And/Or

And/Or

Frozen


Shanker Raman, Motion Picture Photography 1996

Frozen is the story of a brother and sister who live with their father in the middle of nowhere. It depicts the life of a family that struggles to make ends meet, finds itself pitted against inevitable odds one after the other. One fine day the Army moves in next door and the last bit of comfort the family draws from their familiar surroundings changes irrevocably.

Karma, the father, runs a small-scale jam manufacturing unit. His failing health and unending debts make his life seem an endless battle. Lasya, his daughter in her late teens finds herself on the outside of her father’s struggle to keep the family together. She is a high-spirited, ebullient girl with her own agenda which is totally inconsistent with her immediate environment.

The character of the brother changed from the original consideration of a twin to a younger sibling about 11-12 yrs old. He is her constant companion, mostly a passive accomplice in Lasya’s attempts to be the rebel.

I met Shivajee, the film’s producer-director, in June 2005 for the story idea that he had. By November, we had started developing the screenplay that was crystallized over the next month. The first character to be cast was the location. Ladakh is a high-altitude desert, known for its stark, barren landscape that is at its extreme during winter. For the most part of their routine, our characters are cut off, almost quarantined from the pervasive influence of modernization. We were convinced after the first recce that Ladakh had the ideal landscape to depict this physical isolation.

While examining the first set of images shot in October and November 2005, we felt, in order to do justice to the title Frozen it was necessary to find the appropriate visual palette. We debated over many colour tones and colour reduction theories, recorded many images on a Nikon D100 digital SLR 6 megapixel camera, to explore the options for manipulation. Eventually, on looking at some lovely black and white pictures from the book ‘Ladakh’ shot by the photographer Prabir C Purkayastha, we began to seriously consider black and white as an option.

The landscape of Ladakh at that time of the year is predominantly barren, stark, in tones of red and brown that appear saturated against a deep blue sky. Even though it was at times minus 15 Celsius outside in the middle of the day, when photographed in colour it appeared like it was summer. The film is set in extreme winter, and the drama played out by our characters is totally devoid of any warmth, reassurance or cheer. Black and white images seemed to illustrate this iciness authentically. The texture and tonality of black and white, we felt, would make the images associative without the burden of having to create unnecessary elaborate detail. Black and white helped us in visualizing with economy.

The problem was with the quality of black and white processing. Having tried the FTII lab as well as Ramoji during our tests, we found both way below the mark, especially in handling. The print had all kinds of pins and needles on it. We had to find a lab outside India, and some cursory research showed us the costs would be phenomenal apart from the practical difficulty of sending the exposed negative and receiving it in time enough to monitor the shooting process effectively vis a vis the dailies.

Meanwhile, we had also shot some tests on colour negative, which were processed at Prasad. The black and white image obtained from the colour negative had finer grain and reproduced greater shades of grey, resulting in an overall softer contrast. It felt right to choose and work eventually with colour negative for the entire shoot. The DI platform has immense possibilities. If the original negative provided an image close to satisfaction then one could always manipulate it further if required. Finally, the film was shot on colour negative, and after colour reduction in LUSTRE, it will be recorded on Eastman colour digital intermediate 5242. The release print will be on Eastman black and white positive 2302. The DI will be recorded in Prasad Labs Mumbai, and the final print made in Technicolor Lab Los Angeles.

Shooting commenced in the second week of February. A lot of people we consulted were skeptical of our intentions. Understandably. There was a huge investment involved. One had to have clear goals and accept them to keep a certain perspective. Early on Shivajee, Alan (line producer) and I agreed that this concept does not fit into any genre, which is so-called ‘popular’ in the Indian film industry. It does not conform to any formula that has had huge financial success. It does not have any songs. There is no studio backing the production. There was no star signed on yet. But finally, we made our decisions keeping in mind the fact that we felt committed to the idea and we had the resources to film it. And it’s just one of the things that seemed attractive because it’s not conforming to what is conventional and convenient.

The main house was built on location in Stakmo village. The landscape was ideal, huge boulders strewn all over on both sides of a winding road. The peaks were close, and large enough to give a sense of scale. We could build the house facing a nearby hill and in such a way that the front, facing south, was always lit by the sun travelling across. And when we filmed the house frontal, the northern sky behind would be a deep blue for the most part of the day.

The main advantage of making the set as authentic and dedicated as possible was to minimize the use of lighting to create light and shade. More often than not, we used two or three 1K fresnels on dimmers supported by firelamps as practicals to light up the night interiors. Sometimes, a single light bounced off a white board behind the camera would suffice in reproducing the range of greys that existed in the set, something the eye could see with reasonable illumination. We could put the camera anywhere and it would look great. It was so designed that we could shoot 360 degrees without having to shift anything or bring anything extra.

This gave the camera crew a huge advantage in terms of time taken to set up. We hardly had to wait on art to be ready. We used minimal lighting, mostly augmenting available light, and shot handheld most of the time. It helped in maximizing the space for shot taking and the performance of actors. It became a process ‘in the moment’ taking shape and form as we went along. The art direction made it possible with minimum fuss.

The core unit was flown in a week in advance to get acclimatized to the low levels of oxygen and temperature. The shoot did not begin on schedule, due to a rare curfew that stretched over a week or so, combined with delayed and cancelled flights, which were to bring in our grips. Some of our gear was stuck for as long as two weeks in Delhi before it could be flown in.

We had two camera bodies. ARRI 535B with Carl Zeiss primes, and an ARRI 3 body. In addition to that we had an Angenieux zoom (25-250mm). The A camera, ARRI 535B, was shooting sync sound. Most of the house interiors were shot handheld. It helped a certain freedom of movement for camera and actors in the given space. The heavy camera provided a nice sturdy balance to frame slightly breathing static shots. The B camera was brought in primarily for action scenes and pick-ups. It proved very useful in filming real situations during a mela at the Leh market. The camera also was a standby body in case the 535 broke down. We had anticipated some irregularities in performance of the 535 due to the temperature, but apart from the magazine jamming on a few occasions it was fairly reliable.

The biggest challenge after building the house was to transport all the camera and lighting gear to Leh. During that time of the year there is no access by road. So everything had to be flown in. And everything was flown in except the generator.

We built a makeshift housing for the non-silent generator acquired in Leh, to keep it as quiet as possible. A majority of the day interiors were shot with available light. Day exteriors were shot entirely with available light. The winter sun sits at a comfortable angle most of the day. Sometimes it would betray us in the middle of a sequence and disappear behind clouds for the rest of the day. The schedule was a continuous 35-day shoot. The crew did not have any breaks.

Although it was not the ideal choice, due to budget considerations we had to implement it. Physically, it was possible only because of the clean air and cold weather which allowed us to work long hours without feeling bogged down. Of course full credit to the crew to have made it through psychologically.

The final film, of course, is for the viewer to partake of and digest. It will surely have mixed reviews simply because a film can’t be everything for everybody. Having said that, I feel a sense of accomplishment just for having been part of a movement that found a common objective.

GraFTII Factor in Frozen

Danny Denzongpa – Acting, 1970
Shanker Raman - Motion Picture Photography, 1996
Tanmay Agarwal – Motion Picture Photography, 1995
Vivek Philip – Sound Recording,1997
Abhijit Roy (Tenny) – Sound Recording, 1999
Shan Mohammad – Editing, 2006
Prerna Saigal - Television Editing, 2005

To know more about the film visit www.frozen.co.in