With the advent of flashy photography and advances in printing, the art of making cinema banners and skyhigh cutouts by hand has been lost. Artist Jeevananthan takes you on a throwback trail down memory lane as he revisits the glory of days of yore when cinema banner design was an important part of marketing for films. His work often reflects a traditional yet vibrant style, characterised by bold colours, intricate details, and larger-than-life depictions of film stars ranging from Vijayakanth to Superstar Rajinikanth.

Tell us about your journey into the world of cinema banner design, how did it start?
My father N.Velayutham was from a poor background in Kanyakumari District. Out of interest in Art, he learnt Drawing and Painting from Chithra Drawing School, Nagercoil, paying the fees from his daily wage works as a labourer . After learning art, he travelled to Trichy and joined actor NSK’s office, which was distributing films. They used to make big banners and cut outs for the films they used to distribute. My father worked in this new medium and learnt the nuances of painting big size banners. After a couple of years, he travelled to Coimbatore to join a sign board artist’s company. In 1954, as a very young man he started Cine Arts, and the first assignment he got was the publicity of the film Thookku Thookki, starring Sivaji Ganesan. After a couple of years, I was born as his eldest son. From my childhood, I was always with my father, watching him working and I grew up in an atmosphere of paints and brushes, smelling the aroma of linseed oil and vajram (gum) mixed with chalk powder, which was used as a starching material for making ordinary cotton cloth into a strong canvas material.

How did your family influence your choice?
Even as a kid, I used to draw well, and my father was always proud of me. Whenever his friends visit him, he would ask me to do a live sketch of them and when I did it with exact resemblance, everyone would laud my talent. In school and college, I used to contest in art competitions and would win prizes. Though academically strong, with a degree and PG in Political Science and a degree in Law, I used to paint with equal enthusiasm. I used to break the laws of painting and would use modern styles in composition, usage of colours and fonts. Sometimes, we would have heated arguments with my father on such styles. Though he protested, was always happy with my activities. He never wanted me to follow his footsteps and wanted me to become an IAS officer. But life had its own course. During my second year of Law, he had a heart attack and left the world leaving his wife and six children behind. As the eldest, I took the brush and continued to do banner paintings even while studying in the college. After passing out and enrolling as a lawyer, I used to go to court in the daytime and would paint in the evenings till midnight. After 9 years, I couldn’t manage both the boats, so stayed to be an artist instead of a lawyer. Though the income was not lucrative, we were always busy painting and had a staff of more than 10 people, comprising carpenters, banner stretchers, cart pullers, background painters, letter artists, artists. My choice actually was not out of compulsion and I enjoyed painting.

What was the first cinema banner you designed?
During 1977, I came home for a vacation from Chennai. In our studio, I saw a black and white still of an unknown actor with cigarette dangling from his lips and his face lit from below. I was very much eager to paint it on the banner. I asked my Dad’s permission and he allowed it on one condition. As it was for the city theatre, if he was not satisfied with my work, he would repaint on it. With great enthusiasm I painted the actor’s image on the banner in colour and in the style of patchwork . My father and his friend were standing there watching me painting. After I completed it, my father was silent and then said ‘Ok, we will use this’. His friend was praising me to the sky. The film’s name was Moonru Mudichu and the unknown actor was Rajnikanth.

What was the world of cinema like at that time when compared to now both in terms of art, sets, ambience and so on.
Those days, everything was handmade right from poster designs, banners, cut outs to studio sets. Great manual skills were needed in creating these. Mostly the time limits were very short. Great artists like S.M.Pundit, J.P.Singhal, Ramkumar Sharma. Eswar and Bharani were involved in poster designing and every poster was an artwork. Another set of artists right from Achrekar who designed the sets for Raj Kapoor to Thotta Dharani were involved in set designing and erecting them. Skilled carpenters and Plaster of Paris moulders were hired for these works. The sets created for films like Avvaiyar, Chandralekha even during the 40s still create surprises when we watch these films. Spectacular sets, innovative lighting for black and white cinematography, trick shots created manually were all wonders for the age they were created. Cinema banners were introduced to the whole of India from Chennai. A highly respected and talented artist K.Madhavan painted huge plywood cut outs and cinema banners for the Hindi film Chandralekha for North Indian theatres and people were looking at them in awe. After the coming of the computer into our lives, everything has changed. Poster designs and banner flex designs are not made by artists, but by photoshop technicians, who have no idea of what a final product will look from a distance. They copy designs from the net and from foreign film posters. Art directors too make backgrounds from softwares and now sets are replaced by green matte screens, and afterwards the backgrounds can be added in computer graphics. The lack of human touch leads to lifeless visuals.

