Secrets of Film

Tuesday 5/01/19 Today's session was the last film appreciation session of this semester to which I was late by ten minutes. I noticed people doodling and writing on black sheets of paper which were to be put up on the windows at the back of the auditorium. I placed my bag down, took out my stationary and the black sheet of paper and hurried to the stage to start with the task. It took me a while before I could complete the task even though I didn't do it creatively as I'm really bad at writing on sheets without lines on them. After everyone was done with the task, we got back to our seats and saw a movie called "Still Life", of which our faculty was a part. However, the movie was in black and white and since I was a little tired, it went over my head. After the movie we all posed for class photographs which took a while as we kept experimenting with different poses. After the class photograph, we were dismissed. We all bid good bye to our faculty, shook han...

Kuleshov Effect Kuleshov effect is an effect from which people can derive different meaning when two shots are shown simultaneously, a couple of times and each time one of the shots is kept the same while the other is changed to derive a different meaning altogether. Here is a video showing the kuleshoK effect. In shot 1,3,5 we can see a girl in pain, a girl walking and a closeup of a girl's face respectively. In shot 2,4,6 we see the same shot of an expressionless man but when this shot follows shot, 1,3, 5, the interpretation of the shots completely changes. Let's take a look at the video. Please, do share your interpretation of the shots in the comment section below.

Monday 4/02/19 I got to the class on time, got seated and started googling the terms we were supposed to read and come. A few minutes later the CR went on to the stage and started discussing the terms. Most of us were prepared for the class, hence, we knew what the terms meant. We discussed about Mise-en-scene which is a French term meaning "placing on stage" or in respect to a movie it could mean the arrangement of everything and anything that appears in a frame ranging from lighting, costume, props, etc . We further discussed it's elements  such as lighting, colour pallet, colour design, prop design, costume design, hairstyle and make up, etc. We then watched a video portraying the Kuleshov effect which is an effect from which people can derive different meaning when two shots are shown simultaneously, a couple of times and each time one of the shots is kept the same while the other is changed to derive a different meaning altogether. After this we saw a sho...

 Rashomon : By Akira Kurosawa The film Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa tells the story of a murder from the perspectives of various individuals including the one who was murdered. And the various stories narrated in the courthouse were nothing but half of what was true. The rest part of the stories were a manipulation of the real occurences.  What I learnt from it and how I relate it with my past and my present? No matter what, no one is completely honest, not to others and neither to their own selves. The woodcutter who claimed that the stories narrated by all the others were lies, himself admitted to lying in the court to avoid getting involved as he had witnessed the murder and probably had stolen a valuable knife from the scene of crime.  I can relate to it as I myself at various points in my life have lied or manipulated the truth in order to avoid getting in trouble but at the same time I have claimed that the others were lying.  For insta...

Apples & Pears : A video compilation This is a video compilation of three shots depicting examples of apple for apple by which we mean what can be seen literally and apple for pear by which we mean what is suggested by what we see, the hidden idea behind what we see. - Shikha Singh

Walk: A three shot compilation This is a video complilation of three shots. The task was to make a video compilation of 3 shots of man enter frame, walk across, exit other end. In long shot, mid, close up. Edit them together to show continuity, match cut, expansion of time, ellipse. meaning of those terms are as follows : Long shot : The shot where the object is in full view from top to bottom Mid shot : The approximate upper half of the subject is in frame Close-up Shot : The shot where most of the frame space is occupied by the subject and where you get a detailed view of the subject Match cut : The type of cutting technique used to match mivementsmor different spaces Expansion of time : Making the shot time longer than real time Ellipse : Ommision of some part of a scene -Shikha Singh

Friday 1/02/19 I reached the auditorium in time for class and got seated. Shortly, our faculty joined us. He asked one of the students to come up on the stage and discuss the terms related to sound that he had asked us to study before hand. After the discussion got over the student on the stage had some videos she wanted to show us, however, due to technical issues we were unable to hear anything other than the video's background music, hence, we had to discontinue with the video. The faculty then asked who all had completed all the tasks given so far and who all haven't. I hadn't made the video comprising of different kind of shots which we were supposed to do before this session, hence, for the first time I was amongst those who weren't up to date with their work. He then asked us to provide reasons for why we failed to complete the tasks. After that he asked those who had done all the work to stand up and decided what was to be done with those who hadn't co...