And for the man who got to shoot the film, the anticipation is doubly heady.

National award winning cinematographer (Priyadarshan's Thenmavin Kombathu) K V Anand recounts his experiences of working in the film in this interview. Excerpts:

The offer to shoot Sivaji

I had missed out doing the last few films of Rajni including Baba and Chandramukhi. When Ram Kumar asked me to do Chandramukhi, I was in the middle of my first directorial venture Kana Kandein.

I had done two films for Shankar; Mudalvan, and Nayak in Hindi. But I couldn't do his last two films; Boys and Anniyan. That was because of my prior commitment with Rajkumar Santoshi. I was doing The Legend of Bhagat Singh when Shankar called me for Boys and I was doing Kakhee when he called me for Anniyan.

It was in August 2005 that Shankar called me for Sivaji. I was already feeling bad for missing out on the last four films of Rajnikanth and the last two films of Shankar. So, when Shankar told me Sivaji would be a Rajni film, I was ecstatic. I set everything aside and accepted Sivaji.

Text: Shobha Warrier
K V Anand's photograph: Sreeram Selvaraj

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