Can you share any compliments from big stars and directors for whom you designed these banners for?
Usually painting banners was a thankless job. Only ordinary fans and public used to appreciate it openly. I remember a very young Raghuvaran whose grandfather and father were hoteliers in our area, and his father Velayuthan Nair was a film distributor too. Raghuvaran came to me with his stills from Ezhavadhu Manithan and asked me to make banners with great facial expressions. I was surprised that he was acting in a film. He was very happy to see his face on a giant banner and he appreciated me. Sathyaraj ordered us to make his own cut out for a film Avasarakkari. Director Manivannan worked for a short period in our studio as a letter artist and when he was directing Amaithippadai he insisted that we should make the cut outs of Sathyaraj that were used in the film for election campaigns. Directors like S.A.Chandrasekar and Bhadran have visited us when we were making banners for their early films and watched me painting.

Which ones are your favourite?
There are plenty of my works which are close to my heart. One of them was Rajnikanth’s close up face that was 10 feet high, wearing coolers and two tree images reflecting on the coolers. Many people used to turn around to see whether there were trees on the opposite side. Parthiban’s face was another. I didn’t even know who he was when I was painting his head for Puthiya Padhai. For films by directors like Mahendran, Balachander, Bharathiraja, Manirathnam and many others, I took special care in colour schemes, lay outs etc. to produce art works that would steal the heart of the passers by. Hollywood films and Hindi films inspired me to make beautiful artworks and I was very enthusiastic in painting them. All were my favourites.

What is the process that goes into making a banner? Who will brief you.
Usually, the film distributors who had the rights for particular areas will give orders for theatres they are screening. We used to work generally for Coimbatore, Erode, Tirupur and Nilgiri districts. For English, Hindi and Malayalam films, the theatre owners used to give orders. The theatres had different measurements for banners depending on their frontages. We knew the measurements of every theatre in our area. So, we would make a wooden frame of that size, pin gada cloth on the frame and would apply a coat of vajram-chalk powder mixture. This process was called water coat which would strengthen the cloth. After it dried, another coat would be applied on it. It was a mixture of varnish and a white paste. This coat serves as a primer. We would project the stills on the banner in a dark and closed hall through a projector called Epidiascope. A rough sketch would be taken on the projected image. After that, colours like skin tone and colours for dresses, and a background would be applied by assistants based on the idea and suggestions by the Head Artist. After it dried, the artists would paint again. Letter artists would write the title and credits, using fluorescent paints. For plywood cut outs every part of the image would be projected on a 8 foot plywood and cut and fixed on wooden reapers. If the height of the cut out was say 24 feet, three parts of 8 feet dimension would be painted and while erecting at the theatres, the pieces would be joined together. The paints used for these were colour powders mixed with double boiled linseed oil. Enamel paints would be mixed for quick drying too. Painting banners is a very fast job. I used to paint a 10 feet high head within 20 minutes. The job was a very painful and laborious one too. Mixing the colours on a table, climbing on a bench called goda, applying and shading colours, climbing down ….for a single image the artists would have gone up and down a hundred times. The real challenge was the artist could see the painting he was doing in a very close range, so he won’t have an idea of a full image. But the experience he gained would make him face the challenge. Exact resemblance was another great challenge. Freedom of colour applications and usages gave us immense pleasure as artists. Generally black and white photos were given to us in the past before colour stills became cheaper, and we would create our own colour combinations from black and white sources.

The payments would take weeks and months to be settled, and sometimes returned cheques will be in our table drawers.

Tell us about Cine Arts – the family’s film banner business.
From its start, Cine Arts had plenty of trained artists headed by my father. Apprentices from nearby districts would throng to learn painting and writing fonts. During lunch intervals students from nearby schools would be here to watch what was going on. And art lovers would be always there to watch the artists painting. We had a lot of fans. And when I took charge after my father’s demise, many senior artists left our concern, maybe they didn’t like to work under a young boss who was an artist too. My brothers would be helping too and my youngest brother Manikandan was sent to film institute to learn cinematography and now he is one of the leading cinematographers of the country.

I trained myself and became one of the speedy painters in this line. Whenever we erected banners and cut outs at theatres and public sites, people would throng to watch them.

Till when were these banners used?
We used to paint banners till 2005. Flex invasion was already there. After 2005, we moved to flex printing. People who used to throng to watch hand painted banners lost interest once it came to these dull and cheap flex prints and now nobody cares. When the film distribution business crashed and film making, distribution and exhibition went into the hands of corporates our flex printing also is facing bad times.