Hi-definition film-maker

IN CONVERSATION

S Nallamuthu speaks to Abhilasha Ojha about his film Dharm being selected as the closing film at the Cannes Film Festival this year and the hi-definition technology that needs to find more takers in India

Your film has been selected as the closing film at Cannes Film Festival this year. What is so special about this film?

Dharm is an off-beat film starring Pankaj Kapur and Supriya Pathak. It was shot in Benares over 60 days and is a story of a Brahmin priest who follows the prescribed rituals of prayers as well as the social practice of casteism.

But the uniqueness of the film lies in the fact that it is India's first feature film to be shot in hi-definition technique. The idea is to set an example for other filmmakers and to encourage them to make use of this technology.

Without sounding too technical, what exactly is hi-definition filmmaking technique?

The technique, to put it simply, is one of the many digital technologies (in India, it is fairly new) that offers impeccable quality in films. Dharm, for instance, has no grains in any of the frames, and has a very clear quality. What's more, by shooting films with hi-definition cameras (I used the Sony camera for Dharm), one saves on time and money.

The quality of shooting with hi-definition cameras is so high that one only needs to "shoot and telecast" directly. There are other benefits too, and especially in Indian cinema this technique can be, and should be, used in the restoration of old film titles. Mughal-e-Azam was introduced in colour and shown in multiplexes two years ago because the filmmakers made use of this technique.

How will budgets alter if filmmakers in India start shooting with hi-definition cameras?

My film was made on a bud-get of Rs 6 crore and had I used the traditional videotape format the same film would have seen a budget of Rs 12-14 crore. The cost of 40 minutes of filming in hi-definition is around Rs 6,000 whereas in the video format the cost will be four-five times more.

A hi-definition camera costs around Rs 60 lakh but that's really a one-time investment. Production houses in India (80 per cent of them) shoot films and spend Rs 30-40 lakh on correcting it digitally later. They can eliminate this process completely if they use hi-definition technique.

Then why don't filmmakers shoot films on hi-definition?

We are witnessing a change and I am sure there will be filmmakers shooting with hi-definition cameras. Companies like Adlabs and Prime Focus are already investing money to support the use of hi-definition equipment in India.

When I started working on this technique two and a half years ago, there was only one such camera in India. Now there are nine of them. My future projects (that include two documentary films and a UK-based fiction show) are going to be shot in hi-definition.