Revolution on Film

How cinematographer Binod Pradhan traced light, colour, and idealism across Rang De Basanti's frames

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I had worked with Rakeysh Mehra on a lot of ad films before Rang De Basanti. When he called me for this project, I was immediately intrigued. What struck me was the concept of the past and present being enacted by the same actors. That was an unusual, exciting challenge — how do you visually distinguish two timelines that are connected, yet separate?

Rakeysh and I spent long hours talking about this. The first decision was to give the past a very distinct look. The obvious thing would have been to go sepia, but I didn't want that. I come from Kalimpong — my father ran a photo studio there — and I grew up in a darkroom, processing black-and-white photos. Those old photographs often turned yellow with age, and I thought, “that’s the look.” I told my digital intermediate colourist, Ken Metzker, that I wanted it to feel like an old hand-painted photograph — black and white, but with the faces delicately tinted. It shouldn’t look naturalistic, but almost like watercolour on monochrome.