AUDIOPHILIC From the Desk
“I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about”
Rajakrishnan
- Aurthur C. Clarke
With the above sentiments at heart, we caught up with Rajakrishnan, the chief Sound Engineer for Four Frames. He won the Kerala State Award in 2011 for the sound mixing done in the Malayalam film “Urumi & Chappa Kurishu”. His major projects include Thandavam, Pizza, Paradeshi, Velayudham, Mayakkam Enna, Madirasippattanam, Deyvathirumagal, Kireedam, Billu Barbar, Thattathin Marayathu and the list just goes on and on. Having worked in Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi and Malayalam films, he speaks to us about all the delights, dilly and dallies of Sound Engineering in the film industry. Mr. Ranjith Menon General Manager, Muzik Lounge
Medayil Radhakrishnan Rajakrishnan is an audiographer for Indian films. At the early age of 23, Rajakrishnan worked with Deepan Chatterji as an assistant sound engineer. He has assisted him in around 70 films, which includes Balothekko (Bengali), which secured National Award in the year 2004. He later joined Four Frames Sound Company, Chennai as an assistant sound engineer and now works as the chief sound engineer for the same. He has worked with leading directors in Indian film industry and has done sound designing, mixing for over 200 films in various languages. Rajakrishnan has been the choice of many Indian Film Directors like Priyadarshan, Santosh Sivan, Lal Jose, Bala, Major Ravi, V.K Prakash, A.L Vijay, Selvaraghavan and Anjali Menon to name a few.
What is the current state of the Sound Engineering: Is it difficult to break into?
“silence” on the set, everyone becomes silent. The actors study their lines and each one is doing their best out of the scene.
When it comes to the cinemas, everyone has it equally difficult. According to the movie, musicand light are chosen. This is what the movies are all about; sound and light. When directors are getting to this phase of work, they want someone who has proved themselves. Newcomers do find it difficult to break in. I came at a time when there was a transfer from Mono Sound to Digital Sound. Thus, it was different in my case. But there’s a new pattern “Sync Sound” which is a relatively new field which the said newcomers can break into. Sync Sound is something that is done with all the movies in Hollywood. Here in India, we depend on dubbing. This is for two primary reasons:
In Indian movies, the actors are working back to back on different films at the same time. So, it’s very hard for us to try Sync Sound. It makes a huge difference; we can “feel” the movie and that’s most important. Ask any director, he or she would always vouch for Sync Sound. But it’s not always possible. I got a chance to do it with Anjali Menon’s movie.
Languages: You have a Tamil actress working for a Malayalam movie. In these cases, dubbing is the best way out. Discipline: When the directors in Hollywood movies call for
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I’m sure each movie was a learning experience. Share one such thing you learnt. There are many things that I can say but on the top of the head, I’d say how I learnt the trick of mixing. It took me 3 movies to get “mixing”. During my initial days what I had noticed is that the dialogue is kept high and the other sounds are underplayed. Once when working with .Priyadarshan, he came up with a comment that he can’t hear the background sounds. It was this