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Rajeev Jain - Indian Cinematographer
Life through the lens ....
What can I say, I shot film ever since ...
Over the years I I had the opportunity to work with many of the best filmmakers around. The nice thing is that I was exposed to many styles and approaches. I've learned what I like and I learned how to problem to solve a variety of lighting conditions.
My favorite style is to shoot with natural lighting, motivated light sources. I enjoy working with large soft sources and then "paint the shadow areas. I work very hard to make sure that what story is told and enhanced communication with the light and images.
For me, the best cinematography, the kind that takes you to another world? cinematography that brings you the experience of the story and makes you quickly forget that you're a movie looks. Seamless and realistic.
The great masters of light, which inspired me Dante Spinnoti, ASC Heat, The Insider, Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC Sugarland Express, The Deer Hunter, Don Burgess, ASC Cast Away, contact, and John Toll for his brilliant work on Legends of the Fall. Finally, the greatest master of the light in my opinion is Rembrandt. Are art is really inspiring for me. My favorite piece is The Polish Rider, a beautiful work of art.
Directors I admire also Ran Akira Kurasawa, Tony Scott Of The Enemy State, Ridley Scott Gladiator, Good Will Hunting Gus Van Sant, and Michal Mann Insider and Heat.
I am blessed by the opportunity to live a life doing what I love to make. "
A CONVERSATION WITH Rajiv Jain (ICS / WICA)
QUESTION: Where were you born and raised?
Rajiv Jain: I was born on November 29 1964 at a Civil Hospital in Lucknow, India in a working class (Indian term: lower middle class family), hard core Hindi-speaking family. I have my formative years in the Etawah located in Uttar Pradesh state, India. That is where I grew up. It was a one-horse one-horse town with a bank. I had a great child-hood is. We came from a relatively closed in urban areas, and suddenly I was in this environment where we could ride bikes outside in the bush. We also had the River. It was beautiful. I loved the outback and the large open spaces. My father worked in a bank and we moved / transfer every two to three years. My mother is the whole world around her children and the house, so you see, I led a very sheltered childhood with little or no contact with the outside world to speak off. My father had an Instamatic camera that has fascinated me, but I was forbidden to put my hands on, its funny, but somewhere in my curiosity I actually developed photography was forbidden to touch the camera. My father provided me as a doctor, engineer or an IAS officer.
QUESTION: Your Qualifying ...
Rajiv Jain: I went to the University of Lucknow in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh state and I was fortunate to go to the Bhartendu Academy of Dramatic Arts (Bhartendu Natya Academy / Bhartendu Natya Akademi), Lucknow. I studied in Stage Craft and minored in Stage Lighting, with the intention of a lighting designer.
QUESTION: Do you plan to follow in the footsteps your father?
Rajiv Jain: I do not think I ever saw myself in the banking profession. I actually caught the filmmaking bug when I was about 10 or 11yrs old. A Satyajit Ray film named Shatranj Ke Khilari was filmed in my neighborhood in Lucknow. I saw the trucks to the streets, and then crept around the house where they were shooting. I saw them setting up the lighting and cameras. I was completely awe.
QUESTION: Were there any other influencers in your family?
Rajiv Jain: My mother is a religious person. I had often looked her prayers, I do not think I should work for all those who were prayed for. Our careers and our future, my mother is greatest concern. I remember that moment as if it were yesterday was, I was chatting with mom when she cleared the dinner dishes and she happened to ask me what I wanted to do with my life after getting my degree from the drama, at that time I had a piece of 35mm film still in my hand "I would like to do something with this" I said watching the film. It is a long way since then but my mother stood beside me those early years and guided me every step of the road. I was very happy to join the Film & Television Institute of India, but I do not qualify for the entrance examination, but the transition from theater to photography and cinematography seemed then a very natural progression.
QUESTION: Were you interested in films in those days?
