Interview | Cinematographer Shehnad Jalal: No one, including me, has seen ‘Bramayugam’ in colour

Cinematographer Shehnad Jalal talks about the black and white horror thriller Bramayugam starring Mammootty

Shehnad Jalal rarely watches horror movies. Quite an irony since the cinematographer has cranked the camera for two of the most talked-about Malayalam movies in the genre – Bhoothakalam (2022) and Bramayugam, Mammootty’s horror thriller in black and white, which is now having a dream run at the box office.

“People are curious to know how and why we shot it in black and white. Even though black-and-white movies are regularly being made in Hollywood, that doesn’t happen often in Indian cinema. In Malayalam, we have Don Palathara who shot his first three movies in black and white,” says Shehnad, who received the Kerala State Film Award for best cinematography for his first film, Chitrasuthram (2010).

Bramayugam, directed by Rahul Sadasivan, unfolds in a crumbling mana (mansion), where the formidable Koduman Potty (Mammootty) stays with his cook (Sidharth Bharathan). Thevan (Arjun Ashokan), a singer from a ‘lower caste’, seeks refuge there.

Shehnad says that black-and-white frames have a nostalgic element about them. “When we study cinematography, the initial lessons are in black-and-white medium. At the institute [Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute from where he did his post-graduation], we do shoots in black and white when we start studying lighting, exposure and other aspects of cinematography. I remember developing black-and-white film rolls when I used to do still photography. Besides that, most of the classics I have seen are black-and-white movies,” he points out.

Shehnad says that Rahul had pitched Bramayugam as a black-and-white movie to him even before he narrated the story! “He shared the idea with me while we were shooting Bhoothakalam [Rahul’s second film]. I had made black-and-white short films during my studies and had done a music video ‘Funeral Of A Native Son’ for Muhsin Parari. What excited me about Bramayugam was that not many filmmakers of the present era would choose to shoot a film in black and white. It is a fact that the horror becomes pronounced if we watch it in black and white. Moreover, we had a producer who was excited about the project. At one point, we had decided to shoot the movie in film and had arranged for the film rolls. But we had to drop that plan because there are no labs to process the rolls,” Shehnad says.

Talking about the technical aspects of the process, Shehnad explains that the settings of the camera is changed to black-and-white mode. So everyone in the crew saw it in black and white. “None of us, including me, has seen Bramayugam in colour.”

After an extensive pre-production phase, they did a test shoot of one of the scenes. “I took a lot of photographs of the artists’ positions on the set before the shoot started,” he says.