In Conversation : Santosh Sivan ISC, ASC (Part One)

Multiple National award winning Cinematographer and Director Santosh Sivan is a alumni of Pune Film Institute, during his film making career he has achieved many laurels at International film festivals.

Apart from feature films Santosh Sivan has  shot many commercials, short films to add more than 55 documentaries, Having started his career in Malayalam film “Nithiyunde Katha “and recipient of  Government of India’s  Honor  PADMASHRI for his contributions to the Indian Cinema (2014).

Santhosh Sivan who is a Extensive explorer  has  travelled length and breath of our country, shares his remarkable Film Journey with SICA.

• Who is the greatest inspiration in your life?

My Father Sivasankaran Nair known as Sivan is my first teacher  on Photography( he has won national film award three times. He was the first government press photographer in Travancore and Thiru-Kochi).

He was pioneer in creating a cultural hub at Kerala where photographers, film makers,  Painters and eminent writers used to spend their time for creativity, my father was with American information service as a photographer  he had photographed Indira Gandhi and many personalities, so i had opportunity to travel with him upon that journey i saw the world of various culture.

* How did your visual journey begin?   
My visual language journey started with sketching. my Grand ma who encouraged me used to teach in the palace ..where she used to get Raja Ravi Verma painting and explain the stories to the children, Sometimes she used my paintings to teach children and Sketching made me happy… because by the art you can start observing your surrounding in greater detail. Later I picked up a camera. It used to be a film camera in those days, so I learnt how to process both black and white as well as colour photographs.

* What is your important learning from your younger days?

Things change. What will not change is your sensibilities, your upbringing and todays what is happening is the most of the world is obsessed with web, smart phones which will have same influence on everybody we loose individuality, influences should come from our culture, education and by traveling we learn something new for the first time.

So i  believe in Change and traveling will teach new things in our life.

* What is your advise to upcoming Cinematographers ?

It is not advise…but will say traveling is the best education for the Cinematographers.

* How you see film and Digital medium?

Digitization has given a voice to many and allowed people to capture moments and images that they would not have been able to do on film, Earlier cameras, the films and their processing were an expensive affair.

Film is an Analog medium where original is a Negative, Whereas in Digital original is always a copy from a source of data. Digital we have to be very careful with the resolution it has a quality of being too sharp. It is less kind to human skin and flaws  the details are going to be more vivid.

* Coming to your recent project which you are doing 3 D Cinematography?

Yes…it is a directorial venture from Mohanlal  titled as Barroz – Guardian of D’Gamas  treasure  is  a children subject with fantasy adventure which required 3D Cinematography.

* What are all the challenges 3D Cinematography has?

Basically due to 3D rigs the camera form factor becomes very big…to make 3D visuals interesting we have to create forced perspective camera coming very close to the characters…so the lighting gets complicated both in Indoors and outdoors to avoid unwanted shadows.

To create greater depth of field  we have to light up to T8 aperture, Lenses choice also restricts to work with only  3 different focal length lenses.

But at last Cinematographer has to narrate  story visually, he has to come out of comfort zone. No guts no glory!

* What is your take on Digital Cinema Camera resolution is getting higher and Higher?

According to me Somewhere the Resolution getting higher should stop. Technically higher the resolution the color space value becomes complicated. That’s why Alexa sticks to moderate resolution.

4k Resolution is more than enough as standard one which is capable of filming upto Imax standard…many film makers go beyond 4k for taking advantages of cropping the image in the post, (Shooting in 8k and Cropping the image in the post for extra shot..where the resolution still will be with 4k)which i feel unnecessary and Cinematographers composition in the camera should be the final one.

* Yours first national award for best cinematography was for the Malayalam film  Perumthachan !

Based on a story by MT Vasudevan Nair (also the screenwriter), Directed by Ajayan  the film digs into the psyche of the legendary architect and sculptor Raman — christened ‘Perumthachan’ by many — and the complex relationship between him and his son..i had many paintings as a reference created a warm Light thorough out the film.

* Dalapathy too had warm light ?

The story of the film revolved around Rajinikanth character as reference to  Karnan… where i wanted to keep Sun as a pictorial element to the character, in Dalapathy i shot Rajinikanth in the exteriors using Tungsten Light.

* How challenging was shooting Roja ?

Mani Ratnam was very ambitious of Roja but challenge was to achieve it with very limited resources of that time. There were many instances of challenging days as each film creates…but to say we have to be very spontaneous of achieving it…for example i have to light up broad night exteriors of the waterfalls with just using 3 HMI lights …so i used Mirrors to pump the light into falls which was another side…but these challenges invents something new from us.

* Your Directorial Venture Terrorist which had unique images  created huge acclaims from  International Festivals and Film Makers?

Idea of  making Terrorist came for me was the day i was caught in a severe traffic jam when Rajiv Gandhi was shot dead ….that time  i was speaking to my friend about what if the suicide bomber not pressed the trigger button…from there the idea developed.. i did not even write the story..all i had an idea developed by creating a painting into fragment of scenes. I shot it like a indie film with Just Camera and lenses…even location was at porur chennai ..only few scenes was shot at chalakudi and i used natural rain in the film.

Film went on to win major awards at International film festivals …and Hollywood actor John Malkovich who was one of the jury brought this film and released world wide.

ASC (American society of cinematographers )magazine at Sundance film festival picked Terrorist as one of the  three best films visually striking films….and many critics said ” Terrorist is the film written by a Camera”.

* Terrorist had stunning images of extreme close Ups and Shallower to selective depth of field?

Visual form of Terrorist was to create images having shallower back ground  more activities happening…so that audience imagination also works to great extent.

* Most haunting character in the film Terrorist is the one bed ridden through out the film. How it was conceived ?

I have a friend who is a Doctor from US ..his grandfather is bedridden for more than fifteen years.. i photographed his grandfather with the Bed long time ago….that was the only photo my friend had of his grandfather  after his death ..this in a way inspired me to create a character in Terrorist.

* Your Film images  have signature kind of Light and shadows with various grey scale…what is the inspiration ?

First thing is to being original is to be closely associated with nature and surroundings…i have been teaching photography to children during my early days as a work of passion. That time  i had to travel to Arunachala Pradesh full of forest..to teach a group of school children, one day a dog died there and the locals took to the forest and they dig so deep…to bury the dog, according to them ‘”Every thing that has a life should have mystery of Light and Darkness”  according to me that’s Grey Scale.

I always invent myself with what life lessons has taught to me …i am able to convey it through images.

…..the conversation with Santhosh Sivan to be continued to PART TWO which will be published soon!

Article by

CJ Rajkumar

Author/Cinematographer