Unravelling the science of cinema

The fundamental purpose of language is to communicate. Every language has a structure associated with it. And every language has semantics. So far so good? I already knew this before the film appreciation workshop which I attended a couple of weeks back. On the first evening, I got to know a new word, semiotics. Language has semiotics too. The semiotics of a language appeal to a person's senses. Why is it that when I saw "Neal and Nikki" (a Hindi movie) I left kicking myself and not believing that I actually subjected myself to such crap while others left humming "I'm Nikki Bakshi. Sweet and sexy, hot and happening"?! Semiotics. In simple words, the way that we are 'affected' by a film and how its message seeps into our consciousness and arouses feelings within us.

Film as a language has no rigid structure and depends a lot on semiotics. The semiotics of a film are invariably affected by society and opinions. How we watch and appreciate a film is influenced by what information we carry about the message of the film, the people involved with the film and what we have already heard about the quality of the film. I was quite surprised when I heard at the workshop that renowned Indian filmmakers like Guru Dutt and Ritwik Ghatak were hailed as wonderful filmmakers only after they died! Reason being that the film society of that time had decided that films which had song sequences were trash. Simple. Sad isn't it?

Another interesting thing that I got to know was that cinema is a very mechanical art form. Everything about it has mechanics associated with it! From the equipment that is used to capture scenes to the film which stores the images to the screen on which the film is eventually showcased. "Do films reflect society" is a common essay topic in schools. Let's not get into that but film certainly reflect technology. As advances are made in technology, the face of cinema changes. Cinema really has come a long way from black and white silent films to digital films like "300".

"Cinema stands at the crossroads of real time and elapsed time". One of the many gems that Prof Hari Haran scattered for us fledglings to peck on. Time is probably the most important element of cinema. As he so beautifully put it, "A shot is born only when it ends". "A film becomes a film only when it ends". He asked us to come up with an example of a constant stream of visuals. Constant because it never ends. Answer; close circuit TV! Close circuit TV constantly records the happenings that it focuses on. It may move and thus the point of view that is depicted may shift but it never changes or ends. Not surprisingly, you don't generally find people standing and watching that kind of footage with drooling tongues and sparkling eyes. That is simply not cinema.

Coming down now to 'real time' and 'elapsed time'. A film is a piece of work that is supposed to be watched at a single stretch. (I do know people who watch a film intermittently but have never really understood that.) When a filmmaker makes a film, he makes it keeping in mind that his audience is not going to ditch him midway through it. There is in a sense an unsaid commitment between the filmmaker and his audience. It is clear that time constrains a film. It's not like a photograph or a painting which can be savoured all the time. Time is harnessed by the filmmaker. He uses it as a tool. A long shot communicates that a lot of real time is passing. Many short shots indicate more elapsed time. Elapsed time is the time that a movie depicts which real time is the actual time that is shown on screen. Simply put, a typical movie has about two hours of real time and may represent any amount of elapsed time.

From time immemorial, man has invented tools that replicate his body parts. The simplest example being that of the wheel which was inspired by his knees which he would use for locomotion. Man invented the lens to replicate the function of the eye. It is truly interesting to note that lens in French is objectif. In other words, the lens is objective and does not lie. "Seeing is believing" is no longer true in this day and age. These days we need a photograph in order to believe! (Of course, with the advent of image manipulation even this doesn't really hold water. We should probably get back to good old instincts!)

There were quite a few films shown at this workshop. I found myself noting that the discussion that follows a film screening interests me far more than the actual viewing of a film. At the workshop, there was a discussion on form and content and it is then that I realised that the reason for the above observation was probably that I didn't really know how to view a film. You may be scratching your head and wondering, how difficult is to "know how to view a film"?! Well, tell me something, if I were to put before you a plastic bottle of water, what would you say to be the form and content of what you see before yourself? Is bottle the form and water the content? What if you put beer or milk in the bottle? Same form and different content? What if you use another container to store the water? Different form and same content? WHAT'S the deal? All this leads to an idea that form and content can be separated. That doesn't make much sense, does it? The critical question is, are we deliberating over the form and content of the bottle or of the water? The form and content of the bottle is plastic and the form and content of the the liquid inside the bottle is the liquid. Now, you may be wondering why I'm such a fuss about this. The reason is simple. Each and every film is made for a purpose. The filmmaker has a story to tell to people. This is the content of his film. The way in which he presents his movie, whether it be through a huge budget, hand held cameras, animation or stick figures is up to him and his constraints of purse strings and imagination. This is the form of the film. Too often it happens that we watch a film, appreciate it's story and go home. But what about what the movie is trying to tell us? A simple analogy to illustrate my point. Who are you? Answer without thinking. Fast! If your answer is engineer, student, doctor, alocoholic, drug addict or anything on those lines then that's not who you really are. That's not you at all. That's the function you serve. You could be a person who likes to walk on the road, think about what life really is, throw some stones to the side, smoke a cigarette and get back to working in a factory. Or you could be a person who likes to be involved in multiple relationships at a time, go partying whenever you possibly can, read Mills and Boons on the sly, secretly love C programming and adore cutting work. That's more on the lines of who you are. Similarly, the story of a film is the function that it serves. There's much more to a two and half hour stay in a cinema hall. Films are a medium of communication first and entertainment later. Let's keep this in our pockets, please.

This is turning out to be quite a long post and there's still some stuff which I would like to put down. I may do so, sometime later when I feel like it. There were quite a few short films which were screened at the workshop. There were innumerable names which were scattered around in the various discussions that took place. Prof. Hari Haran was a brilliant teacher! His lectures were captivating, interesting and illuminating. He was talkative even during the breaks between sessions where he regaled whoever cared to hang around him with hilarious anecdotes and beautiful nuggets of information. There was another prof at the workshop, Prof. Manu Chakravorty. He didn't speak nearly as much and wasn't really a captivating speaker when he did speak. But he did come through as an immensely knowledgeable individual and raised some highly pertinent points on occasions.

All in all, the workshop was a wonderful experience. I left it knowing that from now onwards any movie that I watched would hold something interesting for me. After those two days of the workshop I felt as if I had been educated. Not much, just a touch.