American Cinematographer - January 2021 - 28

CHASING A DREAM IN INDIA

Preceding pages: Sharad Nerulkar (Aditya Modak) devotes himself
to mastering the intricacies of Indian classical music in The Disciple.
This page, left: As a young boy, Sharad follows in the footsteps
of his musically inclined father. Right: Cinematographer Michal
Sobocinski, PSC (left) with director Chaitanya Tamhane.

The story arc of The Disciple allowed Sobocinski to craft a gradually evolving look, and a
key part of his strategy was lens selection. His
main camera was the Arri Alexa Mini, which he
paired with different lenses as the main character's journey progressed. For the first half of
the movie, when Sharad is a young boy and a
young adult still filled with idealism, Sobocinski employed a Cooke Anamorphic/i SF
(Special Flare), to lend the imagery a more romantic look. During the film's " second movement, " when Sharad becomes disillusioned, he
switched to spherical lenses (Arri/Zeiss Master Primes) to create a more clinical look with
less depth of field and to imply that " the reality
of his situation is coming into sharper focus
- his life has become more workaday and less
'hopes and dreams.' "
As a Polish cinematographer shooting a
Marathi-language film in India, Sobocinski
was uniquely positioned to bring an outsider's
eye - and an empathetic perspective - to the
project. However, he cautions, " that can also be
dangerous, because you might be drawn too
much toward creating beautiful imagery. India
has great sunsets, and it's a country filled with
beautiful colors and women wearing beautiful
saris. Those types of things could drive your
attention to visual elements that are not as important for a film like ours, which focuses on a
28 / JANUARY 2021

character who's struggling in his everyday life.
On this project, the director was looking for
more of a naturalistic look. "
In fact, he says, the production had to be
careful with its color considerations, given India's hierarchical society. " When Chaitanya
and I first started talking, I would give him a
color palette I thought would look good, but
he said, 'You know, people in India come from
various cultural backgrounds. So common citizens who live like this and only earn this much
money would never have walls painted this
color.' I think it was actually very brave of him
to hire a Polish DP who wouldn't know all of
these cultural differences. But film is a universal language, and for me the biggest success of
this project has been hearing from Indian people, and especially classical musicians, things
like, 'That is how I remember my childhood,' or
'That's how it was when I performed this certain
raag.' Hearing those kinds of comments is very
gratifying to me, but also hilarious, because the
first Indian classical-music concert I ever saw
was when I was prepping for this film! "
Shooting the musical sequences required
some very long takes. " The basis for the music
showcased in this film is improvisation, so the
performers - none of whom were professional actors - had to actually perform the music.
They were not lip-syncing; we recorded on set.

Some of the shots were such long takes and so
wide that we couldn't really cheat their hands
or the performances. So it was very hard on
the performers; some of the shots were five
to seven minutes long, and we sometimes did
30, 40 or even 50 takes. After I set up all of the
lighting, we would do the rehearsals, but once
we started shooting, it could take another six or
eight hours before we nailed a particular performance. If they made a mistake, we would
have to start all over again from scratch. I controlled all of the lighting from an iPad because
I couldn't really go into the set and tweak the
lights between takes. The performers were
very focused, and we didn't want to break their
concentration. "
The musical performances, as well as other
sequences in the film, were designed to look
very low-key and naturalistic, but they actually required some elaborate lighting setups, as
well as the occasional deployment of sophisticated camera-movement systems. " Chaitanya
wasn't looking for big shafts of light coming
through windows, or hazing up the interiors
with atmosphere, " Sobocinski says. " He wanted
to make it look real, but I told him, 'Look, we're
not making a documentary - that's why you
have me here.' I wanted to create the character's world. So there was actually a lot of lighting involved in making it look 'real' - we had

American Cinematographer - January 2021

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