Animation started as a promising area in 2ooo, but has faltered along the way. The total revenue generated by animation industry is Rs. 1200 crore which is shared by at least 50 active companies. The US studioes were the first to source from here due to cost advantages. Today, many units have closed down. The remaining have remained medium- or small-sized. Malaysia and China have emerged as competitions. There is no industry body exclusively for animation industry. It is represented either by Nasscom or Ficci. It takes five years for an animation unit to break even. During the gestation period, the unit needs handholding. Animation industry is run by creative people not well-versed in business. Local animation content has not gone beyond mythology and grandma stories. The odds appear stacked against the industry. There should be digital policy and promotion of animation beyond entertainment in the education sector. High-end projects still come to India. The low-end jobs go else where. There shuold be funding available for the animation industry. There will be mergers and acquistions. The quality of training must improve to take care of the high-end work.
Author: Shabbir Chunawalla
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Jazz
Jazz is creative music in three dimensions — melody, harmony and rhythm. However, jazz cannot reach the levels of various forms of rock for popularity. It would remain a niche music given its attributes.Though jazz lacks widespread popularity, it has travelled across the nations — from Scandinavian countries through eastern Europe and the urban American continent. In fact, it started in urban America. Actually jazz came to the US in chains three hundred years ago. It is the best art form that came out of the US.
Jazz reminds you of saxophones, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzerald. It is associated with hard rhythm, brassy sounds and gay abandon.
Improvisation is synonymous with jazz. There is a desire to create new melodies, harmonies and even rhythmic patterns. All this is done in a defined framework, which is the musical composition, and the genre or style. All jazz musicians are in quest.
Jazz in Mumbai and Kolkata from the 1940s to the 1960s matched the international scene in New York and Chicago. Jazz thrived in Kolkata before it met a rapid death in the 1970s. Delhi also had a thriving jazz culture.
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Film Restoration
The Indian film industry has its hands on barely a dozen of the 1700 silent films it has produced. In our archives, we have 13000 films — more than half of these are in desperate need of restoration. Restoration is a process that turns a film into a version most faithful to its initial release to the public. The images are reconstructed frame-by-frame. The damage usually includes scratches, tears, cuts, faded colours and missing frames or sound. Once the film is cleaned, each frame undergoes a scan — a high resolution 2 K or 4 K scan. It is then corrected digitally using a specialized software. Data is extracted from the sound negative, and sound restoration is done separately. Once all frames are corrected, they are recorded on film, tape or a digital medium like blue-ray disc or DVD. Most original negatives lie scattered across many labs. NFDC could barely restore two reels of Raja Harishchandra. As a matter of practice, industry made prints directly from the original negative , instead of a duplicate negative like the Hollywood does. The source material got damaged in the process. That is why sometimes the film has to be restored by capturing material from the print itself or from beta tape. Films do not die, but they fade away . Older films are difficult to restore. Restoration is also a costly process. There are lacs of frames, a big team working in two shifts. Outside India, it is costlier.Restoration done digitally is ephemeral. Simultaneously, the 35-mm film must be made. It is kept in a cool dry vault and lasts longer.
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The Times of India : 175 Years of the old Lady of Boribunder
The Times of India was launched as the Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce in 1838. It has become the unofficial masthead of India, chronicling every momentous milestone in history. It has grown from a single edition of a few thousand copies to some 50 editions with a circulation close to five million.It has all along been contemporary and relevant. Dr JE Brennan was the frist editor in 1838. By 1850, the biweekly became a daily. It tied up with Reuters. The masthead changed to The Times of India in 1861. The paper came to Delhi after a century — in 1950. A year later before independence, Bennet Coleman & Co. passed into Indian hands, and Frank Moraes became the first home-grown Editor of the paper. N J Nanporia, Sham Lal, Girilal Jain, Dileep Padgaonkar, Gautam Adhikari and Jaideep Bose continue the tradition. In 1991, the first page made way for urban issues, social trends and human interest stories. A good newspaper, Arthur Miller once said, ‘is a nation talking to itself.’
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Pulp Fiction in India
Meerut is Hindi pulp fiction country. The people who top the charts here are Surendra Mohan Pathaks, Ved Praksh Sharmas, and Amit Khans. One more author has picked up — Anil Mohan. Desi pulp is India’s answer to the West’s airport novel. The plots are outlandish, the characters are over the top and the titles arrest the attention. Meerut, a cantonment town, is the hub of jasoosi upanyas. It is at railway stations and bus terminus that a chunk of Hindi crime fiction books sell. They are priced between Rs 50-100. They are printed on coarse paper from cheap wood pulp, and hence lugdi sahitya or pulp fiction. Today the margins have declined to just 15 per cent, a huge drop from almost 100 per cent a few decades ago. The nucleus of publishing shifted to Allahabad in the 1970s. Ved Prakash Sharma (60) stays at Kavi Nagar, Meerut. He is the highest selling author of pulp fiction. He has written more than 150 books and churns out four novels a year that sell more than one lac copies each. His Vardi Wala Gunda sold more than 15 lac copies.
The 1960s spawned a crop of good writers — Rajhans, Ibne Safi, Gulshan Nanda and Ved Praksh Kamboj. In the 1970s Nanda’s books were adapted for Hindi movies — Kati Patang, Khilona and Daag.
