Chit Chat with Senthil - Cinematographer of Magadheera

Cinematographer Senthil Kumar announced his arrival with the off-beat success Aithe. And he never looked back once he associated with Rajamouli for Sye. His work for Yamadonga, Arundhati and Magadheera speaks volumes about the talent of this Pune Film Institute’s graduate. Senthil Kumar is one of the very few successful technicians of Tollywood who came from proper training school. Here is an exclusive interview with this educated and the most talented cinematographer –

Magadheera:
I am always fascinated with movies like Gladiator, Ben Hur and Brave Heart. When Rajamouli narrated the story of Magadheera, my joy knew no bounds. At that same time I was sceptical if I could pull it off. Rajamouli gave me lots of confidence , that we pulled off Yamaloka set so we can also achieve bigger things with Magadheera.

Visual effects were never used in such a large scale in Indian movies before. I had to co-ordinate with VFX team even before the shooting started as visual effects are seamlessly integrated into my work.

Chariot Race: Scouting for locations was fun. We were looking for dry, open lands for the chariot race scene. We went to Gujarat to look for it. Out there Some passersby told us that there are white lands around 200 km away. We were thrilled to find salt lands in Dholavira. We doubted whether horses could run on salt . While shooting, we needed a light weight vehicle to follow the horses. So we bought a Maruti van and cut off the top part and used it to mount the camera along with jimmy jib to shoot the race. We shot a part of Dheera Dheera song in Dholavira salt land. I wanted a dry tree in the backdrop and the art director got one from nowhere. We used a couple of ox as backdrop for a sequence in that song.

100 warriors episode: Rajamouli conceived 100 warriors episode first. We had to make the hero kill 100 warriors,but it had to look convincing. It would be believable if the hero fought with 4-5 people at a time. It struck us that we could use a passage to restrict the number of fighters. Then the conception of a bridge, a cliff and bhairava kona came into existence.

Stadium (Arena): We created the kingdom of Uday Ghad on computer graphics but Developing it was a tedious process. We don’t have the culture of arena fights in Indian history as it belongs to roman culture. Conceiving and shooting in that arena set was one of most cumbersome and satisfying experience.

Golkonda Song: There is a specialty in Panchadara Bomma song. Hero and heroine shouldn’t touch each other, but the romance should be strong between them. It is one of the best songs we ever shot. We explored Golkonda in Sye and Yamadonga before. It only got bigger and better in Magadheera.

Allu Arvind: Hats off to the producer Allu Arvind. The entire production work was handled by the co-producer Bhogavally Prasad. He provided whatever we asked for. We faced no production problems at all.

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