Posted on December 4, 2018
My conversation with PC Sreeram in the “Journeys” series. (Ravi Varman featured in the previous – and first – episode).
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Baradwaj Rangan 
Rajesh Balasubramanian
December 4, 2018
Friday enna nalla naalaa? innikke podalaame BR? pls 🙂
Once again, please consider interviewing Director Visu.
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brangan
December 4, 2018
Rajesh: I just do the interviews. The planning/scheduling etc is done by the video team 🙂
Algorithms more complex than the one that were used in 2.0 go into these decisions (who is watching? when? where?) and I am happy to be out of all this 😀
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Rajesh Balasubramanian
December 4, 2018
:). So, you don’t decide (plan) whom you are going to interview ? (at least in few cases?)
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Recovering Macaulay's Perapulla
December 4, 2018
“Algorithms more complex than the one that were used in 2.0”
Interesting that you mention this. In a recent talk about Pariyerum Perumal, Jeyamohan says there is an auteur behind Pariyerum Perumal, and an algorithm behind 2.0.
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brangan
December 4, 2018
My job is to prepare and interview people (some of whom I decide on, some of whom we get through PRs, some of whom the team suggests). But the decision about when to upload etc is not entirely up to me.
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Gautam Nidharshanan
December 4, 2018
Dear Sir and Film Companions team, Not sure if I can ask this. Just read your comment on the way you decide on people you interview. You have questioned filmmakers about involving writers in the process of film making very often. I consider Writer Jeyamohan is one of the sensible person whom you could converse a lot on this concern. He has worked on different kinds of projects including 2.0, Naan Kadavul, Angaditheru, Papanasam, Ozhimuri and so. Usually he does not appear on social media platforms, yet recently came across a interview of him on 2.0. He is also a veteran writer in Tamil. It’d be great to see you both converse about stories and screenwriting. (I don’t think he has any PRs. You could just mail him and ask for it.) Please try. Thanks. #AskBR
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brangan
December 4, 2018
Gautam Nidharshanan: Thanks for the suggestion. Will do.
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Eswar
December 4, 2018
+1 for Gautam Nidharshanan‘s request. 🙂
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Recovering Macaulay's Perapulla
December 4, 2018
+1 for Jeyamohan as well. The talk whose link I pasted above is a good example of his nuanced understanding of tamil psyche. In the talk, I was impressed by the explanation he gave about Jo’s “casteless loosu ponnu” portrayal and the point he mentions about the three generatons depicted in the movie and their violence. In his blogs, I have read him talking at length about the process of writing 1) Sarkar 2) Naan Kadavul and he has briefly touched upon 2.0 process as well, among other things, ofcourse.
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Rajesh Balasubramanian
December 4, 2018
+100 for Gautam’s request. Jeyamohan is a stellar writer. He has already written 19 novels (averaging 900pages per novel) in 4years (of 10 years) in the ongoing Venmurasu Mahabharata marathon novel series. He would probably write another 20novels in this series. In an Anantha Vikatan interview, Canada based Srilankan Tamil writer Aa.Muthulingam said that Jeyamohan is totally qualified for a Bharat Ratna or even a Nobel Prize in (at world level) literature.
Kamal about Jeyamohan
Jeyamohan.in website has some 1 lakh viewers/readers everyday(yes!). Jeyamohan’s Pariyerum Perumal speech video already has view of 30k in less than 20 hours since he shared in his website today. So, FilmCompanionSouth (FCS) will easily get the viewer count too and the audience would get good content as usual from FCS.
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rk
December 4, 2018
Waiting for this interview. Would like to know more about his non Maniratnam/Non Kamal movies. Some other questions I would like to ask PC Shriram are:
His earliest tamil movies with Mouli
Lesser known movies like Nee Thaana Antha Kuil
His failure as a director and his role as a director in Kuruthipunal.
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Odiyan - Mammootty's Narrating This Visual Diarrhoea
December 4, 2018
+1 Please interview Jeyamohan and please ask him abt Ozhimuri…
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Honest Raj
December 5, 2018
Once again, please consider interviewing Director Visu.
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Enigma
December 5, 2018
Hi BR, not sure if plans were made by you or your team earlier, but is there a possibility of interviewing director Shankar. Considering that his 2.0 has just released.
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brangan
December 7, 2018
The interview is up.
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Lawrence
December 7, 2018
Hi BR, please do a detailed interview with director Mahendran.
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Lawrence
December 7, 2018
Hi BR,
Interview with Mahendran…
I am, and hope many other film buffs, too, would love to know about Mahendran, the man with such an interesting body of work and craft that is envied by other legendary film makers. I understand that you adhere to certain procedures before interviewing a personality. He is 79, and i think it is about time we got to learn about him and his contribution to Tamil cinema. Thank you.
