Secrets of Film

Thursday 31/01/19 At 3:00, I was in the college bus on my way to college from the National Garment Fair at Goregaon. At 4:10, I reached the campus and hurried to the auditorium on the 7th floor. I got seated while the class was in the middle of a discussion. I stared the speakers blankly. After the previous discussion got over, the faculty narrated a story about his conversations he had with his wife at home in relation to both of them having to share the same work environment since a few days as he's been working as a guest faculty at the same college where she's a faculty as well as handles administrative work. He told us how she keeps mocking him by saying 'Welcome to my world'. He said to her that what kind of system has she and the others at the college made, what have they made of the students as a reply to which his wife says : yes, we all are ________ He asked us to fill in the blank. Different answers came up which cracked us all up. Though, everyone could...

29/01/19 Tuesday Part 2 Q. What's holding our progress and what we need to do? Ans. With reference to the discussions we had in class as well as outside class, here are a few points that talk about the reasons that's holding our progress. 1. We had a discussion about our blogs with the faculty on Tuesday who pointed out that after we write our blogs we don't re-read them from a reader's point of view. And that's because we are writing the blogs as we are supposed to and we just want to get done with it as soon as possible. We don't give in a lot of thought to what we're writing, we aren't focusing on enhancing the quality of what we write but instead we focus more on quantity and thus end up putting in even the smallest of details in our blogs which might not be much of relevance to the readers. And we aren't even trying to improve the quality of our blogs and make it engaging, we're just adamant on staying at the level we...

Tuesday 29/01/19 I went to the auditorium on time for class and got seated. The faculty entered the auditorium a few minutes later while an old music video was playing on the screen which was stopped shortly by the IT staff after the faculty's arrival. The faculty took our attendance after which he pointed out that more people responded to their roll calls today compared to the session on 25/01/19 as we had shut down the noises in our heads today. He then went on to discuss the previous day's blog pointing out that our blogs contain half formed ideas which can be misinterpreted . Also, we haven't been writing from a readers' point of view as we've been putting in information irrelevant to the readers and this could make the readers loose interest and stop reading after a few lines. He then went on to say that nothing's happening without a purpose, the activities that we do is actuality and that's what's supposed to go in our documents. The way...

Monday 28/01/19 I went to the auditorium on the 7th floor where many of my classmates were already seated. I took to my seat, laying down my handbag to the seat on my left, digging out my cellphone from it. After a few minutes, Vinesh sir came to the auditorium and got seated in the front row to the extreme left. After a few more minutes, the class representative came to the auditorium. He read out a message that the faculty had sent him which said that all those who have completed their blogs for day 7 and day 8 can stay in the auditorium while all the others need to go to room no. 535 and complete their work. The message also read that attendance would be given in both the places. The class representative then headed towards Vinesh sir and started discussing about calling the IT staff and getting the screen ready for the class while some students got up from their seats and left the auditorium. Later the IT staff came and started setting up the screen. Two people brought in t...

Faculty's comments regarding the previous blog Your life Daniel San. Not life. Note the tone of the analysis. Daniel San Miyagi tired. Miyagi pruning bonsai. Daniel San you in what little you say. It is all outside. Good teacher third person. Bad teacher third person. Few people third person, My friends third person, Others third person, bullies third person, Today's generation third person. Where is you? The question is very simple. What is the basic qualification for being a student? Do you have it Daniel San? Rethink climax, falling action resolution Graph We? You? Sermons? Where u? Illustrate each point you make with eg from recent life. Then what's b r of student? Do you have it? Polish San __________X__________ Friday 25/01/19 In the 8th session, we were seated in the auditorium. The faculty wasn't there. 'The Karate Kid', the movie was on pause on the screen. Some staff members were fiddling with the laptop kep...

Friday 25/01/19 In the 8th session, we were seated in the auditorium. The faculty wasn't there. 'The Karate Kid', the movie was on pause on the screen. Some staff members were fiddling with the laptop kept on the podium. After a while, the faculty walked into the auditorium.  The faculty asked whether he was late, to which someone replied, no, the boss is never late. The faculty asked us why can't we hear even when there's a lot of noise around us. Students answered. Someone said because of the commotion. Some else replied because of the noises in our head. The faculty asked the same question from the students who left the class early the previous day. The faculty also asked one of them about what did the other student answer. The student who left early the previous day said she didn't hear the previous answer. The faculty asked another question which was why can't we see even when there's a lot of light around. Some students answered. A discussi...

Thursday 24/01/19 In the 7th session, we were waiting for our faculty in classroom 535 but later on we received a message that said the class will be conducted in the auditorium on the 7th floor, and hence, all the students moved to the auditorium.  Everyone was seated in the auditorium. The faculty was outside the auditorium talking to a few students. The faculty then called two students along with one of the volunteers who were in the auditorium, outside, to talk to them. After a few minutes, the faculty came back to the auditorium and so did the volunteer. The other two students didn 't come back to the class.  The faculty called one of the volunteers and the student she volunteered to help to the front of the class. He asked them if she helped him out and whether or not he made improvement in his blog. Both of them replied to the questions put in front of them.The faculty then asked whether anyone of us remembers even one of the idioms he's used in the cla...

