Background
Rajiv was born in Kochi, Kerala to the popular Malayalam and Tamil film playback singer Kalyani Menon. He had the chance to travel across India at a very young age as his father, a naval officer, got transferred often.
Rajiv was born in Kochi, Kerala to the popular Malayalam and Tamil film playback singer Kalyani Menon. He had the chance to travel across India at a very young age as his father, a naval officer, got transferred often.
He is known for directing critically acclaimed Tamil films like Minsara Kanavu and Kandukondain Kandukondain. He later joined the film school to study cinematography. Menon did his schooling in Kendriya Vidyalaya, Madras.
He met a man named Jason Globerman who inspired him to become cinematographer.
He started off as cinematographer with Prathap K. Pothan"s Telugu film, Chaithanya. However, he got his major breakthrough as a cinematographer with Mani Ratnam"s Bombay.
Menon"s second film. His latest work being Kadal.
His second directorial venture was the multi-starrer Kandukondain Kandukondain. In addition to directing the film, he also wrote the story and screenplay for the film.
The film fetched him the Filmfare Award for Best Tamil award. Menon has also set up Rajiv Menon Productions and Mindscreen Film Institute, which supplies equipment for documentaries, advertising films and cinema.
He has acted in a Malayalam film called Harikrishnans and has appeared for a few seconds in his own movie Minsara Kanavu.
His recent work includes a wonderful audio-visual delight about seven great Carnatic musicians. This documentary was made for the event of releasing the coffee-table book "Voices Within" by the contemporary musicians T.M Krishna and Bombay Jayashree. The book brings out the personality of seven great Gurus of Carnatic Music with some very rare photographs presented in great print quality.
The documentary by Rajiv Menon captures the qualities of these music stalwarts.
Falling in love with ad-making at a young age, Menon started his career in the field of ad-photography, and then went on to make a number of television commercials. Rajiv Menon has been a well-respected and notable personality in the Indian Advertising circuit.
He entered the field during the early days (1980"s) when competition was nil. lieutenant was the time when A. R. Rahman decided to do music on his own.
He did his first Jingle in a national wide ad with him (Allwyn Trendy Watches).
So far, Rajiv has done many ads with A. R. Rahman"s Jingles. Noteworthy ones are for Airtel, Colgate, Palmolive, Titan, Asian Paints, Raymonds, Coca Cola. Rajiv Menon"s production house was ranked Number.3 by Economic Times Mumbai in 2006.
The next year"s ranking saw the company move to Number.2.
Rajiv Menon"s production house is set up in Chennai and his agency clients range from Ogilvy & Mather, Lintas, Rediffusion, Hindustan Thompson Associates, to even smaller ones like Zero Degree Design Studio, Rubecon and Situations Advertising.