Decoding a film from its posters

The saying goes “Never judge a book by its cover”, but today’s design philosophy works the other way. A cover page must convince people to buy the book. The same philosophy is valid for films as well. A film’s promotional posters and ads intend to communicate exactly what they want the target audience to know without revealing much of the story. Lets decode an upcoming film “Finding Fanny” from its promotional poster.

What does the overall look and feel communicate? 

• Stamps & handwritten feel suggests that characters might be expressing themselves through old-school writing of letters. 
• The choice of costumes suggests presence of Indian-catholic culture. 
• This also suggests a Portuguese-Goan feel. 
• Overall, it gives a very ‘classic’ feel. 
• It is an urban story that is set away from urban location.

Let’s do some character decoding:

• Arjun Kapoor seems like jobless guy with a serious personality. He is definitely not a ‘bubbly’, ‘chocolaty’ hero. He maybe jobless but definitely has his own bit of dignity. He surely does not look like a ‘chhichhora’/ a jerk. 

• Deepika Padukone seems like a sweet and innocent girl, who seems a bit vulnerable. Nothing different than any average Bollywood girl role. Atleast this poster doesnot seem to portray any unique, distinct personality. 

• Dimple Kapadia seems like a strong opinionated woman who is not scared to be a bit naughty at times. Although she is a strong woman, her character is not very intense.

• Nasseruddin Shah is an old man in search of love. Day seems like a very nice man, a bit of day-dreamer.

• Pankaj Kapoor on the other hand is bit courageous. He is not afraid of taking actions that land him in awkward situations. His role seems to be bit comic. 

Overall, the film seems to revolve around expressing love. Expressing love is not restricted to youngsters only and this seems to be communicated in this film. It is not a very intense film, but ‘the same old fun & light-hearted’ film in my opinion.

*Please Note that the 'Finding Fanny' film posters are sole copyright of the makers of the movie and have only be used for explanation purpose. 

Saswat Mahapatra

Assistant Professor

www.dgmcms.org.in 

Saswat is a design alumnus from Glasgow School of Art, UK. He is a British Council Fellow and comes with a diverse professional experience in the field of television production, animation, game design and illustration/graphic design. He has worked with brands like Walt Disney India, BBC Scotland, Channel 4 London, Cartoon Network India, Cambridge University Press UK and few others. His projects have been funded by British Council, Art & Humanities Research Council UK, Science & Innovation Network UK (British High Commission) and Scottish Institute for Enterprises. He has been involved in collaboration with Falmouth University UK and IIT Bombay.

Characteristics of an Innovative educator

Reflective – As an educator, it is important to reflect on what is working and what is not.  Even though it can be a little uncomfortable, we have to admit when a great lesson was really a flop.  We must constantly examine our processes and our concepts to make sure they are what is best for the students we teach. For example, we need to change tactics when we find that a particular task, however important, is not being done well by the students, and find a new way of doing it.

Learners- An innovative educator is always learning, reading, listening.  Every student, staff member, professional development opportunity is viewed as an opportunity to get better and be better in the classroom and in the education community at large.  They create local and global professional learning communities.  They take responsibility and initiative for their learning. For example, we need to learn to be on social media creatively and use IT enabled services and technology for media education.

Creative- When I say creative I don’t mean in the sense of artistic even though some innovative educators fall in this category.  I mean creative in their thinking and approach.  An innovative educator is very uncomfortable with doing business as usual, especially when it yields no result.  So they go to work brainstorming ways to make things better.  They may change up a lesson to make it more engaging or increase student motivation.  They may adopt a more unconventional approach to handling challenging students so as to develop a stronger rapport.

Connected- It’s hard to be classified as innovative when you are disconnected from your students and trends in the profession.  How can you know what your students need and what will be the best approach to use with them if you are not connected to them personally?  Innovative educators close the gap between the traditional images of teachers so he can determine what is best for each student.  In addition, because they are life-long learners, they are abreast of changes occurring in their field and how to best apply these new changes to their instruction. Every one of us must be 24X7 connected and have a multi dimensional virtual personality.

