What it takes to produce video reviews of Hindi and English films for a movie website

From The Commits Chronicle, April 17, 2014:

A DREAM JOB THAT JUST KEEPS 
GETTING BETTER AND BETTER!

In January, SHIKHA BHATNAGAR (Class of 2014) joined PK Online in Bangalore as a content executive and her primary role then was to do voiceovers (read about her first month’s experience here). But today Shikha has been given many more responsibilities and, as she writes below, her job has become not only more challenging but also more interesting:

I once mentioned to RP Sir that I can’t believe my luck because, career-wise, I have surely landed in the right place: with every passing day I love more and more what I am doing.

RP Sir’s response: “The harder you work, the luckier you get.”

That simple comment made me feel so proud of myself. I had started off as a voiceover artist but today I not only face the camera but also edit videos. Each week I face the camera at least once, either for the box office predictions or for a movie review, and I am told that I am only getting better with each effort.

What else can I ask for? No doubt this is turning out to be something more than a dream job.

The first movie I reviewed was Gulaab Gang. I sat through the screening feeling extremely uneasy; the thought of having to face the camera afterwards and talk about the film was making me really nervous, even though I had had some exposure to television anchoring, thanks to Commits. After the movie got over, I raced back to work and wrote a long script, which I then tried to memorise and deliver verbatim in front of the camera.

That day I learnt two things. First, never try to mug up a movie review, and second, act like the camera is a person and you’re talking to it in a casual manner about the film. Today I am much more confident, and I actually look forward to the experience: I watch a movie (for free) almost every Friday, jot down key points, and, later, in our studio, simply talk to the camera.

JOTTED DOWN: SHIKHA'S FILM REVIEW NOTES.

There came a day when my video editor needed a four-day break from work. During my job interview I had mentioned that I can do some basic video editing. My boss remembered that and she asked me to step in and edit some videos using Final Cut Pro (which is the software we used at Commits, too). I did a decent job and so, today, I also edit my “filmi gossip” videos. At Commits it is compulsory to learn editing and we had to edit all our video projects. It’s true I never took the editing classes seriously — I thought editing was not something I would have to do in the future — but I am grateful now that we were forced to learn how to use Final Cut Pro. Now just four of us in my team are producing enough content for our channel.

This is why I will always maintain that Commits provides a complete media education package. I am not just saying it for the sake of it, but because every single thing that you are taught helps you later in ways you won’t even realise while you are being taught.

So once again, thanks a ton, Commits!

Scintillating analysis of Roger Ebert's film review intros

Any experienced writer can master the short snappy sentence.  It takes a good writer to master the long sentence, the one that takes the reader on a journey of discovery, the one that leads you to a special place you could not have imagined when you stepped on board the bus.

That is Roy Peter Clark, a brilliant journalist and writer himself, paying tribute to Roger Ebert by explaining why he thought the late film critic was a good writer.

Good? Why not "great"? Clark writes:

Notice I am not using the word “great” because good is good enough, especially if you’ve been good for more than forty years.

And then Clark examines the intros, what he calls "leads", from the first three examples of Ebert's work that he could find online.

Read Clark's post in its entirety here to understand why I am saying this is a scintillating piece of writing from which media students, journalists, and people who simply love reading good writing can learn plenty.

PS: Don't miss the punchline — Roy Peter Clark gets a zinger from Roger Ebert.

ADDITIONAL READING: "Point your mouse to Poynter".

ALSO READ: "Roger Ebert: A film critic like no other".

Roger Ebert: A film critic like no other

He was the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize. For more than 40 years he worked at one newspaper, The Chicago Sun-Times. He was hailed as the best-known film reviewer of his generation, and one of the most trusted.

So it is no wonder that when Roger Ebert died yesterday at the ago of 70, even President Barack Obama was moved to say that for a generation of Americans ... “Roger was the movies. When he didn’t like a film, he was honest; when he did, he was effusive — capturing the unique power of the movies to take us somewhere magical.”

Read the New York Times tribute to Roger Ebert here.

• ADDITIONAL READING: Cancer surgery cost him his lower jaw and his ability to speak — but not his ability to write. To know more, read this magnificent profile of Roger Ebert in Esquire magazine.

• EXTERNAL READING: Jai Arjun Singh, a New Delhi-based freelance writer and journalist whose writing I admire, has published a post about his brief encounter with Roger Ebert. Read it on his blog, Jabberwock, here. 

• EXTERNAL READING: Actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui's Ebert connection: "Remembering Roger Ebert". (Thanks for the tip-off, Noyon Jyoti Parasara.)

• EXTERNAL READING: Read Roger Ebert's 20 best reviews here. 

