Then, the process of finding the film reel you shoot best with, the mental calculations that dictate a perfect shot… they connect you to the camera at a subliminal level. Nowadays, a computer tells you when your exposure is off. You needn’t trust your eye any more, as the digicam lets you see the result as you shoot. Earlier, we would shoot and take the reels to the dark room and experiment with techniques to create a particular effect. The magic of seeing the image unfold for the first time in the dark room… there is nothing quite like that feeling.”
