Alphonse Roy on MAIGHAT.

Alphonse Roy,  internationally renowned and Emmy award-winning wildlife cinematographer,  He graduated from the Adyar Film institute in 1985.
Alphonse Roy , who has been making documentaries and films for more than 25 years for National Geographic, Discovery and BBC channels, made an impact with his stunning work in the 2008 film Aamir.

His documentary on Tibet titled “Lost Civilization” for the prestigious PBS channel channel earned him an Emmy.
Jewel among his rarest achievements list is huge one among them is that he has shot the most number of films on Tigers. He has filmed wildlife in Africa, Amazon river, Bhutan, Srilanka & India.
Animal Planet decided to shoot a film on him titled Great Cats of India. He is one among the first few to have been lucky to film the snow leopard in the wild.

Alphonse Roy had made important contribution to feature films, he cranked camera in many Indian Languages.
In Tamil his cinematography for the film Ooruku Noor Per was much appreciated for its semi dark tones, based on the writings of Legendary Jeyakanthan this film won Best Director national award for B.Lenin.
His recent work in Tamil Appavin Meesai directed by Actor Rohini is yet to be released.

Maighat Marathi film Directed by Ananath Mahadevan which is inspired by the story of a Kerala woman who fought and won a legal battle after her son’s death in police custody.
This film won many honors at National and International arena, Usha Jadhav main lead received best Actor award at IFFI 2019.

Alphonse Roy’s powerful images got recognition at Indian Film Festival Cincinatti where he was awarded Best Cinematography for MAIGHAT.
Mai Ghat  was entirely shot on Cannon C-700 FF a full-frame camera Explaining his decision to go for this particular camera, Alphonse says, “The size of the Sensor is larger than super 35 format. My thought process was the story of the film is not distorted and i want to present images with zero distortion, so using a full frame sensor camera with careful choice of lens and composition gives you great advantages in terms of perspective..and also avoid distortions in the Image.
Another important aspect of the film is its color which was so real, Alphonse speaking on it says he wanted every color detail in the frame along with actors skin to be real, so i tried to give True Tone, in a way through this film we celebrated different kinds of skin tone in a most perfect and balanced way as if a image look in a mirror through our naked eyes, all the actors never used makeup and costumes wise all were used clothes.
His lens choice was from 24mm to 50mm with Canon Cine lenses according to him on testing he found that it produced natural colors.
Alphonse Roy adds that he shot this entire film in just 18 days and there was no any enhancement process during digital color correction. while shooting itself almost every corrections on light, continuity, zone level achieved during shooting stage itself.

SICA wishes Alphonse Roy for all his achievements.

Article compiled by CJ Rajkumar

Author/Cinematographer