DISCOVERY: Nikos Andritsakis

IN SEARCH OF NEW IMAGES

Dibakar Banerjee’s Love Sex aur Dhokha a.k.a. LSD is India’s first major digital film. Much of the credit for its authentically tacky look goes to young Greek cinematographer Nikos Andritsakis, whose brief was to make amateurish and shaky footage look aesthetic. “When I first met Dibakar, he showed me some low-grain porn videos from YouTube. And that was all the reference material we had,” Nikos laughs. From there to designing a distinctive look for each of the three stories of LSD was an exciting journey. “The first story is the video diary of an amateur filmmaker. So we used shots from his film, which is why the footage is unframed and quite gritty. The second is a story in a supermarket seen through the store’s CCTV cameras, so we have wide, high-angle zshots. The third story has a hidden camera in someone’s vest or bag because it’s a sting journalist’s story.”

Nikos found the CCTV story the hardest to shoot. “It’s rare for a cameraman to function without the comfort of close-ups or mid-shots or even basic camera movements. Since the entire story plays out in front of the CCTV camera, it was a huge challenge choreographing and composing the shots because the objects and characters were always at a fixed distance from the camera.” The other major obstacle was the lack of adequate digital equipment unlike in the West, where Nikos has shot digital films both for independent filmmakers and music videos.

A self-confessed fan of classical photography, he started his career as a stage photographer and initially worked as an assistant on Greek films because he wanted to be a director. A short four-minute independent film called The Bus, which he produced and directed, landed him a scholarship for a Master’s programme at the London Film School, where he learnt various aspects of filmmaking from direction and cinematography to set design. “That was essential, I think, because a cameraman needs to understand other departments in order to do his job well. My function is to service the narrative in the best possible way and use lighting to bring all emotions of a scene to the surface. Cinematography shouldn’t be obtrusive.”

A 15-minute short film, which Nikos shot while at the LFS, got selected at the Camerimage Cinematography Festival in Poland, which in turn landed him an entry to the 2005 Budapest Masterclass. Before long he was shooting music videos, commercials and micro-budget films in London and travelling across Europe shooting graduate films for film school students. “In Europe, filmmaking is often financed by passion and hence isn’t always a commercial activity. So it’s possible to get independent projects for small budget films which are usually shot under very difficult circumstances but offer a great learning experience.”

Nikos first arrived in Mumbai in 2009 to shoot a film for fellow LFS graduate Anu Menon who was planning her directorial debut. The film got horribly delayed and he was jobless in Mumbai. Luckily, he fell in love with the city and decided to stay on. “Since I had nothing to do, I started shooting stills on the streets of Mumbai. The natural lights here are exquisite. Mumbai is unique and unlike any other city I’ve seen in the West because the beautiful and the ugly co-exist in the same image.”

Nikos now plans to divide his time between Mumbai and London, shooting ads and feature films. “We have reached a point where we’ve seen so much cinema, we rarely get moved by the action on screen. We need images which will surprise us and as a cinematographer, the greatest challenge is to bring those images alive.”