May 06 2018
Talking about Realism in Cinematography SubrataMitra the legendary cinematographer who shot for the Great Director SatyajitRay , among other Directors has a great influence during our film school days and continues to have even today.
He was a stickler for Realism in Lighting and Cinematography. For “Dada “ as he was affectionately called lighting has to motivated and source justified. Essentially if we had a window in the frame the light should appear as if coming from the window.. To achieve soft lighting he pioneered something called the indigenous softbox or “Dabba” light . It is a rectangular wooden box , painted white inside which has a series of Bulb Holders approximately 30 No’s Mostly household incandescent bulbs were used . Then he would diffuse with a butter paper for soft light .He preferred using light from direction of the source of natural light and maintain the quality of soft daylight
Image from “Charulatha”
SubrataMitra was a good sitar player and found an interesting correlation between music and Zone system .In those days the Black and white film stock had a exposure latitude of 7 stops . He found an interesting way to correlate the Music Notations Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni to 7 stops of exposure latitude and Zone System
Zone 1- Black ‘Sa’ (12.5 foot candles) f/1
Zone – 2- Deep Gray ‘ Re’ ( 25 foot candles) f/1.4
Zone- 3- Dark Gray ‘ Ga’ (50 foot candles) f/2
Zone- 4- Mid Gray ‘Ma( 100 foot candles) f/2.8
Zone- 5- Lighter Gray ‘ Pa'( 200 foot candles) f/4
Zone-6- Lighter Gray ‘Dha’ (400 foot candles) f/5.6
Zone-7 – Black – ‘Ni’ ( 800 foot candles) f/8
Shooting in a set depending on the mood of the scene “ dada “ would create all the 7 tones for Normal Day Light Reproduction using this principle
Image from “ Charulatha”
In night scenes by omitting intermediate tones he has created High contrast lighting
Image from “ Aparijito”
Avoiding the Higher scales and Lower scales he created a low contrast feel in certain scenes
Image from “ PatherPachali”
He would always prefer to use the Reflected Metering system for accurate reproduction of tones. His precision and approach was instrumental in designing the pedagogy and teaching methodology of cinematography in Premier Film schools across the country .Legendary cinematographers like BaluMahendra had followed his realistic cinematography and he continues to remain the inspiration to many leading cinematographers like Santosh Sivan, Sunny Joseph, Anil Mehta and others worldwide
SubrataMitra’s Filmography
Awards
Narayan Kumar
Cinematographer / Faculty