A sound career choice

It was the curiosity to know the technicalities of cinema that attracted an Msc, B.Ed graduate Smijith Kumar to learn movie-making. And this mathematics expert could crack the entrance to the film institute in Pune in his second attempt. Here, he enrolled for the audiography course. “The time I spent at the institute was an experience of a lifetime. I had some idea about direction and cinematography, but my knowledge of the sound department in cinema was zero. While studying at the institute, I got to watch movies that used sync sound. This intrigued me a lot and I could clearly understand the difference in quality between a movie where the sound was recorded naturally compared to the one done in the studio,” says Smijith, explaining the baby steps he took to the career he chose out of sheer fascination for cinema.

The audiographer, who won the 2017 State Film Award for Best Location Sync for the movie Rakshadhikari Baiju Oppu, has also worked in the sound department of Bollywood movies such as Fitoor and Bangistan. His talent has also fetched him highly anticipated projects like Dr Biju’s Painting Life and a schedule of Geethu Mohandas’ Moothon. Sync sound, which is recording sound when the filming is being done, according to Smijith, is indeed a tough task to accomplish because apart from doing real-time recording, cutting down unnecessary sounds is extremely difficult. He adds that the support he received from Rakshadhikari director Ranjan Pramod and the cooperation of the residents of the location where the movie was shot made his job a little easier.

“I definitely owe my award to the team and the villagers who made it possible for me to do my first independent project with utmost dedication,” he adds. When asked the sensibility of sound in Malayalam movies, Smijith says though it is gaining acceptance, the process is very slow and is often dependent on various parameters like time, money and even the comfort level of the stars.  “In Bollywood, the shot is given extreme priority and the entire crew, including the actors, only concentrate on getting the shot right. However, in Malayalam, in a couple of situations, I have felt that the importance gets shifted to other aspects. When too many parameters are given importance, the sound is sometimes pushed to the bottom. But no one can be blamed for this because none of us is used to this. Real-time recording was never an agenda for Mollywood films. Very few films  use sync sound,” Smijith says.

Newbie directors are, however, very open to experimenting and prefer sync sound in an effort to elevate the quality of the movie and uphold its natural nature, he feels. Smijith is of the opinion that Mollywood makes some of the best movies and is hopeful that more use of such technologies will make the quality of Malayalam cinema soar higher.