Quotes from Rajiv Menon

Ashok Mehta was the man who brought contrast and lighting back to mainstream Hindi film cinematography.

You have to keep the audience glued by hook or crook.

Accents are not for comic relief anymore; they root the character to the place they're from.

I like to shoot feature films because it's about capturing emotions... words like guilt, hurt, betrayal.

Music is one field where your caste and religion is not important. People accept you so long as you can move them. It is a medium that allows you to fly beyond your caste.

The film industry is moving towards digital technology.

Ashok Mehta did not go to any institute. He did not carry the baggage of formal education.

Film music is always given a step-motherly treatment though it is the most popular form of music.

We have to create images that remain in people's memory because a film is judged by what they have already seen. You are trying to create an image that is unique and you have to employ all the resources available to you.

I think directing a film is like a woman going through labour. After she goes through the labour pain and delivers her first baby, she says she will not going to have another baby. Then, when she sees the child growing up, she decides to have one more child!

Three years at the institute had not taught me as much as two weeks on the sets of 'Susman.'

My films are musically inclined.

When I was in the 12th standard itself, I decided to join the Adyar Film Institute and study photography. I specifically chose photography because I see photography as an applied science. There is an artistic element also in it. If you perfect your scientific element, you can attain certain quality.

I have a brother and we lost our father when I was 15. And that was a big emotional upheaval in my life.

Good acting is confused with good dialogue delivery. Acting is about all about performance, and the way we interpret and understand the character that we bring alive onscreen.

When in school, I was interested in many things other than studies.

In Berkley, they have academic studies on all genres of music including rock and jazz, but in India, we don't have serious academic research and studies on film music; it is such an interesting area of study.

Everyone thinks I am rich, I have a plush office, I make advertisements and travel - but only I know the kinds of problems I face.

I don't have any romantic notions about villages.