In the press tradition

"Your Premier is a very eloquent and experienced politician," remarked Mathew after his meeting with Mr Wickremesinghe. The proposed peace talks with the LTTE were naturally the focus of his interview, for Malayala Manorama readers are keenly interested in the outcome of any negotiations, Mathew said. "The interest is, of course, greater in Tamil Nadu, but if there's peace in Sri Lanka, it's good for us. Right now, there is a trend for peace everywhere." 

Mathew, is carrying on the family tradition at Malayala Manorama, India's second biggest circulating newspaper, ranking only behind the Times of India. Published in Kottayam, Kerala, the Malayala Manorama was founded in 1888 by his great-grandfather's uncle. "It was in fact, my great-grandfather who built the newspaper up," he says, with a touch of understandable pride.

Though graduating with a B.E (Bachelor of Engineering) degree in electronics and communication and doing his MBA in finance at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA, Jayant Mathew felt the need to change track and went on to do a Master's in journalism at Columbia University. It was to prove a winning combination as he went to work in New York with News Corp, the communications giant which owns Fox TV, Twentieth Century Fox, The Sunday Times, UK and Sky TV. All the while he wrote on India-related issues for The Week back home. 

Inevitably, after three years covering the finance and business beat in the US, Jayant Mathew headed back to Kerala to join the Group and take up the post of General Manager cum Deputy Editor. The broader duties he now has to handle have somewhat constrained his journalistic side but he still manages to write at least one in-depth investigation or issue-based article every fortnight for The Week, the Group's popular news magazine.

The Malayala Manorama Group has some 23 other publications, but Jayant Mathew admits that he channels much of his energies into The Week, where they try to provide their readership with a different style and content, focusing on developmental stories, those that highlight current trends whether in politics, sport, technology or any other field and even offbeat pieces.

"I have a special interest in putting my expertise into The Week because the English language is my strength."

A firm believer in the simple, easy to read and understand style of journalism, Jayant Mathew says the challenge for any journalist is to present even the most weighty and complex issue in a way that readers would be able to grasp. "I'll never forget being told early in my career that a word I had used in one of my articles, 'onerous', sounded Biblical," he smiles. "So now I make my stories as simple as possible." His background in editing also helps here, he adds.

He has also a keen interest in design, believing that newspapers and magazines need to be attractively presented. "Design is very important, for a reader's first impressions of the publication are formed on this basis. You need to make the newspaper so attractive that people would want to pick it up." They have just completed a major redesign at Malayala Manorama, he explains, bringing in foreign expertise to help give it a new perspective.

Widely travelled and experienced despite his relative youth (he's just 30), Jayant Mathew seems destined to take his illustrious newspaper group to even greater heights in the years to come. 

(RS)

The Eyes have it

By Mike Roberts

When The Lord of the Rings special-effects wizards needed to conjure up freaky eyes for the Hobbits, Orcs and the grotesque Uruk-Hai warriors that inhabit the mega-hit-movie version of the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy, they contacted Douglas and Alain de Zilva, the father/son team in Coquitlam that creates special-effects contact lenses that double as windows of the soul for all manner of movie monsters.

Alain de Zilva of Eyetech Optics, shows off the special-effects contact lenses.

"They weren't happy with the contact lenses that they had tried from Australia so they called us, wanting to see what we could do for them," says Alain de Zilva, who was contacted by WETA Workshops in New Zealand, the primary producers of the digital and physical effects in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Tania Rodger, who runs the award-winning effects studio with partner Richard Taylor, says the de Zilvas were "recommended to us and we commissioned that particular company to supply all the contact lenses for us".

Based on e-mailed drawings and Fed-Ex-ed sketches, the de Zilvas produced over 100 sets of lenses, with each lens costing between $300 and $800, depending on the detail.

Alain designs his contacts on a computer beforehand, painting each lens, a detailing process that takes up to four hours.

"All of the Orcs that you see close-ups of, we did different types of lenses for them," explains Alain. 

"Some with high-detail for close-ups and some with different colours for wide shots."

"There were also the Uruk-Hai characters, the characters they bring to life that can travel during the day, the really big guys. 

We designed their eyes. Even Elijah Woods (who plays Frodo), when he was dying and his eyes were getting all blood-shot, the different veins and stuff, those were actually the first ones that we did."

Eyetech Optics was founded in 1986 and the de Zilvas have created creepy peepers for The X-Files, Millennium, First Wave and dozens of TV shows and movies.

Hobbit or human, Alain recommends keeping his contact lenses moist at all times.

- Courtesy The Province