Film editor T.S. Suresh on the mentors who helped him
fine-tune his craft
Being weak in mathematics' was his rea-son to take up Visual
Communications in college, but while helping out his senior in college with a
tele-film production, T. S. Suresh fell in love with the craft of film making,
specifically editing. Suresh has worked closely with ace filmmakers Santosh
Sivan and Priyadarshan. His latest project is Santosh Sivan's Inam. "Inam
was my biggest challenge, so far, simply because it was very differ-ent,"
he says. "Unlike most directors who ask us to use the beautiful shots, Santosh
wanted us to use the not-so-scenic, yet candid, shots to keep it real." He
was 18 years old when he joined the well-known film editor, Anthony, as an
assistant. "Anthony sir was working with many renowned directors and big
production houses in both Kollywood and Bollywood. Assisting him gave me a huge
exposure to the indus-try" says Suresh. Being part of Ghajini's post
production stint, Suresh had the chance to interact with the perfection-ist
Aamir Khan as well. "Although he came to the editing lab in Chennai only
to see the songs, it was an overwhelming experience. He has a keen eye for
editing and gives very detailed inputs," says Suresh. "Anthony also
cultivated in me the habit of watching foreign language films which helped me
stay updat-ed with the world's stan-dards in film editing." After working
with Anthony and numerous big banner productions, Suresh made his debut as an
inde-pendent film editor with Thamizh Padam. "Anthony's style is fast
paced editing, but Thamizh Padam being a spoof, I couldn't use those
tech-niques. For the first time I realised that keeping it sim-ple is the most
challenging
task in editing," he says, adding that an editor
shouldn't confuse the audience with complicat-ed editing. Starting off with an
off-beat film like Thamizh Padam to editing a mass entertainer like Vanakkam
Chennai, Suresh has had a varied range
of experience. Of commer-cial mainstream films and art house
cinema, which genre of movies tested the editor's skills more? "What's
tested is different, but for commercial films there is a set formula that we
use. Moreover, it is diffi-cult to get involved in the storyline in a mass
enter-tainer as there is more to it than just the script. But for
script-oriented films one gets involved in the flow of the story, which helps
in editing." Suresh will be busy this year too with upcoming projects,
like lEndrendrum, ,Irumbu Kuthirai, Vaalu and one other Telugu movie.
