For Bramayugam, we had a much bigger space with many layers inside the house… the corridors, hallways, kitchen, wine cellar, store rooms, and pathways the characters keep passing through. In that sense, there is a natural variation in the space, lending a dynamic quality to the image and narrative.
All the shots were meticulously planned, as we spent around 4-5 months on pre-production. Rahul [Sadasivan, the director] would prepare the storyboard himself. Everything was set before going to the shoot. On the set, we just had to execute it the way we wanted to. The film was shot on Alexa Mini LF and we finished shooting in 52 days.
You must have worked very closely with the art department to bring Potti’s mansion to life.
Absolutely. Our art director (Jothish Shankar) gave us a design and as we made miniatures, I would give suggestions about the tonality and more importantly, textures because it’s a vital quality for a black-and-white image. While the colours of the sets and props were kept natural and weren’t necessarily customised for grayscale, I only controlled the brightness of the walls because I wanted darker walls. But keeping the tonal range of the black-and-white in mind, I would ask the team to maintain different shades for props.
We used different locations to bring Potti’s mansion to life. The house was one major portion and then there were a couple of different sets. For instance, the attic onto which a tree falls was one set and then there’s a separate portion for the kitchen, which was a real structure but major work had gone into it. The wine cellar was a different set, and so was the room in which grains were stocked. While it all looks uniform on screen now, the lighting was a challenge because every day, we were lighting a new space and there were so many sets to be lit. It was a new experience.