{"id":4088,"date":"2018-05-06T11:00:04","date_gmt":"2018-05-06T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesica.in\/?p=4088"},"modified":"2018-05-06T11:15:59","modified_gmt":"2018-05-06T11:15:59","slug":"musical-way-cinematography-lighting-narayan-kumar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesica.in\/ta\/musical-way-cinematography-lighting-narayan-kumar\/","title":{"rendered":"Musical way CINEMATOGRAPHY & LIGHTING: Narayan Kumar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Talking about Realism in Cinematography SubrataMitra the legendary cinematographer who shot for the Great Director SatyajitRay , among other Directors has a great influence during \u00a0our film school days and continues to have even today.<\/p>\n

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He was a stickler for Realism in Lighting and Cinematography. For \u201cDada \u201c 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..\u00a0 To achieve soft lighting he pioneered something called the indigenous softbox or \u201cDabba\u201d\u00a0 light . It is a rectangular wooden box , painted white inside which has a series of Bulb Holders approximately 30 No\u2019s\u00a0 Mostly household incandescent\u00a0 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<\/p>\n

Image from \u201cCharulatha\u201d<\/p>\n

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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\u00a0 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni to 7 stops of exposure latitude and Zone System<\/p>\n

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Zone 1- Black ‘Sa’\u00a0 (12.5 foot candles) f\/1<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zone – 2- Deep Gray ‘ Re’ ( 25 foot candles) f\/1.4<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zone- 3-\u00a0 Dark Gray ‘ Ga’ (50 foot candles) f\/2<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zone- 4- Mid Gray ‘Ma( 100 foot candles) f\/2.8<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zone- 5- Lighter Gray ‘ Pa'( 200 foot candles) f\/4<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zone-6- Lighter Gray ‘Dha’ (400 foot candles) f\/5.6<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zone-7 – Black – ‘Ni’ ( 800 foot candles) f\/8<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shooting in a set depending on the mood of the scene \u201c dada \u201c would create all the\u00a0 7 tones\u00a0 for Normal Day Light Reproduction using this principle<\/p>\n

Image from \u201c Charulatha\u201d<\/p>\n

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In night scenes by \u00a0omitting intermediate tones he has \u00a0created High contrast lighting<\/p>\n

Image from \u201c Aparijito\u201d<\/p>\n

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Avoiding the Higher scales and Lower scales he created a low contrast feel in certain scenes<\/p>\n

Image from \u201c PatherPachali\u201d<\/p>\n

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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\u00a0 the inspiration to many leading \u00a0cinematographers like Santosh Sivan, Sunny Joseph, Anil Mehta and others worldwide<\/p>\n

SubrataMitra\u2019s Filmography<\/strong><\/p>\n