Shamdat

Shamdat Biography

Shamdat is a noted cinematographer of south Indian cinema who works in all south Indian languages, mostly belonging to commercial movies. Marykkundoru Kunjaadu, Smart city, Pramani, Teja Bhai & Family, Kerala café, Duplicate, Krithyam, Venicile Vyaapari and Ritu are his noted Malayalam movies. Avakai Biryani, Kavya's Diary and Prasthanam are his noted Telugu works. He also did the cinematography of Kamal Hassan’s Vishwaroopam-2 in 2013.    

He started as a still photographer and won recognition and awards for his talent as well. A short named Dominion, shot in black and white was his first venture in films. He was not all interested in assisting any big name. Instead he sought the help of books and also watched movies, to know more about the technique of cinematography. But later he assisted Ravi K Chandran in some films and stayed with him for about 18 months. Kandukonden Kandukonden (2000) was the first movie as an assistant cameraman, followed by Snip, Dil Chahta Hain, Calcutta Mail, Citizen and Punaradhivasam. It was Ravi who adviced him to start a new beginning as an independent cinematographer. He also reminded that if he stays as assistant under other cinematographers for a long time, he may lose his creativity.    

Thus he started with advertisement films. Telugu movie, Premaya Namah marked his career beginning as an independent cinematographer. His first Malayalam movie was Krithyam in 2005, starring Prithviraj in the pivot role. Though he got associated with commercial action movies in his early career, 2009 movie Ritu was an off-beat movie, but a commercial hit. The movie was directed by Shyamaprasad and it was for the first time, this renowned film maker made a movie on an independent new script. Now he is mostly concentrated on to Telugu movies.  

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Updated: April 17, 2014