Collaborative- Education is one industry where sharing is necessary and vital to true innovation in the classroom.  When teachers work together to solve problems and share successes, our students perform much better in the classroom.  An innovative educator is always exploring topics with other educators, sharing what they know with others.  They are members of Professional Learning Communities where they learn and share with others.  They know that none of us is as smart as all of us. We must learn to collaborate among ourselves and with the industry friends to bring in value, content, assignments, projects, exposure, internships and jobs for our learners.

Inquisitive- How can I improve?  What did I do wrong?  When is the best time for this approach?  How should I adapt this for my struggling readers?  What can I do to extend this lesson for my gifted students?  What if I did it this way?  Innovative educators are always asking questions.  After all, it’s not about having all the answers; it’s about asking the right questions. We must change cases, examples etc in our sessions each year and add new facts and figures too.

Principled- Innovative educators live life according to strong values. They want to make a difference.  They believe that being an educator is a great way to make their mark in the world and they don’t take it for granted.  They believe in being a role model to the students they serve and look for opportunities to show they care by their actions not just with words.  They also care enough to make tough decisions even when it’s not popular and accepted.  They stand up for their beliefs. We must aim for productivity and not popularity and a uniformity in basic principles for all stakeholders.

Prof. Ujjwal K Chowdhury

Dean

www.dgmcms.org.in

Prof. Ujjwal K Choudray is presently the Dean of DGMC (Deviprasad Goenka Management College of Media Studies, Mumbai). He is a Senior Education & Media Consultant, Delhi, Kolkata & Kathmandu; President, Advisory Board, Whistling Woods School of Communication, Mumbai; Former Director, Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication & Dean, SIU, Pune; Former Media Adviser, Textiles Ministry, GOI; The Nippon Foundation; and WHO, India.

Genre: Meaning and Substance

There are occasions when you have to choose from the wide array of options to make certain choices. These choices somehow depend on or reflect on our positions. Where are we speaking from and who we are? Such selection marks a step in forming a specific meaning. The important aspect of this process is that these options and their selection, the exercise of their practices resonate with people. It decides the communication with the self and its tendency. These choices are definitive in order to generate a social response. But follow a specific mechanism of that has categories. The Greek word generous gave out genres- meaning categories, modes, options or tools. These options or categories form the set of styles in audio, visual, written or spoken mode of meaning. As these meanings add value and truth to any entity; genres come out as a crucial tool to differentiate and hence, evaluate the meaning.

It was Plato who came out with the concept of categorization depending on its nature and implementation. It began with the theory of mimesis that spoke about the imitation behind the work of art; as a painter ‘mimics’ scenic beauty and reproduces it with his impression on canvas. Plato states in Ion, that poetry is the art of divine madness or inspiration. Because the poet is a subject to this divine madness and therefore it is not his/her function to convey the truth. The truth that the poet or the artist finds is therefore removed from reality making a work of art a mere imitation. Plato’s categorization thus outlined the relation between work and its impression. The work of art had a specific realm in which it connected the codes of resemblances of behavior. The very act of resemblance provided a mirror image that evaluated the impression of art on its audience. It was Aristotle, Plato’s disciple and teacher to Alexander the great; who in 324 BC figured out the exact framework for this categorization based on the notions of tragic and comic components of the works of literature in those times. Aristotle linked the impact of these works and their psychological mechanism. The arousal of tragedy, response to comedy and influence of heroism has been used effectively to categorize their definitive impacts. This link has provided the necessary paradigm of the actions and impacts, rather than the impressions.

