Kochi: A bullet is in the air, falling. A man jumps up. Imagine walking around the man with his feet up in the air, watching that bullet that is still falling, catching every little detail. Then imagine a hundred cameras fired at the same moment, to freeze all that’s happening in that fraction of a second.
Sitting at his home workshop in Murukkumpuzha, Sino Sidharth had imagined that scene, only seen in Hollywood movies and Tamil flicks like Boys and Vishwaroopam.
It is a huge task to take up, and expensive too, at Rs 20lakh a day. But Sinu has turned his many ideas into reality before. He was the cinematographer of the first DSLR Malayalam movie Nakharam.
Before that, as a cameraman for a news channel, he has sent his camera up 84 feet high to shoot the Attukal Pongala. It is after several years of working for television channels that Sinu came into the cine industry. By then, he had done an underwater cinematography course in Gangtok and a 3D videography course in Singapore.
Sinu shot the underwater song sequence in Ettekaal Second and is set to shoot his first 3D project for Jayaraj. “I would think of possibilities or ask filmmakers about shots they have always dreamt of making but found it impossible to,” says Sinu.
For Lissammayude Veedu and God For Sale Bhakthiprasthanam, he came up with a rope camera that could be controlled with a remote, and shoot fast movements through areas filled with obstacles from above. He loves challenges.
When Sino imagined working on a ‘bullet time’ or ‘time slice’ shot with 100 cameras, he didn’t see a reason to not go ahead. Starring Pournami will see just that in a shot in Manali. Sunny Wayne, Tovino Thomas and Sathar are all in that scene in the climax.
“I can’t talk more about the scene since it is the climax, there are 30 days of shooting left,” says Sinu. His next work with Jayaraj will be his third with the director, as also a Tamil film.
