Picture perfect
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One of the biggest draws of Mungaru Maley is its cinematography. The credit goes to S. Krishna
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FRAMEWORK Krishna: `Once I heard the story I realised that artificial rain will not work.'
One sentence from cinematographer S. Krishna summed up his approach to "Mungaaru Maley": "We need to stand out from the others." Krishna is credited with conceptualising the stunning imagery in MM.
"Once I heard the story I realised that artificial rain will not work. You cannot shoot in sunlight with artificial rain, so we decided to work in the rainy season," he recalls.
MM has been shot entirely with a lens, quite new to the Kannada film industry and Krishna credits much of the lighting effects to that.
"We did not have the right lens, so we bought an Arriscope lens. The lens gives a high-degree of sharpness and is widely used in the Telgu and Tamil film industry. We used colour film throughout and wanted to create the right ambience in every shot. For example towards the climax we used a blue tint to symbolise sorrow and death."
The climax he says was a challenge because there are no dialogues and the story had to be communicated visually. Also the lighting was never enhanced in any way to give a natural look. The imagery that has really caught the fancy of the audience is that of Jog Falls, which Krishna shot from overhead with a remote operated jig.
He says the entire Jog sequence, which includes the song "Kunidu, Kunidu, Baare", demanded extra effort because it was very important to the script.
"We wanted the audience to be silent and tell the story through the girl. It was a very special place for her to propose to Ganesh. The visual pattern was decided by us after we decided to not use regular angles to shoot the falls."
Another sequence that catches the eye is the number "Onde Ondu Saari," which is shot in a studio with some clever lighting effects. "We wanted to show that the boy is very urban. And that we did in a studio. We needed to highlight the fact that Ganesh was a rich city guy and make it stylish." Krishna hopes that MM will help change the way directors and producers interact with cinematographers.
"They must get us involved from the early stages of the script so that we can hear the story and make a visual pattern." Krishna's next project is "Geleya", which he says is a contrast to MM. "I got many similar offers to MM but I don't want to be branded with a specific style. I like this new project because most of the team is from MM and it is very grey-based because the story is about the underworld."
A.S.
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