Tuesday 21/01/19 In the sixth session, our faculty took our attendance towards the beginning after which he called forward a girl who had volunteered to help one of the students with his blog. Sir said that she has been called forward because she deserves something by which he meant applause because she had understood what he had been trying to make all of us understand but we haven't and she did. Hence, we applauded for her and the class moved forward. The faculty asked us what all we had talked about in the previous 5 sessions.  The class named the different things we talked about so far. And since in the 5th session we were came across the terms art and science but mostly discussed only art, hence in the 6th session we resumed with our discussion about science. Our faculty asked us what science is to which one student replied that it is a set of principles formed over the observation of natural phenomenon. He then asked us whether astronomy could be considered as s...

Monday 21/01/18 The fifth session began with our faculty asking us whether we have completed all the tasks that were to be done by us for assessment along with the blogs. Only 5 of us had all the work completed and even our blogs from the 4th session were missing some information. So technically speaking not even a single student had all the work up to the mark. Our faculty had asked us to ponder upon what measures can be taken to help those lagging behind in the tasks, to help bring them on track. To which I answered that we could keep a check on them from time to time before the deadline, we can keep encouraging them to complete the work but even despite that if they fail to do it, they should be punished in one form or the other.  However, to this he counter questioned me that what if even that doesn't solve the problem, what is yo be done in that case, to which I didn't have an answer. He further said that won't pointing out their mistakes and making them realise ho...

Friday 18/01/19 In 4th session, our faculty asked whether anyone of us would be willing to volunteer for some unknown task. At first, no one came forward to accept being a volunteer, however, later, three students volunteered. The task was initially to be done by another volunteer who not only failed to come to the class but most importantly failed to inform and hand down the task to someone else for the time being. The same volunteer had apologised in the previous class for leaving without informing, but since this was repeated once again, it does not seem like the apology was genuine or that she realised where she went wrong. The faculty had called her and put the call on speaker for everyone to listen as her inaction wasn't just affecting her but all the rest of us as well as we too had to give in our time and get involved in the issue and the discussion that followed it. We too were at fault for being unaware of the whereabouts of a volunteer who wasn't doing the task...

Zoetrope A zoetrope is an animation device. It has a cylinder with vertical slits cut into it and on the inside is a strip with a set of images in sequence, each varying just slightly from the adjacent images. The cylinder is rotated and the viewer looks through the slits at the pictures which potray some kind of activity. Below are the pictures and video of the zoetrope that I made and it is called 'Phases of the Moon'. -Shikha Singh

Spinner   The spinner I initially made had a penguin standing straight on one side while on the opposite side the penguin was skiing. This spinner didn't work well as there was quite a large difference in the two pictures, hence when the spinner was rotated it didn't produce the effect it should have.  Thus, I decided to make another spinner, a simpler one this time. One face of the spinner has the image of a diamond and the markings on the opposite face of the spinner are supposed to make it look like the diamond is shining, when rotated. This one was successful in producing the required effect. Below are images of both the spinners. 1st spinner :-  2nd spinner :- -Shikha Singh

Thursday 17/01/19 In the 3rd session, our faculty asked us about what all issues we had regarding his classes as many students were not happy with something or the other. The maximum amount of time went in discussing and resolving those issues. After that in the remaining half an hour we proceeded by talking about films and that they are a record of actual happening or actuality. Then we watched the first documentary film which goes by the name Nanook of the North. There we discovered how scenes were captured in a way that suggested  they were all in continuation. In one of the scenes we could also see the shadow of something behind the lead of the film and though we could not see the complete shadow yet we could make out that it belonged to a human. Hence, this shows how films have the power to make us perceive more than just what is being shown on the screen. The class was dismissed soon after the attendance was taken. This whole session was more about resolving everyone'...

Tuesday 15/01/19 In the second session, our faculty asked us to show the assignments we were supposed to complete in the previous class. I had both, the name placard as well as the spinner with me as I had done it. We were also supposed to send in our contact details  to one of the student who volunteered for it. However, many hadn't comepled these three tasks and hence the four of us who had done all three tasks were to decide what was to be done with the others. We unanimously decided that the others be sent outside the class and can come back inside once they've completed all the tasks. Our faculty then continued the session with the four of us. We started with learnig about what a zoetrope is. We watched a video of it as well as made one practically in the class to understand how to go about making one as we were supposed to make one afterwards individually before the next class. We then continued our discussion about film from where we left off in the last class...

Monday 14/01/19 The first session of film appreciation general elective started with an introduction of our faculty, Mr Tanmay Agrawal. He then layed a few ground rules to be followed for every session we have with him. Followed by which he asked us to make name placards as it would help him address us individually. Once that was done, we proceeded with the topic and got into a discussion about films. He asked us what according to our understanding classifies as a film. This led to us discussing various characteristics of a film and in the process I came to an understanding that films are a means of communication which use motion pictures. They may or may not have audio. We also discussed which are the different forms of art, some of which are music, dance, painting, cinema,etc. This discussion led to a realisation that cinema is the ultimate form of art because it is an amalgamation of all the other art forms and it preserves space and time like no other form of art can. We al...