On a roll

Sudeep Elamon on his career and the photography of Rajisha Vijayan’s Finals. 
Sudeep Elamon
Sudeep Elamon

With Finals set to hit theatres on September 6, Sudeep Elamon, the cinematographer of the film, is on cloud nine.

As a person who loves adventure games and scuba diving, Sudeep couldn’t refuse to be a part of the sports drama directed by P R Arun.

“The emotional element of the story that portrays the bond between a father and daughter is what attracted me towards taking up the project,” noted Sudeep.

Capturing the scenes involving cycling was a challenging task for the cinematographer and his team as it required them to keep the camera close to the athletes and include all angles to track their movement. Also, the visuals had to be shot using specialised drones to get the feel of an international cycling event.

“Shots from helicopters are normally used while covering international cycling events, so recreating the scene using drones was difficult as it is not something that we normally see in Malayalam movies,’’ Sudeep said.

The cycling scenes in the movie were shot in Kattappana and places in Thiruvananthapuram like the LNCPE ground and Chandrasekharan Nair Stadium.

“The early stages of the protagonist’s career that show her training as an athlete were shot in the city,’’ he added.

As the son of prominent wildlife filmmaker and photographer Suresh Elamon, Suddep has always been interested in following his father’s footsteps.

“My father shot the Kerala forest which was shown in the BBC’s documentary Land of the Tiger (1997). I had also attended the Green Oscar Film festival (2003) in London with him which greatly developed my interest in wildlife photography”.

Sudeep’s Life Force 2, a wildlife documentary that he did as part of an Animal Planet series was a finalist at the C M S Vatavaran Film festival held in 2013 at New Delhi.

The documentary tries to show the existence of Gondwana, the supercontinent that existed 30 million years ago.

“We shot the purple frog in India, which emerged from mud only eight or seven days a year. Its closest relative is located in Madagascar that is close to East Africa.

It’s proof that India and Africa were one at that time”.

Apart from shooting wildlife and commercial films Sudeep has also jointly directed the film Sleeplessly yours with his friend Goutham Soorya in 2017. The film shows the life of couple Jessy and Maanu who experiments with sleep deprivation.

“After the characters are deprived of sleep for more than three days, they are emotionally and physically affected. Its impact be likened to that of drugs or alcohol as the characters began to hallucinate”, the 27-year-old filmmaker said.

The film Sleeplessly Yours was also among the top ten Malayalam films was screened during last year’s International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK). Presently Sudeep is shooting for the Prithviraj—Biju Menon starrer Ayyappanum Koshyum in Attappady, Palakkad.  

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The New Indian Express
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