Cameraman Sridhar can now heave a sigh of relief — one that is similar to the sigh let out by students who have passed an examination with flying colours. For Sridhar’s work in Geethanjali Selvaraghavan’s Maalai Nerathu Mayakkam has come in for high praise.
“I will consider this film to be my toughest assignment because it is Selva sir’s script,” he says. “His script has a lot of emotions and capturing them is quite a challenge. as his films and characters have strong, sub-conscious emotions. I wanted to highlight them using my lighting. Through lighting, I wanted to showcase the inner emotion of a character.”
It’s evident from the way he speaks that the cameraman is in love with colours. Ask him about it and he says, “I strongly believe that colours carry emotions. That, along with the amount of shadows we can use to convey emotions, is unimaginable! In this film, I have used vibrant colours like peacock blue, magenta, red and amber,” he smiles.
But how does he know so much about colours and their usage? Says the cinematographer, “I study paintings. I have observed European paintings which use strong colours. When you use vibrant colours, it intensifies human emotions.”
Sridhar’s motive is simple. “If I can move a person with my visuals, I believe I have succeeded. If I can bring out the human emotions through my lighting, then that would be the best thing I have achieved. To me, a film is like a painting. Placing all the colours in a frame is easy, but picking the right colours for the right emotion is the ideal thing to do,” he says.
He Does His Homework
Sridhar is nothing if not thorough and he ensure he does everything to get a shot right. So, when the team decided to shoot a song in a TASMAC shop, the cinematographer, before getting to work, decided to do his homework. “I visited around 60 TASMAC shops just to observe how they look. I wanted to show the TASMAC shop colourfully but at the same time, I did not want to exaggerate.”