In the era where cinema focuses increasingly on colour grading, set design, and colour aesthetics came Bramayugam, a full-length black and white film that presented a unique viewing experience to the audience. Colourist Liju Prabhakar shares his experience of working with the film. He has worked in 200 films so far.

Liju stepped into Malayalam cinema in 2013. He has previously worked on films like Bhoothakalam, Churuli, Hridayam, Drishyam 2, and Naayattu. When Rahul Sadasivan presented his wish to shoot this periodic drama in black and white, Liju was initially skeptical.

As a colourist, creating a cinema in black and white was challenging, Liju says. It was a play with light and shade to create the illusion of a previous era. There was a lot of concern about how people would receive this. But after a test-viewing of the first shot on the big screen, everyone was confident, Liju said.

“I felt great satisfaction when I saw the final print. Night scenes were the most difficult to capture and rainy scenes became a different challenge altogether. Some of the night scenes that were captured during the day, especially the opening scene, posed significant challenges. But now we cannot even imagine Bramayugam in colour," he said. 

"People had great expectations as this was Mammootty’s first film after Kaathal: The Core. I worked doubly hard thinking it should not fail because of my mistake. I worked with Mammootty on Kaathal as well as Bramayugam, but both were unique experiences. Now, Malayalam cinema uses colourists even in the pre-production stage. Previously this was the case only in Hollywood,” he noted.

Interestingly, Liju visited the shooting location just once. Colouring is even more difficult for OTT films as the colour seen on each phone screen may vary, he said. The colouring for Bramayugam was done using the DaVinci Resolve software. 

Normally, it takes about a month to complete a colour film. But Bramayugam took a little longer than that, Liju said. He won the Kerala state award for Best Colourist for his work in the film, Churuli. He also won an award for the film ‘Kayattam’ which was shot exclusively on an iPhone. 

Liju’s name came on the silver screen for the first time with Karan Johar’s Student of the Year. He also worked as a telecine colourist for Three Idiots. Liju says that he wishes to see more black-and-white films in Malayalam. Prior to Bramayugam, Liju worked on another black-and-white film called 1956, Central Travancore. Liju works with a team of seven people and says nothing can be done alone, the film was a joint effort.