Surendra Mohan Pathak (75) writes intelligent stories. He does not spell out every detail from scratch. Vimal is his popular character.He has sold more than 25 millon books. He is a self-proclaimed follower of Om Prakash Sharma’s writing.He writes about 180 sheets of paper to make a novel of 350 paper-back pages. He writes in long hand.He charges Rs 4 lac for a book.Anil Mohan writes 8-10 novels a year. He is 50 now.Between them, the popular Hindi pulp fiction sells more than 20 lac copies a year. Veena Sharma has created Reema Bharti, a woman spy. Amit Khan has created Karan saxena, a RAW agent. There was a time when cinema and popular Hindi fiction were the only means of entertainment in hinterland.These days TV competes with them.
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Rituparno Ghosh — Great Storyteller
Rituparno made his first film Hirer Angti ( The Diamond Ring ) when he was just 27-28. He, through his films, made it clear what it means to live LGBT lives in the conservative Indian society. He explored even human relationship ( usually male-female ) in ways that hardly any contemporary filmmakers do. His films Dosar, Chokher Bali and Raincoat are fine follow ups to celebrated works of Satyajit Ray. His recent contributions in bringing LGBT issues in mainstream films deserve a special recognition. His LGBT characters were real in Just Another Love Story, Memories in March and Chitrangada which reflected his beliefs in life. They were not caricatures that we see in Hindi films. His normal was the love between two adults, no matter their gender or sexuality. His sudden death at the age of 49 is a great loss. His forte was his story telling style.
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Brief Journey of Hindi Cinema
The journey of Hindi cinema started with Ardeshir Irani’s Alam Ara (1931 ). De de kuda ke naam par is the song in this movie. It is considered the first song in Indian film industry. The music of the movie became highly popular. There was no playback in those days. The actor used to sing their own songs. There was live recording with tabla and harmonium. The equation of music and cinema was established right from the first movie. Music has become an integral part of Indian films.
In 1933, Karma was released. It was through Himushu Roy and Bombay Talkies. It had a kissing scene.
In 1937, Ardeshir Irani released an India processed colours film — Kisan Kanya. It is the first colour film in India.
In 1935, Chandrakant Baruah directed Devdas based on Sharad Chandra’s novel starring Kundanlal Saigal was released. It was popular on account of its music .
An all time classic Pather Panchali of Satyajit Ray was released in 1955. It started the wave of realistic cinema.
In the early 1970’s, Rajesh Khanna gave 15 super-hit movies, and became the Hindi film industry’s first superstar.
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3D Cinema
It was in 1895 that for the first time the public saw a film — Arrival of a Train at La Cio tat — a silent film where a steam engine charged straight at the audience. In 1896, William Friese Greene filed a patent to view images in the Three Dimensional format. This surreal format seems to be arriving after 119 years since its invention.
The House of Wax was the first 3D colour film 70 years ago. In India, Jijo Punnose directed My Dear Kuttichathan ( the Malyalam original to Chhota Chetan ) in 1982. 3D imaging originated before photography. The pioneers are the optical scientist Chris Condon and academician Lenry Lipton.
The tricky part in 3D is the depth. The closer the object is, the sight perceives its entire depth. As the distance creeps in, the object becomes flat. 3D is akin to what happens to sound in mono and stereo versions.In mono, the sound comes from a single source, whereas in stereo it comes from many sources.The same logic applies to vision too.
On this very blog, kindly refer to the write up How 3D Works ?
So far 3D movies shown in India were sourced from Hollywood. India is rolling out 3D screens. India produces Haunted of Vikram Bhatt which is its first 3D stereophonic movie. The incremental cost of 3D is around 30-40 per cent higher than the cost of production of a normal movie. The 3D shooting equipment and manpower is currently sourced from abroad. The shooting schedule increases by 10-15 percent. The premium pricing is used to recover the additional costs. The 3D pioneers in India is Sanjay Gaikwar, UFO founder and MD. The quality of 3D will determine its success. Hindi film industry does not have many genres suitable for 3D. A robot comes once in a while.
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Ramsay Brothers
Tulsi Ramsay (72), one of the seven siblings that made up Ramsay Brothers, stays in Mumbai in a high-rise where Hema Malini, Sunny Deol and Akshay Kumar’s mother also have flats. His father shifted from Karachi to Mumbai after the partition. His father strayed into the films from electronics, and the second film he made Rustom Sohrab (1963) did well. The Ramsays took off in the 1970s and 1980s when they made their signature, low-budget horror films. Ramsay produced five shows for Zee TV. The popular Zee Horror Show ran for seven years with record TRPs. The biggest Ramsay hits are Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche (1972), Darwaza (1978), Hotel (1981), Purana Mandir (1984) and Bandh Darwaza (1990).
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Turing Test
If a human being cannot distinguish between a machine and a human through interaction, then that machine would be intelligent.
The experiment that is visualized runs like this.In one room, there is a computer.In another room, there is an interrogator and a computer with a human and both the computers are are connected. The interrogator interacts with both the computers. He tries to guess which computer is run by a human and which is running by itself.
When the computer manages to fool the interrogator into thinking that it is a human, that is the point the intelligent machine is born.
Despite the spectacular advances, no machine has come anywhere near passing the Turing Test.