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MANK
December 7, 2018
Watched the interview twice, it was really hard to understand what he was saying a lot of the times. Second time, I switched off the visuals and plugged in the audio only which helped me to understand a little more
PC seems to belong to the artistically intelligent group that sreehari Nair was mentioning. He has trouble and looks very uncomfortable having to articulate the process. You did your best and pushed him hard, but he wouldn’t budge beyond a point
Was he annoyed by that cinemascope question?
There were some great nuggets thrown around here and there, like color palette for OKK and his inspiration for lighting schemes, film vs digital, but overall, this must be the toughest interview that you have done
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hari
December 7, 2018
I thought you might have asked him regarding his experience working with Myskkin. Cos I remember in your interview with Mysskin, Myskkin said not so “flattering” words regarding good cinematography (forgot the exact words). Thanks for such a wonderful interview.
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Padawan
December 7, 2018
Saar, Did I miss out the reviews of Marvel movies or did you just not review them? The only review I remember reading is that of The Avengers (Avengers Assemble).
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therag
December 7, 2018
Valiant effort BR.
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Dora
December 8, 2018
Incredible job BR sir as an interviewer. In this day and age, when other interviewers frequently interrupt their guests, and even complete their sentences sometimes, I really appreciated how you let him articulate his thoughts, without interrupting him or distracting him. I Didn’t see his response to the CinemaScope question as annoyance, he seemed genuinely curious as to why you focused in on that aspect.
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brangan
December 8, 2018
So I had this interesting exchange on FB, and wanted to put it up here:
Sam Pau (on my interview): This is what happens when a complete Theorist interviewer tries to make a “Man of Action” condense his actions and Instincts into Patterns and Theory.
Even after all the efforts made by Baradwaj Rangan to find a meaning to Pc Sreeram’s visuals, the man just answered in Clint Eastwood’s style,
“If you want to shoot, just shoot. Don’t think” B|
The beauty of a subject is in the Randomness and Abstractness, Not the meaning we try to force on it.
BR: Okay, I saw this interview very differently. For one, I never try to impose MY meanings on a creator. They remain mine. 😀 Here, the attempt was to get at what PC is about. Is he like Ravi Varman or Vittorio Storaro, with an idea or color theory behind his work? Or is he a point and shoot guy? Or is it really that he cannot (or maybe resists) putting into words the processes behind his work? My job is to poke and prod and see what happens. Again, I do not try and force-fit interviewees into my paradigms. Of course, my questions are going to sound like ME, but that’s inevitable, right? 😀
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sravishanker1401gmailcom
December 8, 2018
BR : Sorry if this comes off sounding rude to PC. The man was incomprehensible in every interview of his I’ve seen before – not to put too fine a point on it – a crashing bore.
You got him to talk. Period.
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boredguys
December 8, 2018
I always find interviewers to be cynical when it comes to talking about film vs digital debate. Thankfully this interview wasn’t. I believe in future, shooting on film or digital will be a matter of choice, like the situation in hollywood. Wish BR spoke about the possibility of coexistence. I also wish PC opened up about the colour timing process of Alaipayuthey because cinematographers were never that imaginative with colour correction during photochemical process (they were mainly used to paint the skies or for day to night conversion). And IMO Thiruda Thiruda was the tour de force of his body of work. Excellent interview by BR
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(Original) venkatesh
December 8, 2018
I have seen a few PC interviews and they are always painful.
1) He is not very articulate and mostly mumbles his responses.
2) He doesnt really like talking about his process
And last but not the least, he gives the impression that the process is boring. Even in this interview, he seemed to constantly suggest that his thinking process and how he got to take a shot is “boring”.
This doth not make a good interviewer.
Kudos for sticking with it BR.
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Honest Raj
December 8, 2018
About cinematographer-turned-directors handling camera for their own directorial ventures, I never expected this from him. Balu Mahendra and Govind Nihalani were great in this regard.
Kuruthipunal is his ‘most satisfying’ work to date? Seems more of a ‘content first’ guy. 🙂 And, not a single word about Thevar Magan?
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Odiyan - Prakash Raj would do any movie for a quick buck
December 8, 2018
I really liked his answer to the wash-basin lighting question, sometimes light does seem to play out in interesting and illogical ways in real life…
I am very bad at physics but I think the shiny surface of wash basin has something to do with this lighting from underneath effect…
In films, sometimes when a director, writer, cinmeatographer or editor tries something realistic we tend to find it unrealistic cause we are already used to certain conventions…
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sanjana
December 9, 2018
Cant blame Prakash Raj. He needs money and fame. Does he himself speak his dialogues in malayalam? If so, how is his dialogue skill in that language?
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Enigma
December 9, 2018
Couple of commenters here have not been very kind to PC Sreeram. Looks like he is not very comfortable in English, it might have helped if the conversation had been in tamil. There is one point where he says “Eppidi sollarathunu theriyalai”.I guess he may have articulated his thoughts better in tamil.
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Gautham
December 10, 2018
Enjoyed this interview and thought it was quite illuminating (with a bit of reading between the lines though).
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