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On the sets of Bumboo
ChaLLenGe
ACCEPTED
MUMBAI
Having being born and raised in an environment where cinema took centre stage, Sanjay C Nair opted for cinematography as a
profession because he knew that’s where his calling was. A disciplinarian, Nair has worked extensively and has interesting observations
about why ‘film’ still rules as a medium for his profession. According to Nair, the most challenging aspect of a cinematographer’s duty
is to achieve the final look of the film, and Kodak he feels has stood the test of time.
V
eteran cinematographer Sanjay C Nair hails from a
family where cinema forms an essential part of the family
tradition. The youngest of a family of graduates from
the Film and Television
Institute, Pune (FTII),
his father Chandrasekhar
Nair was the head of
the department of direction at FTII. His
sister Manjusha and his brother-in-law too
graduated in 1986 in Editing and Direction.
So, the milieu of cinema is something that
he grew up with.
His father has had a tremendous influence
on him as a child, and from the tender age
of eight, he grew up watching films of
great masters of cinema such as Kurosawa,
Hitchcock, Truffaut and Ray, to name a
few. Through the growing years, Nair was
always around edit rooms, dubbing studios,
music studios, shoots, scripting sessions – basically the whole spectrum
of filmmaking. “Watching films, observing how films were made, reading
about films, were all a part of growing up,” he says.
Since he had a technical bend, it was almost like a family decision that
cinematography would suit him best. “At first I had great reservations
about being thrust with this career decision but my exposure to leading
I have conducted tests
comparing mother
negative to DI negative
prints, wherein I
personally feel the loss
of resolution and depth
from mother to digital is
very much quantifiable
and noticeable even to a
layman’s eyes.
cinematographers brought within me a great fascination for the art and
craft of cinematography,” he says. “I started working from the age of 17
as an Assistant director but the pull of cinematography was too strong for
me in almost all the projects I worked in.”
Having spent a few months at Kamlakar
Rao’s workshop, Cintronics, where film
cameras are brought in for repair and
maintenance, Nair prepared for the entrance
exam of FTII. Sitting there surrounded by
cameras and lenses, it suddenly dawned on
him that he had finally made a decision for
life.
Nair has worked on film analogue and
digital systems respectively. According to
Nair, film scores over digital in terms of
resolution and depth, as digital loses the
race in detail and its obvious flatness of the
image. However, digital scores over film in
terms of speed of process, overall control of
the image and image manipulation through SFX and DI. Film analogue
process has stringent demands of the experience and tests the mettle of
the cinematographer, whereas the digital process extends its favour to
cover the blemishes of even the most inexperienced one, to make even a
mediocre level of work look credible. This has brought a dynamic change
in the way film makers of today view the role of a cinematographer the
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