As the 2027 Project Involve cycle is open for applications, we are looking back at S. Lakmé Iyengar and her experience in Project Involve. Lakmé worked on the live action film Saving All My Love and the stop motion animation film Dormilón through Project Involve. Working on both films at the same time gave Lakmé a unique opportunity to reflect on the differences and similarities between live action and stop motion animation cinematography.

Saving All My Love captured Lakmé’s interest “with its exploration of the mother daughter relationship through hoarding and learning how to let go of physical objects to make place for those close to us.” The majority of the film took place in one house and Lakmé explained that because the film dealt with feeling physically overwhelmed by a lack of space, she wanted to make “the frames also feel claustrophobic and cramped.” With Dormilón, the film takes place in an old theater and draws inspiration from Vaudeville and early 20th century performers. Lakmé researched films from the early 1900s to take inspiration for the film’s cinematography. “The film takes place over one night but it’s a very eventful night so we talked a lot about color and lighting evolution over the course of the film which played a big role in setting up looks and visualizing Dormi’s journey in the story.”

Lakmé explains that “the core idea of cinematography stays the same in live action and stop motion animation; a cinematographer still has to work with camera and lighting in either medium.” Stop motion animation is much slower paced “which allows for more time to spend on framing and lighting each shot”, compared to the fast-paced nature of live action film making. Being in Project Involve, she got access to the story and script development of both films, which she says gave her “an opportunity to try new techniques and push myself to be a better collaborator.”

Lakmé grew up in Australia and after graduating with a degree in Communications and Production, she came to America to pursue a master’s degree in Cinematography from the American Film Institute. Since college, she was sure that cinematography was the job that best suited her and her interests. She was a Film Independent member for a few years before applying to Project Involve, and was drawn to the program because of Film Independent’s “commitment to independent storytelling and amplifying marginalized voices.”

Project Involve gave Lakmé the opportunity to learn: “I learn something from every project I work on. I really appreciated that Project Involve is a program that spends a significant amount of time on story and script development, and I learnt a lot about this process by listening in on these sessions, something I don’t regularly get to do as a cinematographer.”

Working on Dormilón was the first time she had been a part of a stop motion animation project from start to finish. “I learnt so much about the process of creating an animated film, how different departments collaborate and how I can make early contributions that can also benefit other departments and their decisions. These are all skills that I continue to use today.”

In addition to learning, being a part of Project Involve gave her the opportunity to build community: “I also loved getting to work with new collaborators and building those relationships over the course of these films.” Looking forward, Lakmé has a few projects that have completed principal photography, and she is currently in pre-production on a hybrid live action and stop motion project. Always looking to grow and learn, she says, “this will be a new style of collaborating for me and I’m excited to dive deeper into the process.”