Cinematographer Declan Quinn gravitated to Cooke Optics’ flagship spherical S4/i prime lenses for Lookout Point’s six-episode series of Vikram Seth’s bestselling novel “A Suitable Boy.”
Directed by Indian-American filmmaker Mira Nair, A Suitable Boy tells the story of university student Lata (Tanya Maniktala) as she comes of age in North India in 1951, while the country is carving out its own identity as an independent nation and is about to go to the polls for its first democratic election. The series involves more than 100 characters, many belonging to one of four extended families.
“I’ve worked with Mira for a long time, with a history that goes back to 1996 with Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love and Monsoon Wedding in 2001, which was a homage to the book of ‘A Suitable Boy,’” said Quinn. “Aesthetically we’re on the same page. Mira starts with a ‘look book’; paintings, fashion and location pictures from her first scouting trip to India, then I add images from other movies or photographers and we narrow everything down to create a cinematic grammar for the story.”
The series was shot in 4K with four Sony Venice cameras–two each for the primary and second unit–and both units started out with full sets of Cooke S4/i primes (16/18/25/32/40/50/75/100/135mm).
Dealing with a very dialogue-driven script spanning many characters, Quinn’s tendency was to approach A Suitable Boy with natural light and to see faces most of the time, as opposed to silhouette. “We would have the camera move through a scene from a certain character’s perspective–usually Lata’s [the story’s heroine]. Tom Walden, our A cam/Steadicam operator would keep a moving master shot where most of the scene played out. This wasn’t a wide shot, but a very usable shot where the camera would flow through the space to follow the gist of the conversation. It was all choreographed, and we would use cuts to cover the other characters as they needed to be covered.”
Quinn’s hero lenses for A Suitable Boy were the 32 and 40mm. “Those have been my favorites for most of my career,” he said. “They represent the human visual perspective the best and are great at separating the actors from the background. And with a 2:1 [18:9] aspect ratio, the 32/40 combo works very nicely.”
With large format sensors becoming more commonplace, Quinn does have some experimenting to do. “The S4/i are great lenses, but I’m looking forward to testing the S7/i for larger format projects.”
