Mira Nair’s 6 Tips for Developing a Visual Palette for Film

Mira Nair is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker who's one of the most renowned translators of the Indian-immigrant experience. Born and raised in Rourkela, India, Mira began her career as a stage actor in India before moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she transitioned to documentary films at 20 years old. Her narrative feature debut, Salaam Bombay! (1988), won the Camera d’Or and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film.

A resourceful and determined independent filmmaker who casts unknowns alongside acclaimed actors, Mira has directed Mississippi Masala (1991), The Perez Family (1995), Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996), Hysterical Blindness (2002), Vanity Fair (2004), The Namesake (2006), Amelia (2009), and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012). Her film Queen of Katwe, about a Ugandan girl with an aptitude for chess, stars Lupita Nyong’o and David Oyelowo. Mira’s credits also include directing the musical version of her acclaimed film Monsoon Wedding (2001) at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where it had an extended, sold-out run in 2017. She is the director of BBC’s adaptation of A Suitable Boy.

Whether you're directing a blockbuster feature film or your first short film in film school, it's important to cultivate a distinct visual palette for your film. Mira Nair, who has more than 30 years of experience making films with unique and striking visuals, follows these rules in her work:

1. 1. Have a point of view. “It's important to have a point of view about the story, and equally a point of view of the aesthetic and of the design of the story.” For instance, India, when it is represented in Hollywood at all, often sinks into stereotypes; loud colors, gaudy costumes, exotic clichés. Mira wanted to stay clear of those stereotypes and bring her own aesthetic point of view. When Mira was making Monsoon Wedding, she selected a color palette of indigo, ochre, and burgundy—colors that are very specific to India. Communicate your movie color palette to your entire cast and crew, so that all participants are aware of your film’s intended aesthetic.
2. 2. Prepare a lookbook. “Gather a whole manifesto of visual references.” A great way to communicate your intended aesthetic for a film is to prepare a lookbook, or a collection of photographs and images that express your vision. Throughout preproduction, gather visual references that inspire you, feel relevant to certain moods and moments in the script, and reflect your specific color scheme. Organize them in a binder for your production designer, costumer, and cinematographer to study and align with their own design process. Ideally, these collaborators should share your sensibility and also contribute ideas and reference images of their own that support and extend your vision.
3. 3. Share every possible reference. “I think you should show your team every possible influence and reference—showing and telling.” Mira writes a full page of thoughts for each frame, conveying how she wants a frame to look and feel. She may reference pieces of music, the way lighting is used in a photo for a magazine ad to create a certain color saturation or tint, or even a text from the sixteenth century that delineates the meaning of different colors in India at the time.
4. 4. Find collaborators who challenge you. “You must work with people who take you further. Do not surround yourself with ‘yes people.’” Your collaborators are key to the process of shaping your vision. Share with them any and every reference that inspires you, and then give them free rein. The best collaborators will synchronize their vision with yours, and take it even further.
5. 5. Maximize your locations. “The real joy comes out of the chaos of being in real places.” During the making of Monsoon Wedding, Mira sought out a location depicted in a photo of a woman praying on a terrace with the expanse of Old Delhi before her—children flying kites on rooftops, a mosque in the distance, and the open sky beyond. This real-life location became the perfect vista for a character to return home to, longing for the woman he thinks he has lost.
6. 6. Use color to heighten the intention. “Use the desaturation of color to heighten the color in another part of your film.” Sometimes it's possible to heighten certain dramatic themes in postproduction by working with a colorist on a process called color grading. In her film The Namesake, Mira’s team used a technique called “bleach bypass” to drain most color from the image, while certain other colors, such as the color red, pop out. This choice was made to enhance the contrast between a Bengali immigrant in her vibrant red sari, and her new surroundings—the icy, dreary palette of New York in winter.

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