CHENNAI: Speaking with the same clarity and precision that his visuals and films are known for around the world, ace cinematographer Santosh Sivan on Tuesday impressed a gathering of educationists, intellectuals and students with his smart and informative responses to probing questions posed by participants at the ThinkEdu Conclave.
Taking part in an interactive session, Sivan spoke at length on a number of topics ranging from how his grandmother influenced his interest in cinematography to the different preferences various cinematographers in different countries have while filming the same sequences. After that, the floor was thrown open to questions from the audience.
The audience, most of whom were students, had a number of questions ranging from extremely technical ones like the frames and shots he preferred, to the rather trickier ones such as to what did he owe his success. When a student recalled what actor Suriya had said about Sivan and asked him, how, despite being like a child behind the camera, Sivan was able to showcase masterfully the beauty of even a small object, Sivan said, “The whole idea is to have the child-like quality in you always. The whole world is waiting to be admired.”
Elaborating on the need for such a quality, he said, “As you grow older, you don’t want to see so many things the world has to offer. You take everything for granted and you think you know more. If you retain that child-like kind of interest in everything, as if it is the first time you are seeing it, then it is like starting afresh everyday. It also means you live the moment. Most of us get into thinking about what happened yesterday or what will happen tomorrow and in the process, miss the moment. So, being child-like is living the moment.”
While replying to a question, during the initial stages of the interaction, on the influence his grandmother had on him, Sivan said if one sketched, one would start observing things much more.
Explaining how his progression to cinematography happened, the award-winning lensman said, “When I first started, my grandmother used to say the painting was the original. But when my dad taught me photography, he said the original was the negative. Today, we are in the digital world, everything is a copy. The fact is that the image-capturing mechanism keeps changing but the sensibilities always remain.”