How does one create interesting visuals in a world fatigued by visuals from ads to selfies? This was a question posed to veteran cinematographer Tom Cowan, who shot the path-breaking Kannada film Samskara. Cowan delivered the V.K. Murthy Memorial Lecture on cinematography at BIFFes on Monday.
“I agree the world is visually polluted today. But that doesn’t mean you go into fantasy land or hyper-real private spaces to create interesting visuals. Through the history of mankind, he hasn’t tired of a story well told, though using the same words. The same applies to visuals as well,” he said.
He also had an advice for cinematographers: to turn film makers and make a film that only they could make. “I learnt film making by making them. Making a film is the best way to learn. If not a feature film, make as many short films as possible. It will help you interpret a story better,” he said.
A cinematographer must not only bring technical expertise, but also artistry to the table, he said. “A cinematographer should also interpret the characters and that only adds to the film. For instance, if you are shooting an epic film with heroic characters, you foreground the characters throwing the background out of focus. But if you are shooting a social drama, you use a wide angle lens where the background is also sharp, placing the character in relation to the background,” he explained.
Noted cinematographer G.S. Bhaskar said cinematography is an art in which you can attain aesthetic quality without learning the technical skills, but was quick to add that technical wizardry without an aesthetic sense amounted to nothing.
The session leant itself to a discussion on directors themselves handling the camera. A member of the audience pointed out how Satyajit Ray began handling the camera himself, and veteran film maker Girish Kasaravalli said Ray probably made ‘bad films’ after that. “As a director, he was so focussed on the characters that there are jerky movements in the film. But the need for a director to handle the camera – to see the film through the lens – is probably irrelevant now, as we see the visuals on a monitor,” he said.
Performance capture: the future of cinema
The 100-minute Kizhakku Afrucavil Raju is a Tamil feature film starring two familiar names in the lead roles: the late M.G. Ramachandran and J. Jayalalitha, and it is set for a June 2018 release.
Surprising? Not really.
Motion capture is passé, the future of cinema is performance capture technology that is already in vogue in big-budget films, said M. Arul Moorthy, CEO, Digital Magic, who has over three decades of experience in working on VFX for Indian films. He has announced the film as a sequel to MGR’s super-hit film Ulagam Suttrum Vaaliban, which did not happen earlier due to his entry into politics in 1977.
Speaking at a master-class on ‘Emerging trends and technologies for new age movie making’ at BIFFes on Monday, he said: “Performance capture technology essentially captures the facial expressions and even the eye movement, and renders it on to a virtual character on screen almost live. The technology helps make virtual characters, like in Avatar, more relatable.”
The technology has matured to an extent that the output is almost photo-realistic, he said. “Unlike before, today, the models for virtual characters are also made using human beings. A body scanner has 180 cameras with 360 degree capture of a person, which is used to create a virtual model,” he explained.
“I wrote the film script with MGR as the hero, set in East Africa. But after the death of J. Jayalalitha, we have made her the heroine of the film. The fans will be able to see a MGR-Jayalalitha film again. We have used several archival material to create the 3D model of MGR right. Another actor will perform the role and his performance will be captured and imposed onto the virtual character of MGR,” he explained.
