Decoding a scene | How Jomon shot a key 'Thattathin Marayathu' scene that later wowed all

Vineeth Sreenivasan's second directorial 'Thattathin Marayathu' created quite a stir among the youth when it was released in 2012. The popular movie narrates the love story of Vinod Nair and Aisha, played by Nivin Pauly and Isha Talwar. It has captured well the beauty of a picturesque Payyannur college campus and the lively youth festival ambience. It is quite hard to present a crucial scene in a movie without losing the essential features of the location it is placed in.

Vineeth noted there is a magic beyond technicality and literature that makes a movie beautiful. In the case of 'Thattathin Marayathu,' he attributes its excellence to his cameraman Jomon T John.

In an interview with Onmanorama, Vineeth decoded a crucial scene in that film that had challenged his filmmaking skills.

“In my movie 'Thattathin Marayathu,' there is a scene which comes immediately before the song 'Anuragathin velayil..' It begins with a voice-over stating 'Payyannur colleginte varanthayiloode..' I was curious to watch how our cameraman Jomon lighted up that scene,” Vineeth explained.

Jomon generally works at a very fast pace. Be it on the sets of 'Thattathin Marayathu' or 'Jacobinte Swargarajyam,' Jomon had delivered his work quite quickly. Vineeth wanted a tracking shot which reveals the two characters walking together. Instead of going straight to the characters with the tracking shot, he opted for cross-tracking that reveals the characters from a hide. (Hide denotes a shot which starts with the darkness of a wall or a curtain and then shows the characters beyond it. Often, a trolley is used for such a shot.)

Next it was a shot of Vinod and Aisha from their front, which was followed by a parallel shot of Aisha alone. Every shot in the scene was planned in accordance with the voice-over.

In this context, Vineeth observed that Jomon took a lot of time to film each shot.

“He took almost an hour to film each shot in this scene. It was the first time I saw him as stressed out,” Vineeth recalled. After finishing the scene, Jomon called Vineeth to take a view of the end product. Vineeth said he was taken aback watching the scene.

“There was a line in the script which says, 'Her beauty increased as she came out to the light each time from darkness'. We had a detailed plan to shoot that particular shot. But more than our plans, it was a magic that worked out in that scene,” he said.

Vineeth added that Shan Rahman's music was a source of inspiration for the crew while they worked behind that scene. “It was a soulful emotion rather than one that gave professional satisfaction,” he said.