Rajiv Jain: Ya sure! like any other boy of my age the film world fascinated me, it was not the case to be Star Struck every aspect of the movie interested me, so it came as a spontaneous reaction when one of my all time favorite professors (Guptaji) asked me what I wanted in life? "I want a career for me in the film world, I wants to make magic behind that screen. "So yes, my love for cinema goes back a long way. I grew up watching Hollywood and Indian films. I was not drawn to foreign films. American films were the ones I enjoyed the show. Not more than most kids, but I managed to meet the great hits of the time to see. My dad took me to Lawrence of Arabia see, Dr. Strangelove, The Longest Day during the 1970s. He loved the great historical dramas. I was a film buff in the early 1980s, while I went Drama School in Lucknow. Some of my friends and I happened a bohemian folk and classical music and dance find theater, professional drama company, amateur photography club and underground cinema called Lucknow Film Society. They showed classic films and new wave. They were usually 16 mm images projected on a wall. That is where I discovered the world of cinema. I remember seeing Metropolis and Citizen Kane, and films of Bergman, Fellini, Truffant, Welles, Cocteau and Stan Brahkage. That was during my late high school and early college years. I began to read on films and directors and started clicking pictures. I saw a movie that changed my life at that time, it was a movie called Goddard Contempt that Raoul Coutard shot. It was a CinemaScope film, which is very similar to what I did in photography, although of course twenty years earlier. It used many primary colors. It was a movie that put much emphasis on the composition and it had great shots and long tracking shots with two tiny people walking by a big red wall. That was the first time that I connect in my head that maybe films was where my career was headed. I began to feel limited by the still photography. It was the first I recognized the potential of cinema where the story is told through a narrative are a visual way.
QUESTION: Were there particular films that made an impression on you?
Rajiv Jain: Citizen Kane, Vertigo, La Règle du jeu, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Tokyo Story, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sunrise, Battleship Potemkin, 8-1/2, Singing in the Rain, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Strangelove, Bicycle Thieves, Raging Bull, Vertigo, Rashomon, Seven Samurai.
QUESTION: Tell us about your background?
Rajiv Jain: My first encounter with the physics of light came by accident. At one days, when I was cleaning brushes in a dark garage, a light shines through a slit image projected on the wall turning the room into a giant camera obscure. My first exposure to film was a process camera attached to a dark room the size of my apartment. It just so happened that one of the jija Surendra ji (universal law) was 35 mm a very avid photographer who always had his Nikon camera hung around his neck. He got me interested in photography and encouraged me to go to Kanpur, with stills taken from him a student demonstration in 1980 s. That was my first experience with a camera I was able to express myself by taking photos. I started studying Photo manuals trying to learn about composition. I watched artistic photographers use the foreground color and light and shadows. That is my desire to learn more and walk more. I had a full-time job in a dark room and did a photography studio at night and taking pictures in the weekend. This was not only my thirst for learning more about photography. After completing my training in Lucknow in 1985 I moved to Mumbai and started as a runner / training in the low budget series, features and industrialists.
QUESTION: Were you thinking at that point in your life that you wanted to get into narrative filmmaking?
Rajiv Jain: I must admit, I never thought much of a chance for me to work in Mumbai. It was very difficult for North Indians in Bombay for a break .. The only other place where they make movies when was in Calcutta and Madras. I decided to learn English with the concept that I would go there and give it a try. Of course, all the work I did, I never in a true sequence of lessons, and I'm part dyslexia, making it difficult to learn a new language.
QUESTION: How did you start in business? What have you done?
Rajiv Jain: I started as Haskell, student, trainee, spark, grip, key grip, charger, best boy, and worked away to focus puller gaffer (Indian term: chief assistant DOP).
QUESTION: How long did you work assistant?
Rajiv JAIN: Oh, about 7 to 8 years.
QUESTION: What do you do when you complete your assistant job?
