Sathish
Shankutty, the cinematographer from India who now works in L.A., didn’t have a
business card on him when we ran into him at the airport but we think his cards
should say: “Have Great Cinemagraphic eye…will Travel.” There was a famous TV
show in the 1950s about a freelance gunman whose business cards said, “Have
Gun, Will Travel.” Sathish is pretty much in the same category as that man in
black clothes and hat because they are both very good at their jobs, they love
what they do and they both pick their projects carefully and always produce
better than hoped for results.
As
cinematographer, Sathish is responsible for shooting the motion picture and
providing the best images that the director could ever want. Not all
cinematographers come to the job with that attitude but the great ones do. We
got a chance to see some of Sathish’s work on his reel and we came away very
impressed. It was easy to see that his work was very well thought out and
meticulously executed. It was as if he was a calligrapher taking his time
drawing fine lines that turned up and came to a point exactly at the right
time. By taking his time we don’t mean slow by any means. We simply mean that
the camera movements, whether panning, or dollying or using the drone for
distant moving shots were precise and beautifully performed so the audience
could savor the scene.
His shots
reminded us of Vittorio Storaro, who shot The
Last Emperor and Apocalypse Now,
among many other great looking films. Sathish’s camera work on the motion
picture Desert Sai: The story of a
Killing along with his cinematography on the TV series Paranormal Monster’s Society demonstrated his understanding and
grasp of what a real director of photography is supposed to achieve in a show.
That would be “excellence,” of course and Sathish seems to achieve that top
grade in every project he works on whether it’s a feature-length motion
picture, a TV movie or series or a short film. Whatever he does, whatever
project it is, he is such a deliberate person that he
knows what vision he is going to bring to the story way before he even walks on
to the set with his camera crew. He knows how the lighting will look and he
knows where the camera should be positioned. Real professionals are like that.
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