DEEP PAL

UPDATE (April 6, 2013): Commits alumnus DEEP PAL (Class of 2003), who is in the U.S. for his master's in International Security Studies at the Elliott School in Washington, D.C., sent this via e-mail:

Here's some more on Roger Ebert — a series of three articles he wrote while in India in 1999, including a delightful account of his first experience of watching a Hindi potboiler [Taal] in a cinema hall.

I was introduced to Ebert by [Cinema Studies professor at Commits] Tummala Sir about 11-12 years ago. Since then every time a new movie arrived in theatres, or I heard of another oh-but-you-must-see-this-classic, I would Google Ebert and the movie's name. And he never lied to me. That was the beauty of his craft. Not only the brutal honesty that he succinctly put in a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on his TV show, but also the poignancy and sincerity that he brought to his writing in print.

Ebert didn't have the trappings that knowledge often brings, which is why his write-up on movie viewing in India is so exquisite. He is childlike in his approach to new experiences, which is why he compares in all seriousness and sincerity the snacks available at a Hyderabad single screen theatre with that in a cinema hall in Michigan.

And in this sincerity and zest he and Tummala Sir lived a very similar life — both refused to accept what life had meted out to them; both decided instead to take life by the horns, turn it around, and make every moment a celebration and a gift. It's surprising how  similar their approach to life was. Is that the power of the spirit? Is it the power of cinema? I'm not sure. But I am glad I had them both in my life for some time. And of course, the gift of movies that they brought for me.

I hope you and your students will enjoy reading these articles:

• CALCUTTA JOURNAL ENTRY: DAY 1

• 1999 CALCUTTA FILM FESTIVAL

• GOING TO THE MOVIES IN INDIA 

UPDATE (April 14, 2013): Maria Popova, my favourite blogger, pays tribute to Roger Ebert (there's also a link to the late film critic's "unforgettable TED talk"): "RIP, Roger Ebert: The Beloved Critic on Writing, Life, and Mortality".

UPDATE (April 19, 2013): Roy Peter Clark, a guru of journalism whose writing I admire deeply, has also paid tribute to Roger Ebert. Read his post here: "Why Roger Ebert was a good writer".

Who says film reviews have to be text-centric?

Not Sahil Rizwan, a 24-year-old freelance writer and creator of "The Vigil Idiot". Under that rubric, Rizwan "reviews" Bollywood films on the "Mumbai Boss" blog. Of course, "reviews" is a misnomer; what Rizwan does is give us his take in the form of a graphic novella with stick figures for characters.

Here is the first panel of Rizwan's broadside against Madhur Bhandarkar's latest offering, Heroine:

Laugh your way through all the panels here: "The Vigil Idiot: Heroine".

Eat your heart out, Rajeev Masand!

• Thank you, Medini Mangala, for that Facebook alert!

Anurag Kashyap's tour de force

To truly appreciate — and understand — Gangs of Wasseypur and to prepare yourself to appreciate — and understand — the soon-to-be-released sequel, you need to watch the first part (and, presumably, Part 2, too) twice.

• The best review I have read of Gangs of Wasseypur is by Sanjukta Sharma in Mint. Here's an excerpt:

The director is at his pinnacle. Although much of the passage of years is unexplained and the middle slacks somewhat, Kashyap designs the film with such tenacious intelligence that we keep taking it all in. There aren’t many close-ups in the film, a tool usually used to hide the lack of thoughtful visualization. Every visual pulsates with the details of surroundings. So even without the obvious context, we plunge headlong. In routine action films, I often just switch off, and miss nothing. I couldn’t take my eyes off the sequences here, breathlessly following each scene. 

Read the review in its entirety here: "Explosive treat".

Are movie critics totally out of touch with popular taste?

This is the question posed by veteran film critic Anupama Chopra in a recent issue of Open. She writes in her regular column for the magazine that this question struck her after she gave Salman Khan's Ready a two-star rating because "the craft was shoddy, the plot was incoherent and the jokes, cheerfully low-IQ. It was Hindi cinema at its laziest best". Afterwards, she says, she was soundly abused on Twitter by Salman fans. She continues:

Meanwhile, the film reportedly made over Rs 13 crore in India on its first Friday — the biggest non-festive opening for a Bollywood film.

Which made me wonder: are we critics totally out of touch with popular taste? After years of watching movies, do we evolve into curmudgeons who are unable to enjoy anything? What is the function and relevance of our reviews?

She tries to answer those questions by elaborating on the role of the reviewer but she admits there is a disconnect between viewers and reviewers:

Leading critics thought The Hangover 2 was a tired rehash of the first film — it grossed around $ 338 million globally. [At] least one leading critic — Peter Travers in Rolling Stone — described Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides as a ‘giant turd’. It grossed over $700 million worldwide.  Or closer to home, most critics think that Anees Bazmee, the creator of Ready, No Problem and Thank You, is single-handedly lowering the bar in Bollywood, but that has never stopped audiences from flocking to theatres (refer to earlier grosses for Ready).

