An Education of Sorts

Can watching pulp movies be educational? Yes, if you watch them with some attention. And particularly, if you watch them just after you have watched an entire day's shooting for a movie in the making. This is precisely what I did this weekend (which started on Thursday-lucky me). I first saw the shoot of a new Telugu film being shot- on a cricket field, coz the story is that of a school cricket team coming back from the dead. Called Golconda High School in the film. Learnt a lot about getting your act together, camera angles, shot conceptualisation, number of shots you can shoot on a good day (about 40?), and the like. It was hot as hell, but the crew worked 10 hours a day, making us academics look silly. Trolley shots (camera on the rails moving straight ahead or back following a character), crane shots (from atop a crane), plain long shots, close-ups, each has its own place in a movie, and can enhance the efect of what's being shown.

Then I saw two Telugu films, one Hindi film and one Agatha Christie classic, in a span of two days or so. Excellent education, I'd say. I liked Chak De the best, of all. Crisp editing does it for me. Plotwise, Agatha Christie wins hands down. But interesting touches in the two Telugu films- Sye has some nice rugby scenes though they come too late, and A Film by Arvind (that's the title) starts off well with a director finding an incomplete script, and life imitating fiction (the script), before losing its way in the dark-literally.

I uploaded my autobiography in 20 odd pieces on a website, www.scribd.com and found it got a lot of readers- you can find it on the website if you search for My Experiments with Half-truths.