Genres then underwent a surgery that modified its references with their relevant impacts over the time. Characters were evaluated on the basis of particular ‘choices’ that derived their rise and fall. A certain kind of choices and their performances established a school of thought (or so to say) that formulated referent meanings. Douglas Kellner writes in his essay Television Images, Codes and Messages, that “[…] a genre, once established, dictates the basic conditions of a cultural production and reception.  For example, crime dramas have a violent crime, a search for its perpetrators, and often a chase, fight, or bloody elimination of the criminal, communicating the message that ‘crime does not pay’ […]” Similarly, all media- film, television, advertisements, so on and so forth; are based on texts, which all fall into various categories or genres.  The scholarly interest in genres has developed in recent years because we have become concerned about how genres affect the creation of television programs, like family drama, crime investigation and what are the social, cultural and political implications of different genres may be. These attempts of fixing and de-fixing of stories/ texts show how genres begin and evolve. Why genres are fused into one another to form a newer impression and why some genres, such as the western, died out after years of great popularity.  The evolution of a genre as a term of reference and its eventual dwindling is certainly a result of periodic amendment of choices. Genres, as categories or modes, change their routes and touch upon newer territories of meanings. Then why are we familiar with genres? It is because we are able to identify the similarities, distinctions and symbols that are born out of the codes which formulate our actions and their meanings. The actions, stemming out of these imitations align themselves in a pattern that maps and re- maps our understanding for certain thing. Then the subjects, conventions, settings and themes are defined where we find ourselves in them as characters. We find ourselves in this act of justifying actions, categories of certain behaviors and form a meaning.

Amol Jadhav

Assistant Professor

www.dgmcms.org.in  

Amol is an independent filmmaker with an academics specialization in film language, criticism & technique. He owns an independent production house that produces short films documentaries & features films, which have been featured in various reputed film festivals across the globe. He has combined cinema on academics and professional levels thus giving it a new paradigm.

Physical to Digital

The media & entertainment industry has always witnessed various format changes in terms of delivery of content.

Be it from cassettes to Audio CDs to digital music downloads, from VHS to VCDs to DVDs to Blue Rays, from hard copy news papers to e-news, from paper backs to e-books, from physical prints to digital prints, from analog connections to set top boxes. The ever evolving content delivery platforms have presented an opportunity and at the same time have done some harm. Music piracy in MP3 format killed the physical format of cassettes and audio CDs. The home video and computer gaming industry has always struggled due to piracy. Hope fully the Blue-ray format will help revive the fortunes. The books publishing industry has also been plagued by piracy both in both physical and digital format, though off late the e-books segment is getting organized and thus driving revenues for the publishing industry. The cable & satellite television industry has for long seen under reporting of subscriber numbers. Digitization will address that. Movie distribution has widely benefited from digitization, which makes it possible to release a movie widely in 4000+ screens nationally.

Also, the transition from physical to digital has eliminated some intermediaries in the value chain. Gone are music retailers. HMV shut its last store a year back. Digitization and DTH platform will eliminate local cable operators. E-news could eventually eliminate news paper distributors and vendors.  

Going forward customization will be the key. Serve what the consumer wants and not what you dish out. Be it downloading a single rather than buying an entire album. Be it reading only sports news on the internet rather than buying a full news paper. Subscribing only to those channels that you want to watch rather than paying for all sundry channels to the local cable operator.

But is it the complete end of physical era? I believe no. In countries like India there are still many pockets and segments for whom digitization is alien. Be it rural India or people in urban areas  who are averse to technology and thus depend on the physical format. Or purely because its sometimes much easier to just pick up a hard copy rather than depending upon gadgets and bandwidth speeds!!

Signing off at this.

Vishal Desai

Faculty

www.dgmcms.org.in

Vishal Desai is a permanent faculty member at DGMCMS. He is an alumnus of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. He has experience of 12 years in marketing, sales, product management and key accounts management at key positions in leading entertainment companies like Zapak Digital Entertainment Ltd. (Reliance Entertainment), Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd. and Milestone Interactive Group. He has managed mega entertainment brands like Slumdog Millionaire, Dhamaal, Chandni Chowk To China, Bal Ganesh, Spiderman, Batman and many more.