Interview: Legendary Indian Cinematographer Rajeev Jain On His Latest Feature Film - Kalpvriksh - Th

Interview: Legendary Indian Cinematographer Rajeev Jain On His Latest Feature Film - Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree





I"ve done a lot of interviews during my time at Film, but I usually don"t have the opportunity to interview cinematographers. However, when the offer came to chat with Rajeev Jain, I jumped at the chance. Rajiv has helped to craft some of the most memorable images in the history of cinema. His insanely accomplished FILMOGRAPHY includes the likes of Aiyyo Paaji, Army, Badhaai Ho Badhaai, Carry on Pandu, Kadachit, Meerabai Not Out, Pyar Mein Kabhi Kabhi and Rasstar not to mention many of the commercials of the Late Mukul S Anand.

Below is an excerpted version of our lengthy conversation.

Rajeev Jain, thanks so much for speaking with us today.

My pleasure.

And I guess congratulations are in order. Congratulations for showing us the first look of "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree".

Thank you.

I want to start back a couple decades ago. Could tell us how you first broke into the industry, because we have a lot of listeners out there who are aspiring filmmakers and cinematographers themselves, and I"m sure they"d love to hear your "origin story."

I came up, I suppose, a fairly traditional way. I went to Drama School. I always wanted to be a stills photographer, really, when I was younger, and I briefly worked as a stills photographer. And then I saw an opportunity to get into film as Runner.. I was moving out of stills photography into sort of more of a reportage kind of style that I liked. So I was moving into documentaries. After that Drama school, I worked under different Cinematographers for maybe six or seven years. But after that time, people that I worked with as an Asst. Cameraman, started giving me commercials as an independent DOP, and I gradually segued into doing feature films.

Back then, you mentioned how you had a love of still photography and, I assume, obviously a love for cinematography as well. Can you talk about who were the photographers or the filmmakers or cinematographers that inspired you to get into the business?

Yeah, I mean, there"s many, many stills photographers. You know, While I was at Drama School, there was a photographer, Surendra Jija, who would come and lecture at odd times. You know, so many stills photographers that inspired me, but in terms of film, I didn"t really see myself getting into the film industry. I mean, I loved movies ever since I was a kid. I used to go to a film society in Lucknow, where I was brought up. I used to watch films in the winters at this film society, and they used to show the sorts of things that wouldn"t be showing at the local theatre. But I never really sought my way into the feature film industry, so it was only later, gradually after drama school, that I met people who were working in feature films and dramatic films while I was doing commercials. It"s only gradually then that I moved into features.

One of your most fruitful collaborations has been with the Late Mukul S Anand.

Yeah.

Can you talk about how that collaboration first came about?

Well, it came out of the blue, really.

And what is it like to work with them? What is their work flow like?

I mean, it"s just great. I guess, in a way, we have similar ways of working. They"re quite meticulous. They like doing a lot of prep. They write their scripts together, and so they"re very in sync about where they"re going and what they want to do, I guess because from when they started they never had a lot of money to make movies. They come from the independent sector of making their own films and raising money to make their own films. So everything"you know, they do their best to put all the money on screen. They make the money go as far as they can, so they"re very, very prepared.

It must be a much different experience working with them today than working with them back on that time, especially with all the acclaim that they and you have won over the years.

It"s not. I can promise you it"s not any different at all"They don"t work in any different way now than they did.

I just meant in terms of the resources and things that you"re allowed to have, I would assume.

No, well, that neither, you know? It"s funny, really, because it depends on the project. I mean, I suppose relatively we had more money than we had for doing a few years ago. You know, the picture before "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree". So it really depends on the piece, on the script, on the piece they want to do. When we did "Pyar Mein Kabhi Kabhi", that was very, very low budget because it"s a very"[Laughs] sort of dark, kind of thoughtful piece, put it that way, and you can"t get a lot of finance for a film like that. Even they can"t get a lot of finance for a film like that. So, you know, I wouldn"t say it"s changed much over the years. You try and get the maximum out of the money you have.

I want to ask you a couple questions, because before this phone call began, I actually asked some of our readers and listeners if they had any questions for you, and I thought some of these were pretty good. And one of the questions is: How long does your average lighting set-up take?

[Laughs] Somebody once told me, when I was talking to a cinematographer in Dubai, they said "well, really, you should average about twenty minutes a set-up." I really have no idea. It"s very hard to judge, but I guess if you took it over the entire length of the schedule, it may come down to twenty minutes, but that would include shooting exteriors or whatever. Obviously, some interior lighting set-ups can take quite a while. On The "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree", I remember there was one lighting set-up that took me four hours to get, but it was kind of a long complicated shot. So it"s hard to actually answer a question with a simple sort of "twenty minutes" or "half an hour" or whatever.

