A Study on Visual Story Telling Techniques of Maniratnam Movies: Cinematography and Mise en scene Analysis of Selected Movies

Abstract

Visually representing a story is an art. Mastering that art and capturing human minds into the soul of the characters of the film and mirroring the very own society was part of Mani Ratnam’s life for the past three decades. This research paper points towards some of the techniques employed and experiments conducted in visual storytellingin his various projects by using Miseen scene elements and cinematography in beautiful ways. In Roja what he Sasnthosh Sivan and Mani Ratnam experimented was painting the reflectors green, to look the grass greener than it actually is. In Thapalathy, Mani ratnam projected a yellowish light, like an aura into the protagonist which symbolizes his history and background. In Bombay, he throughout kept a blue tone in order to gives an element of mystery in the film. In Raavanan, he played with shades and light and that too in two different ways at the beginning and at the end of the films. In Alaipayuthe he presented the story more through the movements of camera and through micro expressions and symbolizations.Theglobalization and evolution of Indian Cinematography can be traced out through the works of Mani Ratnam. His movies have been always acclaimed for their technical finesse. And we can identify the importance of Mise-en-scene elements in making a movie much more marvelous.The cinematography in all his movies has been path breaking. Basically this study indicates the Maniratnam’svisual story telling experiments in cinematography and mise-en-scene.