Varamalar

Sri MGR Year 95, 23rd December, Sunday

Dinamalar on Sunday’s publishes a booklet known as Varamalar. During MGR’s birthday and remembrance day they publish unique articles. This year they have given two articles about our beloved Leader Puratchi Thalaivar MGR.

 

 

Above image is the cover of this week’s Varamalar.

 

  

 

One article is about MGR meeting a lady and naming the baby and unfortunately the boy urinates on MGR and how MGR behaved.

 

Another article is about MGR’s obsession with Camera and how well MGR utilized in his movies.  Camera enthusiast Sridhar has collected number of images of MGR handling cinema cameras and as well as ordinary cameras and he is exhibiting for public. Interested members can contact him for the exhibition. His mobile number is given in the above image.

Olivilakku Chennai Release VII

Sri MGR Year 95, 7th October, Sunday

Below is the video clips from MGR’s 100th movie Olivilakku. The video clip further goes into the introduction of other characters first the old women and other characters of Muthu’s (MGR) neighbours. Followed by Cho’s introduction.

 

 

(Watch the one take of MGR, Cho conversation scene)

 

When I was editing the video clip I found something odd about MGR and Cho conversation scene, it appeared to me as a single take when I watched again there was 3 shots but on closer observation they have used two cameras and the scene was one take with 3 shots combined.

 

The scene starts from 1.16, there was two cameras one on MGR side mounted on trolley and another on Cho side. When the scene starts the camera on MGR side, first camera,(position A) zooms in on two characters i.e. MGR and Cho, the second camera cuts in with close up of Cho and MGR and now the first camera (moved from the earlier position A to B) cuts in with zooming out, trolleys from MGR and Cho. Since both the actors are drama artist it is simple for them to execute this scene.

 

Other video clips will follow soon.

Madurai Meeta Sundara Pandian - A Look Back II

MGR directed movie Madurai Meeta Sundarapandian has showcase of technical brilliance. MGR used 9 cameras to shoot one scene to reduce the time and money.

K.Kannan who acted as Kosala King in that movie narrates MGRs techniques in filming the long scene into one shot.

At 2 pm MGR handed over 7 page dialogue to Kannan and asked him to by heart the dialogs and the shot will be ready by 4 pm. Since it is last day of shooting in Jaipur if the scene does not end by 5 pm (as the Sunlight gets weak) they have to stay another 1 day.

Kannan was eager how MGR will shoot this lengthy scene. Within two hours MGR fixed 9 cameras and no camera is visible to other camera angle. His placement of 9 cameras was checked again.

By 4.15 pm MGR said "Action" then Kannan as the King and Latha as Kayalvizhi spoke the 7 page dialog without any mistake and the shot was ok.

And further Kannan says that to shoot that scene it will normally take one day to complete but MGR's brilliant mind completed the scene within 15 minutes. MGR's Cinema technology mind is far ahead of others of his day.

The video part will be uploaded in next post.