Aalaya Cotton is a Tamil Nadu brand built around one of the most quietly significant things a man in this part of the world wears — the dhothi. Not a costume, not a trend, but a garment that carries the weight of ritual, occasion, and everyday dignity in equal measure. When the brief arrived for their Diwali campaign — a matching dhothi and shirt combo, the kind of thing a father and son might both reach for on festival morning — Ajay Krishnan knew exactly what the film needed to feel like. Warm. Unhurried. True.

The commercial was directed by Gowrishankar of Colour Purple Films, with assistant cinematographers Pranav and Suresh alongside Ajay on set. The entire shoot ran six hours at Studio Setfire, Chennai — a contained timeline that demanded every lighting setup, every camera movement, and every frame be decided with confidence. There's no room for indecision on a six-hour commercial shoot. You arrive knowing what you want, and you spend the day finding it.

The Brief: Diwali, in Cotton

Diwali in Tamil Nadu is, among many things, a morning of new clothes. The Aalaya Diwali combo — a matching dhothi and shirt — is designed for exactly that moment: the early light, the new fabric, the quiet pride of wearing something that feels right. That emotion was the brief. Not a product demonstration, not a price announcement — a feeling.

The choice to shoot on a RED camera was deliberate. RED's latitude handles fabric beautifully — cotton catches and diffuses light in a way that cheaper sensors flatten, and the Aalaya range, being a brand that takes its textiles seriously, deserved to look like it on screen. The weave, the drape, the way a fresh dhothi holds its fold — these are the details that make a textile brand worth trusting, and they had to read clearly without ever looking clinical.

The garment had to be the character — not the model wearing it, not the set around it. Just the fabric, doing what good fabric does.

Lighting was built around warmth without sentimentality. Diwali carries its own visual language — gold, deepam, the particular quality of early morning light in a Tamil household — and Ajay worked within that language rather than imposing something foreign onto it. Soft sources, controlled fill, the kind of light that makes cotton look like cotton rather than silk or plastic. Warm tones held throughout, but never pushed to the point of distortion. True colour, as always, was the baseline.

Six Hours at Studio Setfire

Studio shoots have their own rhythm — tighter than a location, more controllable, but also less forgiving. Everything that makes it into the frame is a choice, because nothing is there by accident. At Studio Setfire, the team built each setup from scratch: the background, the light, the surface the fabric would be seen against. Gowrishankar's direction gave the frames their emotional logic — when to hold a shot, when to move, when the fabric itself was doing enough without adding any more. Ajay's job was to make sure what the director saw in his head was what ended up in the camera.

Pranav and Suresh, assisting on camera, kept the floor moving efficiently. A six-hour window for a TVC sounds generous until you're in it — it disappears fast when every setup needs its own light build, its own blocking, its own set of selects. The team moved cleanly through the day, and the footage they came out with reflected that.

The Film

The finished TVC carries the quiet confidence of the brand it's representing. Aalaya Cotton doesn't need to shout — it's been making dhothis for long enough that the quality speaks before the tagline does. What the film does is give that quality a visual register: warm light, true colour, the texture of good cotton held with care. A Diwali morning, in fabric form.

Ajay Krishnan is available for TVC cinematography, brand films, and commercial visual work. Enquiries are welcome.