Rajiv Jain: I worked in Mumbai / Bombay on documentaries, corporate films and commercials as a camera assistant and Gaffer. They were all small projects. I worked with a few cameramen who shoot locally. It was a little above 16mm and 35mm, mainly to make some money. While I was doing that I was still mostly shooting several short films and documentaries. I was always working on my craft and building my reel, with the idea that I would shoot one days functions. When I ship the assistance, I gaffed a little, a little help and was shot industrial films, documentaries, commercials and other small jobs. I shot the films for medical sales companies promote new products and techniques, small religious dramatic films for a company T-Series, distributed them to temples, and a number of different shows. I have a lot of jobs through people I knew during my days helping. It is very important to make friends because the people who go to people they know when they bring along a track. We had our own rotating group of guys who already has several jobs depending who was shooting and who was gaffing.
QUESTION: When did you decide to focus on cinematography?
Rajiv Jain: Immediately. I thought the leadership process too long, and I found like a cinematographer. During my second year of drama school in 1985 I worked for three to four months for a television station Lucknow. My job was to select what was enough of the program. It was a great internship. I also learned the craft as second and first assistant cameraman in Mumbai by Ashok Mehta, Binod Pradhan & KKMahajan
QUESTION: What was the deciding factor in making this decision?
Rajiv Jain: I did not want to look back on one days and regret that I never tried. I did not want to be 80 years old wondering if I could succeed. If I do not, I could have gone back to Lucknow feel that I gave it my best shot. So I came to Mumbai in the middle of a fuel crisis - just travel in auto-rickshaw was a big challenge. I went around interviewing various DOP is because they are much more accessible film than big operations. There was no way I could get in the door one of these places. After about three months, the money is low. I went through a sort of a warehouse in Mumbai on Saturday, and I could see an open door if they were building sets. I remember thinking, they would not work on a weekend, unless they were behind. So I walked in, found the foreman and told him that I am a carpenter. He asked if I had a set-building experience? I lied and said yes. It was only half a lie, because I had built many sets for plays in the drama school. The only agreement is that they are both made of wood. They built sets for TV commercials.
QUESTION: Does it work as a gaffer help in cinematography?
Only in India does Gaffer Assistant Chief of DOP. We do not have the tradition of the foreman. I approached the job as a cinematographer think. I was a new technique or a new type of light to the attention of the cameraman I was working with, suggesting something that would help the story a better way. I think I learned more by looking at other camera work than anything otherwise. One of the only ways to really learn cinematography is another cameraman. That is how I think the knowledge is passed. You finally picking up little pearls of wisdom along the road. The main things I learned by watching other cameraman at work were not technical, but how comfortable are set for the director and actors, and how to make a creative environment instead of a technical environment.
QUESTION: How are you in the T-Series music videos?
Rajiv Jain: I've tried to work as a freelancer for a while, but it was difficult for the union. There was a company called Super Cassettes Studios which was led by the late Gulshan Kumar in Bombay. She had an operation and then place they opened an online editing facility. They were hiring a lot of people at that point and I had some experience as a cameraman and crew person, so they brought me in to a whole studio maintenance guy. I also learned running the tape machines. When I got there, it was a relatively small place at the moment, so I learned many things. I had already made two videos on that point. I worked in the studio on the commercial things and they would bring in union lighting cameramen, and I would sometimes work as an operator for them. I kind of a lighting technician for them, so I learned more in that studio in the space of one-and-a-half years than anywhere else. It was a very intense education because they brought in high-quality video is recorded on one inch. We used the Sony camera and it was a very good camera. I still think it is better than the camera's out there now, but we were always trying to watch a movie disembarking. We would play with the filtration and black levels and all types of lighting to see how we could get it to look like a movie.
QUESTION: That sounds like it was a great experience for you?
Rajiv Jain: Yes, I shoot a lot and are quite creative with the camera in that video. I also got to be in the postproduction process. It was an exciting editing process, and we have a kind of in-studio effects, which I got to shoot. That was a really good break for me and when the manager put me forward for many more projects then. I started doing documentaries. I went on the road with them three times on tour. I have a documentary in Delhi on including music videos, which we shot on video, though we shot the documentaries on video, but it really gave me the opportunity to play around with the image and the lenses and camera shake. It was great!
QUESTION: What was your first job?