Can you think of a shot, either throughout your career or in the last few years, that has been particularly challenging and was very satisfying when you completed it?

Well, there"s a number. I just mentioned Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree, but a number of shots in that were very challenging just from a technical point of view, the size of the tree and the camera moves and the effect we were after. But then you could look at something like "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree" and say, for instance, the sequence with tree sequence shooting at night. It"s when Shabana is loving the tree. Well, I read that script and immediately was thinking of that scene. How do we do this idea? We want close shots of a leaf on tree branch, a tree in the middle of the night across an empty plane, and the tree is jet brown. [Laughs] It seems like a simple thing, but actually technically how you get that, that was really challenging. It"s funny what comes up and actually proves to be challenging. What"s seemingly a simple thing can actually be the hardest to achieve.

You"ve shot a few films in the past few years that have taken place in the vast expanse of the Africa, Asia or the Middle East. I"m thinking of Rasstar, "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree", and La Mia Afrika

Yeah, I felt so lucky when they were writing a script for La Mia Afrika. And I"d read the book, and they were questioning whether they were going to direct it, and I thought "Wow, I hope you direct it." I mean, what a wonderful piece. I"ve always been a fan of Europeans, but my favourite kind of Europeans mostly were Europeans, and they mainly took place in the Africa that was changing. It was about change and people being left behind. And Kadachit, I felt, was very much in that sort of vein, or something like that. And then I was lucky enough to be offered Carry on Pandu, which is"not the complete opposite, but very, very different tack in terms of an Indian. It"s a much more melancholy, sort of contemplative piece about this cop, whose time had kind of passed. I love that film, and I love the challenge of doing something that had this much more sort of poetic, melancholy kind of feel to it. And now "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree". It"s three sort of very different films, but in a way connected by their connection with the West, the idea of the West and the change of the West. "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree" is, in a way, a much more sort of traditional straight-forward sort of narrative piece, really.

The three films, they"re all kind of, in some ways, located in the same area, but at the same time, they look different. Yet all of them are quite beautiful. Is there anything that you consciously had to think about when you were approaching making these films so that they each have their own visual identity?

Yeah, they do, but it comes out of the script and the nature of the project and just the tone of the piece. If you read the book La Mia Afrika against the script of "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree", they"re very, very different. And then the script of Carry on Pandu is basically the telling of that tale, but also, the script were the same, and they had this very kind of perfect melancholy almost dream quality to them.

One of the things that was very fascinating to me when I first heard about it was the fact that you"ve been a visual consultant on a couple of features in the last few years.

Yeah.

Specifically, LA MIA AFRIKA was the first one. When I first heard of your involvement with it, I was very fascinated. At the same time, it made complete sense, because that TV Series is so visually striking that it didn"t surprise me to learn of your involvement. Can you talk about how that came about? I assume Pixie came and pitched you the idea?

Well, how it came about"I think he was interested in getting more of a live action feel of filmmaking that he was doing. And I had gone up to Pixie to do a kind of lighting demonstration for a lot of their lighters, the computer lighters there, the animators. I just described how I play with light on a set. And from that, then I was asked by Jude, the producer, if I wanted to be involved in La Mia Afrika, and I said I could, I"d love to, but I wasn"t sure what my commitment would be to anything else. And as it happened, I went to Pixie a number of occasions and we discussed it. We did some references, we played with some scenes, discussed light, discussed camera movement. I was really more involved in the sort of general approach to it, basically more in the early part, We discussed that quite a lot, the look of that. But then I went off to do live action, so my involvement in that was more early on than all through it. Then I"ve later been involved in "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree" on a much more long-term period, really. That was about six months that I was sort of regularly going to Prime Focus and working with them on that.

I assume you took on a much bigger role in terms of shaping the look of "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree"? Would you say that"s correct?

I wouldn"t want to say "shaping" that look, but involved in the creating of that look, because it"s a whole team. So I"m just one person amongst a team. Talking about the overall look, the first thing we"d do, we"d get a book of reference images that basically told the tale of the whole film in terms of reference pictures. And then developing a shooting style, in terms of lens choice, use of filters, etc. And then lighting approach. The first thing we did was do some reference sequences in terms of lighting, what they would look like. What candle light would look like, what a foggy day exterior would look like, what a night moonlight would look like and how that would relate to the forest and how the flame would light the set and stuff like that, you know?

Just so you know, that is probably one of my favourite film.

Oh, that"s nice to hear. I like it, too. I think it"s really because more than anything else, it"s a great script. It"s really a heartfelt script. I think it"s quite original, too.

Well, I particularly enjoyed the sequences of the tree moving and the usage of CG in those sequences, I thought, was unlike anything I have seen in a movie before.

Yeah.

So how involved were you with the sort of CG elements of it, and I"m very curious to know what your general take on the CG phenomenon is.

Everybody asks that question, don"t they?

