The world does not lack stories. Some say there is a dearth of good stories. But is it the story that is bad or the storyteller? Gone are the days when stories were just a long sequence of words put together to create a script. Most of us know of the stories on screen but what about the ones that are off it? This is where Pratha Narang brings her magic. The aphorism, “a picture is worth a thousand words” springs to life in the case of this cinematographer and publicity still photographer who has created posters for shows and films like Half Full (2020 Oscar-nominated short film starring Naseeruddin Shah and Vikrant Massey), Little Things (Netflix series) and Upstarts (Netflix film). She has also done publicity stills for Mirzapur Season 2 and The Last Hour which will be released soon.
The 27-year-old knew that she wanted to take up photography early on in life; it was not something that happened one fine day. “Right from my school days, photography is something that caught my interest. I had started designing posters in my late teens and it was something that I enjoyed doing,” says Pratha.
But the young photographer faced many hurdles and had a twisted journey. In her initial days, she briefly worked as a Bollywood PR handling a couple of big names in tinsel town. Pratha says that during this period she learnt a lot of dos and don’ts in the industry. But just as she was climbing the ladder of success, a breakup weighed her down. Maybe it did not bring her down but it did take her on a trek near Dehradun. It is true what they say about the mountains giving one a sense of clarity. She found it beyond the mountains though, between Dehradun and Mussoorie, in a village called Purkal. “There is a school under the Purkal Youth Development Society in this village which provides education to under-privileged children. I instantly fell in love with the setting. So much so that I decided to stay there and teach for a bit,” she says. A project that she says is close to her heart is a short film that she made for the school—Eloha’s Instrument. “It was to help raise funds for the school,” she says. The short film not only helped the school but also Pratha. “I learned how to draw the line between being emotional and getting attached to my subject through this project. It was a fantastic experience which I will always cherish,” she says.
Post working in the school, the passionate photographer got back to the film scene. She worked on the making of the film videos and still for movies and web series like Hasmukh, Stree, Baaghi 2, Beyond the Clouds, Lucknow Central, Rangoon and Indu Sarkar, to name a few. But the game changer in her career was The Family Man. Pratha was the second unit Director of Photography and drone cinematographer for Season 1 of the show. “It is an interesting story and a very unexpected turn of events. I was working as the photographer for the series initially. But it so happened that the DOP fell sick suddenly and Raj Nidimoru—the maker of the series—asked me if I could handle the big Red Dragon camera. The rest is history,” she says. But it is not only on a film set that she captures stories, Pratha enjoys taking a walk on her own, far from the shooting floor, in search of untold tales. “Whenever we visit different places for shoots, I make it a point to go off the sets and find interesting subjects. I go around talking to locals and I listen to stories saturated with deep emotions,” she says. The go-getter in her refuses to give up on anything spurned by others. And probably this is what makes her style of shooting and photography radically distinctive. Recently she produced a web series— A Viral Wedding—which is being streamed on Eros Now. The eight-episode series is the story of a social media influencer (Shreya) who refuses to cancel her wedding due to the lockdown. The mini series was shot at home with no one meeting each other. With the quirky disclaimer, “No humans were harmed in the making of this series” the show’s brilliance and creativity definitely made it ‘viral’.
One can also call Pratha’s wedding viral. Draped in a gorgeous red Sabyasachi saree, her wedding was the talk of social media for quite some time. “The lockdown was announced just three days post my wedding. And we were prepared to spend our honeymoon period at home. One evening at about 8pm, there was a rotten smell in the building where we stay. It was coming from a dead cat and there was no way of disposing the body as we had been strictly asked to stay at home. So, I dug a grave and buried the cat near the building. The next morning, a headline in the newspaper read ‘cats with no symptoms can also spread Covid-19.’ There ended my honeymoon at home and marked the start of my quarantine period,” she says.
Apart from people and sets, animals are her favourite subjects. “I want to get into full-time wildlife photography in the future. Animals teach us so much,” says Pratha. “Human beings argue over petty things like standing in a queue. The wild is so systematic that way. Animals co-exist so beautifully. The best example is how the vultures and hyenas decide on who gets to eat the leftovers of a kill by a bigger carnivore. They don’t fight. In fact, the decision is made based on who gets to the carcass first. The other just leaves,” she says. With a lot of experiences in her kitty, Pratha is on a hunt for more untold stories—both of people and animals.
A message to people stuck at home.
Count yourself grateful for being alive and reading this, instead of cribbing about boredom. There are many battling their life just by taking a single breath without a mask and wondering if they will see a pain-free tomorrow. Make the most and don’t forget to be grateful.
You’re given a minute in an electronic store, what are top five things you’ll have in your cart?
* Vacuum cleaner
* DJI Drone
* iMac
* Dish washer
* IPhone 11 Pro
Five tips for aspiring photographers and cinematographers
* One does not need fancy equipment to be a photographer.
* Timing and emotion are two important factors. Sometimes pixilation can also add its own sense of texture; don’t underplay it.
* Your camera should be your third eye and sometimes even first. Photography helps you to witness stories that go unseen to the naked eye most of the times.
* Look at your subject with your heart full of emotion instead of just as a composition.
* The reality of your subject must matter more than the output of your camera.
Playing with frames is a form of story-telling. Do justice to the reality of that moment and capture emotion and don’t run behind the light and aesthetics.
10 must watch shows on OTT platforms
* This is us ( Hotstar )
* Brooklyn nine nine ( Netflix )
* Atypical ( Netflix )
* Zoo (Netflix)
* The family man ( Amazon prime video)
* Marvellous Mrs Maisel ( Amazon prime video )
* House M.D. ( Amazon prime video)
* Schitts creek ( Netflix )
* An American Girl Story – Maryellen 1955 ( Amazon prime video )
* Paatal Lok ( Amazon prime video)