Rajiv Jain: My first job was as an independent DOP Army (1994) starring Sharukh Khan, Sridevi & Ram Shetty directed. It color was anamorphic. I changed the contrast of light to eliminate all the gray shades. That was my signature, pure black and white, not gray. Late Mukul S Anand visited the set when I shooting, and later I worked with him for his production house MAD Films are commercials (1994).
QUESTION: What do you do when you read a script? Is it the story, The director, a combination or something else?
Rajiv Jain: Usually it is the story, but there are some people so talented and good to work that I am always inclined to say yes, I will go nowhere. I think in the first place is the story to grab me. I do not necessarily think visually on that ... Ideally, the one film I would like go see. I'm looking for something different than I have ever done. I crave variety. It is a combination of things. At first I thought the script was the most important, but I discovered scripts are constantly changing. It is not so much about the shots you make. Cinematography is about the environments you create. A film is a reflection of a series of two-dimensional images projected on a white screen. It is static flashes of light projected through a lens that somehow stimulates the brains of people in the audience and a three-dimensional moving world. If you agree to shoot a movie, you're making a moral obligation - it is an obligation you owe to the Director and the public. There a visual continuity that makes the audience feel a part of life they have experienced. I tend to be more interested in the concept of a movie. I ask the director to tell me what they want to do with the film. There was a movie called Army. The film is two and half hours long, and it is the only film I've worked where only two pages changed during the shooting. It is the best script in an Indian movie I have ever worked. There are not many experienced drivers in India cinema, because many of them from TV. I've tried to train myself to understand what is necessary to make a film for the cinema.
QUESTION: What were some of the other low budget films you worked?
Rajiv Jain: I do not say those before Pyar Mein Kabhi Kabhi. The first thing I did from my being an independent was a little movie called Rasta who was shot more than 15 days in Jaisalmer and never released. It was my first full narrative experience. I have other films after that. These films played a major role in introducing things together in the later films, because you learn from your mistakes. You learn that there is no time like the present one on film. There is no going back. You need to plan and persevere through the hard times in one film. On lower budget and independent films, which are difficult times coming all the time. There is not an easy shoot, because the powers of the market impact on your shoulders. The most important thing I learned doing these films is that you finally answer. You have to pace yourself and remain true purpose. When we Pyar Mein Kabhi Kabhi (1998) I had a clear idea of the purpose and that our told how the appearance form, but I did not think it worked until he was shown. I was terrified to look at the newspapers and I do not know whether the right track. When I saw the first rough version, it was probably my scariest and most exciting experience.
QUESTION: Your recent work includes two functions. The latter was Badhaai Ho Badhaai. Describe your experience shooting a comedy feature.
Rajiv Jain: Comedy can be tragedy. I think the hardest part about it is that if we shoot everything flat, it's just going to look like a flat comedy. Comedy is bright, but you still want to see the texture sets. In the comedy, I think many times it plays static as it is about comedy, it is not about the joke. If the joke is done in the frame, people should listen. If your camera to tell the joke, it is disturbing. Now, if your camera for a response in the image itself, which is another thing. I think comedy is harder to light than drama. There are different levels of comedy and I see every other photographic level.
QUESTION: How did you start shooting commercials?
Rajiv Jain: Though I still assists in the camera, the production company called and said the agency wanted me to shoot their next commercial. I had never shot 35 mm film, So I was shocked. I remember with my name on the slate. That was a magical moment. The commercial was good, and leading to other commercials, mainly in India. Shooting commercials, I learned how to work with many different people, jumping from one project to another with many different looks and locations. I think I lot of what I learned from shooting functions used to shoot commercials. It is not a conscious thing. I was just in so many different situations, solving the same kinds of problems.
QUESTION: Who were some you worked with the cameraman on commercials?
Rajiv Jain: I worked with KK Mahajan, Binod Pradhan, Vikas Sivaraman then Ashok Mehta.
QUESTION: Do you back and forth between commercials and feature?