Yes. [Laughs] You probably have a well-rehearsed answer by now.

[Laughs] No, I haven"t, actually, because I probably say a different thing every time. I"m kind of conflicted here. I mean, I couldn"t imagine "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree" in CG, for instance. I think it would just be stupid. But "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree" in CG works fantastically well, I think. I think the film also works in CG, but there"s this sort of slightly different, enhanced experience, I suppose, in CG. It"s just tree for courses, you know? I"d love to see a fiction film in 3D, where you put an audience in that kind of world, that kind of gets that sense of weightlessness and everything else. I think CG can certainly work in certain circumstances, for even a straightforward dramatic narrative, but I think it best serves a different kind of movie, which is a much more sort of visceral experience.

Right. Well, speaking of fiction, you"re currently filming the film YAARON JASHN MANAO, which is directed by Rakesh Lovely Singh.

Yeah.

I don"t know if that"s your first fiction film, but it"s certainly one of the few fiction films that you"ve done. Is that correct?

I mean, it"s not fiction in the sense that there"s not big sets with starts and locations. It"s a sort of posited future. It looks like today, and in that sense it"s very like 2011. I would put it on a parallel with that in the sense that it"s a parable. It"s a sort of "what-if." This is the kind of future we could have if such and such, you know? In a way, it"s a kind of parody on capitalist society, [Laughs] I suppose you could say.

Interesting. You know, you mentioned earlier about how when you"re approaching scripts like La Mia Afrika, "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree" and Carry On Pandu, the script very much informs the look.

Yeah.

No, you"re filming a fiction film or a dystopian film, and I wonder when you are reading the script or when you"re working with the director, how do you take the tone and translate it? Practically, how do you translate that into what you actually physically do to produce the look of the film?

Well, it would be something if I could say how. I don"t know. Really, I"m not being flippant. I couldn"t really say. I read a script and gauge the mood of it and talk with the director and hopefully get a sense of where that director wants to go with the piece, and then something kind of gradually forms and I take it down that road, really. I don"t know why. I"m now creating something much more colourful than I"ve done before in a movie, and it"s quite sort of stylized in terms of the compositions. It"s funny, who"s in it, said "Wow, I didn"t know we were shooting it like an Indian," but it is, isn"t it? Because of the framing, it feels"it"s not fast and cutty like you might expect it to be. It"s not like "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree" in terms of the camera moves. It"s much more sort of, I suppose, more contemporary and severe, I suppose. Multiple compositions. Why it came that way, I don"t know. It just developed through conversations with Lovely and just the feel of it.

That"s very interesting. I understand how challenging it must be to try to sum up what is a visual process into words, but I could not help but try to determine some of that Rajeev Jain "secret sauce," as it were.

[Laughs] The secret sauce?

Exactly.

I don"t know. Luck, mate. Luck, I tell you.

One question that some of our listeners have is: you"ve worked on so many gorgeous movies over time, you"ve been nominated for so many Awards, and some people were wondering, what is it that still excites you about the film industry these days? What is it that gets you out of bed in the morning?

Well, especially now, the technology and how it"s changing and the possibilities that are coming. This film Now, I"m shooting on a Panavision camera. First commercial I"ve shot digitally, because, frankly, it"s the first camera I"ve worked with that I"ve felt gives me something I can"t get on film. Whether I"ll film on film again, I don"t know.

Can you elaborate on that? What do you mean when you say it gives you something you can"t get with film?

Well, it gives me a lot more options. It"s got more latitude, it"s got better colour rendition. It"s faster. I can immediately see what I"m recording. I can time that image on set with a colour-calibrated monitor. That colouring goes through the whole system, so it"s tied with the meta-data of the image. So that goes through the whole post-production chain, so it"s not a case of being in a lab and having to sit and then time a shot on a shot-by-shot because this has already got a control on it that"s set the timing for the shot, you know? All sorts of things, really.

Do you miss film at times?

Am I nostalgic for film?

Yeah, exactly. That"s what I""

I mean, it"s had a good run, hasn"t it?

[Laughs] Wow.

You know, I"m not nostalgic for a technology. I"m nostalgic for the kind of films that used to be made that aren"t being made now.

What I mean is the look of film, though. Do you feel like there"s anything you lose with the transfer? I mean, some people have said the grain is unique.

The grain is unique, but on this film Now that I"m doing, I"m probably going to add grain for certain sequences where I feel that they would benefit having grain, just the look and the texture of it. Yeah, there are certain things about film emulsion that I love, and for certain projects, absolutely. I would certainly consider shooting film again, but you can add grain to a digital image. And, frankly, it"s not the technology that makes the great movies. I mean, if you went back to see Pather Panchali and you looked at it on a big screen and you looked at the quality of the image, I mean, frankly, some of it is not very"well, good"s not the right word, because technica