Star Interviews
Camera magician Senthil's Interview
By Sri
Sep 22, 2009 - 3:57:07 PM

Sethil Kumar on Location

Senthil debuted with the film Aithe..! (2003) and did eight films in five years. Compared to other cinematographers, that may seem a small number of films but the films he worked showed his capacity which are on par with camera work in Hollywood films. All of his films were hit too. My association with Senthil started with

Related Links: Art Director Ravinder Interview Camera Shot detailed log sheets

Sye, as we kept talking now and then. After the recent super hit Magadheera, we spoke about the film only briefly, as he was newly married and was also busily working for Bhumika’s own production. We finally settled into a long conversation one late evening about Magadheera. Here are the excerpts from the TC.Com exclusive interview:

Sri: How is your new life … this year you worked for Arundhati and Magadheera, and you married your lady love...
Senthil: (Laughs) Which life? Personal or professional? Both are "colorful" so far...

Sri: Hmm, it's good to know that there are so far no complaints from your better half!
Senthil: Who said there are no complaints…! (laughs) There are… (laughs) ...those routine complaints that I do not have time to spare as I was at the shootings, or scouting for locations, or involved in the post-production work most of the time.

Sri: (Laughs) Good! It's colorful, I now agree…! Lets us talk about Magadheera now… The fall scene in the period part where the colors fade into black and white… it looks like an art work by Da Vinci. How did you did that?
Senthil: This is one of the very well-shot scenes in the film and also very well-composed sequence of the film. The director wanted the scene to look like a painting and so we composed every frame to look like one. It feels good when people notice it. Also, when we shoot what we like, our tastes - be it art, traditions, books, one's education, or even life in general - helps convey what we have to tell in a certain way. About the color fading in to "desaturated effect", the D.I. (Digital Intermediate) helped me in doing it. The sequence itself was shot on blue mat and was backed by some very good C.G. (computer graphics) work.

Sri: I think the valley and fog effects are C.G.?
Senthil: Yes, all that was done by C.G.

Sri: What was your role in CGI (Computer-generated imagery)?
Senthil: As the DOP (Director of Photography) of the film, I'm responsible for whatever is seen on the screen and I am involved in CGI at all stages such as pre-visualization, shooting, and post-production. We, as a team, require a certain effect, and I, in coordination with the director and visual effects supervisor, decide what to shoot in real and what can be done using CGI and how. We then shoot people or objects on blue/green mat with the required lighting, keeping in mind the end result.

Senthil on Shooting

Sri: Who will take care of the color coordination in this part?
Senthil: As a team, we look for a certain feel to the film at the start, and we shoot accordingly. After the shoot, color coordination has to be taken care of at various phases of the CG work. I do it with the CG team; when it comes to the overall color coordination of the shot, I take a call myself.

Sri: For the song panchadaara bommaa bommaa..., we see clouds coming fast at the beginning of the song and greenery in Golconda... how did you bring all the beauty into capturing it?
Senthil: (Laughs) I worked for three films at Golconda, namely Sye, Ashok, and Yamadonga, of which two were with Rajamouli. So, we know the whole region of Golconda so much that I can be a better guide than anyone in Golconda now! The clouds shot was done in a different frame rate. We shot at one frame per second to bring that effect instead of the usual 24 frames per second. This song was one of the best-shot songs in my career, and I am very happy the way the greenery and beauty of Golconda region was exploited to suit the song.

Sri: Ravi (Art director Ravinder) said that the helicopter was not real. So, how did you plan to shoot the flying scenes?
Senthil: Ravi did a great job with the helicopter. It's a very important scene in the film and the effect had to look real. The whole team - particularly the stunts master, visual effects supervisor, director, and me - did careful planning of every small detail - how the air flows, how the body falls, etc. Most of the sequence was shot against blue mat. It was tough, as we shot it outdoors with constantly changing light conditions. I then shot the background plates required from a real helicopter at different heights, with the director, and everything was later put together by the CGI team, who did a fabulous job. It was a complete team effort indeed.

Sri: The Colosseum-like setting was really huge! How did you manage to shoot it?
Senthil: Shooting the arena was one the fabulous experience in the film, as it was a perfect combination of the art department, camerawork, and computer graphics. Only a part of the stadium was erected as a set. We shot the required sequence with blue mat and later extended it through visual effects. We created the kingdom of Udaighad as CGI but developing it was a tedious process. We don’t have the culture of arena fights in Indian history, as it belongs to Roman culture. Conceiving and shooting in the arena set was one of most cumbersome and satisfying experiences really.

Sri: How do you work with costumes and art departments for color coordination of the scene?
Senthil: Before the shoot, I definitely work with costume designers and the art director. Since I worked with Rajamouli for most of my films, Rama gaaru was heading the costume department and we always had healthy fights on color combinations, obviously leading to better screen output ultimately. Her judgment is really good. For example, no one approved of the green and pink dress of Kajal in the climax scene where the protagonist kills a hundred warriors. When we saw it on the screen, she was right - it was looking great on Kajal! ...Ravi and I debuted together with Aithe..! and so we understand each other's working style and work in harmony.

