Posts

Showing posts with the label Media Studies

No Love Lost?

Image
This is for my students who are learning to analyse and write film reviews. I came across an article in The Times of India online edition about box office collection of two films released on Independence Day - 'Satyamev Jayate and 'Gold'. I have copied a paragraph here for reference: John Abraham's film clashed at the box office with Akshay Kumar's 'Gold' but there is no love lost here . Speaking about the clash in a previous interview, John told PTI, "Akshay is an actor in 'Gold', and I am an actor in 'Satyamev Jayate'. It's a producer's decision on both sides. So I have no say in that at all. As far as competing with Akshay is concerned, I want to make it clear that he is my senior in the industry." Pay attention to 'but there is no love lost here'. I was surprised by the use of the idiom, because I haven't come across any article that show any animosity between John Abraham and Akshay Kumar, and no

I give you what you want!

Image
I give you what you want, and I don't have the time, nor the inclination (pun intended) to think about what you, the society needs. Like, I think you should also start thinking, instead of blaming me, the media, for all the unhappy, sad, evil, and all the wrongdoings in the society. Instead of brainlessly switching on channels and watching programs which insult, degrade, make fun of other people, and supposedly encourage superstition, maybe you should just go out, take a walk (pun intended again). You think I should have some social responsibility, which I do agree. And I do give you programs that are beneficial to the society. But I have so many people working with me. You think all people who work for me should go hungry to bed? They don't deserve increments? They don't have family responsibilities and ambitions? Well, you are wrong. Being socially responsible cannot come at a cost of my family and my ambitions. Like, I am the media. I am a business. I am here to

Sherlock Holmes - The Master

We see things, but can we listen to what they say? Can we read what they 'write'? I have copied a rather large text from a Sherlock Holmes' Story - The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. If you are a Sherlock Holmes fan (I mean the books by Arthur Conan Doyle), you have possibly read this before... As always, I am amazed by his powers of deduction and visual analysis.....  I took the tattered object in my hands and turned it over rather ruefully. It was a very ordinary black hat of the usual round shape, hard and much the worse for wear. The lining had been of red silk, but was a good deal discoloured. There was no maker’s name; but, as Holmes had remarked, the initials “H. B.” were scrawled upon one side. It was pierced in the brim for a hat-securer, but the elastic was missing. For the rest, it was cracked, exceedingly dusty, and spotted in several places, although there seemed to have been some attempt to hide the discoloured patches by smearing them with ink. “I c

Speaking Visuals

Image
All visuals have a message. Some are created by us, some, by nature. The beholder/receiver of the message analyses the message, makes meaning out of it; the visual generates responses at several levels. There are several factors that have an effect on our perception of a visual. According to Norman, there are three levels of design: visceral, behavior, and reflective. At the visceral level, which is based on instinct, physical features like look, feel, and sound dominate. When we perceive something as “pretty”, that judgment comes directly from the visceral level.  Behavior design concerns the use, or ease of use where appearance may not be significant. In most behavior design functionality gets the top priority.  In a reflective design message, culture and the meaning of a product gets priority.  However, today, consumers are more critical, prone to analyse a visual at the visceral and behavior level, so the designing is done to evoke emotion, arouse past experiences, create

Beautiful and Ugly - A Matter of Perception?

Image
How does the mind receive and analyse information from a visual? It is a complex process involving the left and right hemispheres of the brain, together synchronising the logical and emotional intelligence, at the same time, involving learning through genetic evolution, and adding to it experiential learning. I came across a Facebook update which described how some primary school textbooks, the meaning of beautiful and ugly were represented. Check the picture.... (Source: Unknown) How many readers agree to this? No, don't give me an intelligent, sociologically relevant, politically correct answer. Truth is, we have all learnt the meaning of beautiful and ugly from this, or some other picture, or have been pointed out a beautiful woman and an ugly one during our childhood and in our college days. In the early stages of childhood, from birth to 3 years, the human brain is extremely vulnerable to external influences. A violent childhood, a traumatic experience, or visuals suc

Formula for a hit film?

It is naive to think that you can hit upon the perfect research topic at the first go. Research can be a piece of cake, and you can have it, but you may not really be able to eat it! That's exactly why, instead of starting to work on the concept of a formula for a hit film, I decided straightaway to search for research done on the subject. That's why we do literature review anyway. And look what I found.... Instead of paraphrasing any of the texts that I found, I am directly going to copy-paste the relevant sentences and give links at the end of this post - Wikipedia style... Psychologist Professor James Cutting and his team from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, analyzed 150 high-grossing Hollywood  films  released from 1935 to 2005 and discovered the shot lengths in the more recent movies followed the same mathematical  pattern  that describes the human attention span. The pattern was derived by scientists at the University of Texas in Austin in the 1990s who stu

Radiance of flowers + liquor = Love?

शोखियों में घोला जाये फूलों का शबाब उस में फिर मिलाई जाये थोड़ीसी शराब होगा यूँ नशा जो तैय्यार वो प्यार है Mix the radiance of flowers. Then add a small measure of liquor. The state of giddy stupor That you get from all the above Is what we call love. For a full and a beautiful translation of the whole song, you must visit   http://songtranslationsbyme.blogspot.in/2011/08/shokhiyon-mein-ghola-jaye-translated.html  by Shivani Mohan. Amazing translations of all those beautiful songs we are fond of) These are the lyrics of a song from the Hindi film, Prem Pujari. But then we know that love is not so simple as that, isn't it? But why am I talking about love? Well, if love could have a formula, why not films? Just suppose there was a formula like H2 + O = H2O everyone would make a hit film. No one would be worried about giving a flop and losing a lot of money. This is exactly what a guest, a complete system's man, said the other day in my office. He was completely conv

From Consumers to Producers - The Indian Story - Part 4 - The Internet

Image
The Internet I remember, in 1996, in a meeting, a client showed me the Internet. We browsed through Yahoo, one of the most popular websites and search engines at that time. I was amazed that I could just search for any subject and get so much information. I immediately wanted get it on my computer at home, but the only service provider at that time was VSNL - Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited and the cost was Rs.15000 for 100 hours! But very soon, on demand, the rates were brought down to an affordable Rs.1500 per 100 hours of browsing. There was, of course, a catch here. First, you needed to buy an external modem (about Rs.4000/-) and connect it to the phone line to connect to the Internet. There were no schemes or data packages other than the one mentioned. So if you did 100 hours of browsing, it translated to 200 phone calls, which in turn meant a whopping telephone bill. And I did get a bill of about Rs.4000/- which is like getting a bill of about Rs.30000/- now! (Image src:http

Karlo Duniya Mutthi Mein - Part 1

I was working for a pharmaceutical company and posted as Manager in Ahmedabad for two years - 1989 to 1991. Those days were quite turbulent, one, on my professional front, because I was trying to make inroads into a very tough pharmaceutical market, and second on the political front. Those days were of unrest, and riots during the time of Lalkrishna Advani's Ram Rath Yatra. I saw the horrors of mindless killing, and mob fury first-hand. During Diwali, rarely now, but I still wake up from deep sleep in the middle of the night thinking there is police firing going on somewhere. This was also a period of turmoil in the music industry. In July 1990, the film Aashiqui was released and became a super duper hit. But the credit for its success goes to its music, which was released in 1989 by Gulshan Kumar. This is a story in itself. Coming from a humble background, Gulshan Kumar began his career in the music industry by producing cheap cassettes of music of older hit films. With no cl