Rajiv Jain: I have a movie in almost three years. The rest of my time was commercials. Commercial work is very interesting because a lot of tools you can try first. In India now, commercials are so much aesthetic with the network still like photography, and you learn to create different worlds and they want that kind of unrealistic worlds. I've learned to take risks, because if you want something special you should try to achieve, and sometimes you succeed and sometimes not, but that's all part of the learning.
QUESTION: Are commercials affect the way you shoot film?
Rajiv Jain: They give you a firmer grasp of the possibilities for what can be achieved with photography. You get a lot of experience creating different looks at different ways that can apply to a movie. The more you shoot, the more you learn. Sometimes you discover something news that you can build on.
QUESTION: Do you have a certain style, that makes your work recognized?
Rajiv Jain: I think everyone has his or her style, but I would hate for someone to go into a cinema and say, 'Oh, Rajiv JAIN shot that, because that is his style. "I want to say," Oh, who shot that? "I think you have more versatility in your look this days. Each film is different, so you would think that you can put something different in each film as opposed to creating a repetitive look.
QUESTION: How many features, commercials, music videos have you shot?
Rajiv Jain: 6 positions, almost 1032 commercials, music videos & 43 150 documentaries, corporate and industrial films.
QUESTION: Are all your projects are limited to India or abroad shoots have you done well?
Rajiv Jain: I shot in Austria, France, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nepal, Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Uganda, United Arab Emirates United Kingdom.
QUESTION: How did you finally Indian Cinematographers Society and West India cinematographer s Association?
Rajiv Jain: You could apply to the association. I had experience, both in commercials and films as an assistant and as a cameraman on five films. I had much better documentation assistant for getting into the Union. I was a loader for KKMahajan five features and two television series, and I was an assistant on two features Binod Pradhan & approx. 300 commercials and Ashok Mehta on two characteristics & Approx. 100 commercials. I drew focus to one years, until I moved up to chief and assistant b camera operator.
QUESTION: Is a talent that you're Cinematography born with a skill you learn, or both?
Rajiv Jain: I think you to be born with the ability to visualize. As a child I spent much time looking out the window at school if I had to look at the books. I swore to it many times. I grew up and yet I still do. I still fantasize, I think more than the average person would dare to do. In such daydreams, you create images that take on a kind of reality of their own country. Movies have influenced how we love, what we wear, how we eat, how we walk, how we talk, and how we act in everyday life. You have to walk over the bridge in this imaginary world and able to walk back. One of the tricks is that You must know how to handle light. You must have a feel for different kinds of light. Where do you get that knowledge? You see film as the back of your hand. This is a skill among others you should learn. Even as a child, I emotionally responded to light. It has always been a part of me. Filmmaking grabbed me at a young age and gave me a voice I do not have in another part of my life. I am happy to have found an outlet for. I ca not imagine doing anything else.
QUESTION: Finally, did you ever get used to the fact that you live your dream?
Rajiv Jain: The night before I shot my first commercial for late Mukul Anand S, I have only two hours sleep and I had a dream that panic set our interior hall was built less than half the shell was like. We could not walk on it much less film. There was no room for our lights or the actors. In my dream, I kept asking: 'How are we shoot in this area "after 600 commercials and Feature Films 5 later, I still do not sleep much the night before the first day of shooting. The truth is that I feel me incredibly happy to be able to earn my bread by using shapes, colors, contrast and movement to a story to life. I love the collaboration with the director, production designer and passive players and the cooperation with the composer, editor and writer. If I hear a carefully crafted musical score and images I have photographed together to arrive at the screen brings tears to my eyes. It's incredible how music can enhance my work. I've talked to about these composers and they tell me is the same for them as their music hear and see how photography works with you. We have almost no contact during the making of the film, but his principal assistants in the emotions that bring it to life on screen.
QUESTION: Do you have a sense of responsibility, because many people will be influenced by the movies you make?
Rajiv Jain: I feel a responsibility to the public and for a company I've loved my whole life. I take a lot of pride in the fact that I can work in Bollywood in the tradition of the great filmmakers who were here for us. Films put something in our lives, and we have a responsibility to give back.
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