Sri: Sometimes, the costumes were same color as the background. Would it not be difficult to distinguish?

Senthil: It is a bit difficult, yes. In Chatrapathi, we had this song A vacchi B pai vaale..., in which I wanted to have a monotone feel, which was never done in recent Telugu films and thus tried the same color for background and foreground. The results were amazing. For Magadheera, in the song dheera dheera dheera..., we tried it in a small portion of the song, the part that was shot in Dholavira with white salt background, and it was awesome!

Camera Log book

Click here for more pics of Camera log details

Sri: Tell me about Dholavira I heard it was really good but that it was also extremely difficult to shoot there.
Senthil: True. Dholavira is an excavation of the Indus Valley Civilization or the Harappan culture, dating back to over 4500 years ago. ...It feels good to visit a place of archaeological importance. Scouting for locations was fun. We were actually looking for dry, open lands for the chariot race scene. We went to Gujarat while looking for the same, and some passers-by told us that there were white lands around 200 km away. We were thrilled to find salt lands in Dholavira. While shooting, we needed a light weight vehicle to follow the horses. So we bought a Maruti van, ripped open the top part, and used it to mount the camera along with jimmy jib to shoot the race. It was really very hot as we shot in summer, but it turned out to be one of the most satisfying experience in the film too.

Sri: I think another difficult scene was towards the climax, that scene where the protagonist kills 100 people.
Senthil: Right! We had to carefully plan for that scene. Rajamouli conceived the hundred warriors episode. We had to make the hero kill a hundred warriors, but it had to look convincing too. It would be believable if the hero fought with 4-5 people at a time. It struck to us that we could use a narrow passage to restrict the number of fighters. Thus came the conception of a bridge, a cliff, and the bhairava kOna. Shooting this part was another great experience because we were using blue mat for a number of days again in an exterior set, dealing with constantly changing light, and so on...

Sri: It looked like an inspiration of Jackie Chan's recent film The Myth to me...
Senthil: Honestly, I have not watched that movie...

Sri: What I feel is the most difficult scene in the movie is the cave scene, where you had to show darkness, but also had to show the set (so that the art department doesn't feel injustice) and also have to show the expressions of the artistes in the dark, the fire, etc. How did you do that?
Senthil: True, and the fire effect was difficult. When shooting for Arundhati, we had a fire effect scene for which I did a lot of experimenting. It was a tough time, but I finally achieved it then. We used the same effect for this one too. We used pompoms of different color in front of the lights and then diffused them to get the needed effect.

Sri: I heard that Nandi (Rajamouli) started going around with the tape to measure the length and shot dimensions and used to note them in the note pad.
Senthil: Indeed! When erecting the set, we had a lot of measuring to do, and it was time-consuming yet inaccurate. As a lot of CGI work was involved in the film, and since we should give dimension details to the CGI department accurate to less than one half an inch to ensure good output from the CGI, Rajamouli finally got a laser tape from the USA to measure distances accurately while saving a lot of time too!

Sri: The film was shot for more than a year and a half. How did you keep track of shots and other details.
Senthil: That is another difficult task indeed. We maintained a camera report book and an assistant wrote details of each shot - the lens we used, the focus distance, height of the camera, and other details. It helped a great extent in maintaining the continuity of the scene. When we were shooting the stadium, most of the shots had to give space for CG and so we had to measure the camera distance from a few reference points on the set. The major problem was with the lens. Since the shooting was not continuously go on, a few lenses changed and so I had to check the lens before the shoot, see the results, and give details to the visual effects personnel accordingly, in order to maintain color continuity and scene continuity.

Sri: I heard that you are on cloud nine for a while?
Senthil: (Laughs) Tell me, who will not be! When ace cameraman like Ravi K. Chandran complements your work, you will also be in cloud nine. It is really nice of him to call and tell nice things about my work.

Sri: Tell me how was it working with Charan.
Senthil: He's one of the very focused and hard working artistes. His horse-riding skills inspired us to do some great shots. I don't think it would have been possible to shoot the chase sequence without his riding skills. Of course, he's also a very good dancer and does his own stunts. I enjoyed working with him.

Sri: Tell me about the support from producer for such a huge-budgeted film.
Senthil: Hats off to the producer Allu Aravind. This kind of a film needs a great producer who has confidence in his team. The entire production work was handled by the co-producer Bhogavalli Prasad, who provided whatever we asked for. We faced no problems ever from the production team!

Sri: How come you're not working for Rajamouli’s next film Maryada Ramanna?
Senthil: I would love to work with him, he is a fabulous director but  because I am working for the film Thakita Thakita. Downtown Films waited for more than six months for me to work for the film, and so I cannot work on other films without completing  this film. This commitment is something that I cannot push further.

Edited by: NaChaKi
Interview: Sri Atluri
Acknowledgements: Senthil Kumar for his help