Page 88 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

An Epic in Production 75

the more you know what to include in your frame and what
to leave out.
In the afternoon the same ghats present an utterly diff erent
aspect. Clusters of immobile widows make white patches on the

greyish ochre of the broad steps. The bustle of ablution is absent.

And the light is different, importantly so. The ghats face east.

In the morning they get the full frontal light of the sun, and the
feeling of movement is heightened by the play of cast shadows.
By 4 p.m. the sun is behind the tall buildings whose shadows

now reach the opposite bank. Result: a diffused light until sunset
perfectly in tune with the subdued nature of the activity.
Morning scenes in the ghat must be shot in the morning
and afternoon scenes in the afternoon.

As for the interiors shot in a Calcutta studio, Ray’s camera-
man Mitra devised a system of ‘bounce’ lighting, which had
never been used in movies. (Ingmar Bergman’s cameraman
Sven Nykvist later claimed to have invented it, but Nykvist first
used it in 1961, five years after Aparajito was made.) Instead of
direct lighting, with its attendant swarms of moving shadows,
shadowless lighting from above was simulated by stretching a
sheet of cloth over the set and bouncing studio lights back from
it. This matched the actual source of light from the sky in the
open courtyards of houses in Benares, particularly those in the
area of the city favoured by Bengalis such as Harihar Ray. The
‘bounce’ system worked so well that no one was aware that the
courtyard was faked in a studio, whereas the street outside the
courtyard was authentic. ‘Besides its truthful character to simu-
late natural light, bounce lighting has a delicate artistic quality
as an additional advantage,’ commented Mitra. ‘To me, to shoot
with nothing but direct lights inside the studios is something
like photographing the exteriors only in sunlight, sacrificing all
the subtle tints of a rainy day or an overcast sky or dawn or dusk.
It is like someone refusing to shoot in the mist or not caring for
the poetry present in a cloudy day.’

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