An Interview with Award-Winning Indian Cinematographer, DOP Rajeev Jain ICS WICA during the filming of "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree"

An Interview with Award-Winning Indian Cinematographer, DOP Rajeev Jain ICS WICA during the filming of "Kalpvriksh - The Wishing Tree"

Rajeev Jain is one of the hottest Indian cinematographers working in the Bollywood industry today. I met with Rajeev at Film city, Mumbai to talk about his work as a cinematographer with some of Bollywood’s biggest names in directing.

Could you talk about the collaborative relationship between the director and cinematographer? What is the ideal situation for you? How do you like to work with a director?

Rajeev: One of the things I like about what I do is precisely the collaboration with the director, and the opportunity to work with people who I find their point of view [how they see things] interesting, and to work with someone who would approach things completely differently than I would. I find that it helps me grow when I get involved with someone else’s point of view. And I have to learn to listen and see why a director would go in a path that would not have been my first instinct. But, then discovering what it is about that path that I can work on, it helps me to grow, and sometimes it’s painful. It can be difficult to find your way in a certain new perspective.

Ideally, I try to get myself in tune with the director’s point of view. And what I enjoy is then coming back with a set of ideas that conform to that basic structure or groundwork and bring something additional to the plate.

What is your process for preparing for a film?

Rajeev: My process is, I of course, first read the script, and from there, ideas are generated, but I try not to fall in love with my ideas – just get some basic concepts. I try to listen first to what the director has to say, maybe talk about some of the concepts I had on my first read. Then once I understand the approach to what the director is trying to do, then I go to my photography books or visual references and try to come up with visual ideas that I can present to the director. Maybe a certain scene could have a certain type of framing or grain structure or colour. And I present these ideas to the director so we can ping pong ideas back and forth, discard some, keep some – and that will evolve during preproduction. For me, that’s very enjoyable, and that’s exactly the process I’m in right now with the current movie. I’m doing investigation, and then, of course, the production designer and research will come into play as well. So it’s a three-part collaboration. I try to be involved in all of it with the Director and Production Designer.

Of course, the ideas are all based on the director’s original intention, but we all try to come up with ideas that will work together. It’s a whole process that’s really enjoyable and for me. Prep is like going to (Bhartendu Natya Academy, Lucknow) my drama school all over again. I try to keep an open mind and test, test, test everything that I am imagining. I always try to test things I haven’t done before, not for the sake of doing something different but to explore different avenues and to see what we can get. Then, I present these ideas and tests to the director, and from there, we narrow it down to what will be the movie.

What if a director comes to you with the storyboards all prepared and says, ‘I want it like that’?

Rajeev: That happened to me only once on a movie Kalpvriksh - The Wish Tree in India, and I actually tried to quit. Even while scouting locations in Mahableshwar, any proposal I had about camera placement or framing would immediately be shot down because everything had to be exactly how the director planned it on the storyboard, so there was no room for anything. So I said, ‘what do you want me for, find someone else.’ But then she said, but you can do whatever you like with lighting, but this is what I want with camera angles and framing. So I decided to go for it and told myself I would learn to work like this, and it was a good experience for me in the end. I try not to set myself into a definite way of working because ever

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