And then she rests her case by stating unequivocally that box office and quality are not necessarily linked. "My job is to be unconcerned with the former and consumed with the latter," she writes. "The rest is dross."

Every filmgoer should read this column to understand the angst of our serious movie critics. How depressing it must be to write for an audience that does not get it.

WATCHING READY, SAYS ANUPAMA CHOPRA, WAS A "SQUIRMY" EXPERIENCE.

• ALSO READ: "Anupama Chopra's favourite film critics". And pick up her book, too: First Day First Show: Writings from the Bollywood Trenches (a copy has been placed in the Commits library).

• UPDATE (September 2, 2013): On Outlook editor Krishna Prasad's blog: Do readers and viewers care for film reviews?

What do filmmakers think of film reviewers?

That is a tantalising question, isn't it? Going by an eye-opener of an article in Open, filmmakers have a point when they carp at reviewers saying they have no qualification for what they do:

When Hollywood comic Rob Schneider attacked Los Angeles Times critic Patrick Goldstein over his comedy Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, he argued that Goldstein was unqualified because he had never won a Pulitzer Prize. Roger Ebert came to Goldstein’s defence against Schneider. He said he was a Pulitzer Prize-winner and “Your movie sucks.”

Here in India, write Madhavankutty Pillai and Pratibha Singh, actor Ajay Devgn has the same complaint:

"I know critics are important, but do you know there are some 400 critics today? Every channel, there are two people discussing films when they don’t even understand film-making. You’re harming someone’s business, career; a producer could have put in all his life savings. It’s not fair. There has to be some kind of qualification before you become a critic."

The article also refers to the digs made at critics by Salman Khan and Sajid Khan and it then explains that, sometimes, it is not just the reviewer but newspaper policies which determine how opinion is shaped:

For years until the early 2000s, a filmmaker would have to try really hard to get a kind, non-sarcastic word out of The Times of India’s critic Khalid Mohamed. After he shifted jobs, the newspaper went to the opposite extreme. It almost seems paranoid about offending filmmakers. Rarely does any film get below two stars.

Or take the case of DNA. It has outsourced its film reviews to the owner of a trade magazine. He was replaced a couple of months ago with the owner of another trade magazine. A trade magazine essentially provides information about the business that movies do, upcoming launches, etcetera. Mainstream newspapers will not shut shop if the Hindi film industry stops advertising; trade magazines will. Also, a lifetime of tracking box office numbers does little for one’s ability to analyse a movie. At one stroke, both objectivity and competence are called into question by such an appointment.

Harsh words, indeed. But they ring true. How can you be objective and competent if you are beholden to the industry you are critiquing?

There is one glaring flaw, I think, in an otherwise interesting and enlightening piece. Where are the critics' views?

Read "Review of Reviewers" and tell me if you think Open should have given us film reviewers' opinions on the matter, too.

'Film criticism in India has become a joke'

Noyon Jyoti Parasara

Commitscion Noyon Jyoti Parasara (Class of 2007), who is an entertainment journalist and film reviewer in Mumbai, comments: This is one thing I have been talking to people about for ages now. I agree film criticism in India has become a joke; most times it is pointless criticism.

I can only speak for Bollywood cinema. The industry is at a very interesting stage, with a change in the type of films that are being made. Movies such as Udaan and Tere Bin Laden, and filmmakers such as Anurag Kashyap, Shivam Nair, Shimit Amin, Onir, and Rajat Kapoor are trying hard to do something that has so often been rejected; when it comes to movie-viewing, they are trying to put the audience through rehab of sorts. But these directors often end up being booed by certain reviewers who cannot identify with these films because they grew up on the ’80s movies and now just chug along with the (same) flow.

On the other hand, there is a young generation of reviewers who welcome the change. And in their excitement they sometimes show the green light to just about any movie which pretends to be 'new'. These reviewers also go about blacklisting any 'mass entertainer' labelling them 'same old trash'. What makes things worse is that most of them are kids who have not seen half as many Hindi films as they have seen Hollywood movies. I know people in their early twenties who have been reviewers for a couple of years — but they have not seen the films made by Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, or B. Subhash. While the first two made classics, B. Subhash gave us Disco Dancer!

Hence, there is a lack of balance.

On a personal note, I was pushed into reviewing — clients of the media company I worked for at the time wanted reviews. There are many others who get into reviewing just as I did — because it's a job and it needs to be done. I refused to do Hollywood reviews though, because I thought I was not qualified. But I love watching Hindi films so I carried on with it.

"You don't expect everyone to like a film. I loved Tere Bin Laden; some hated it. I hated Housefull; some loved it."

Over time I have learnt the ropes — and I have also openly admitted that I have been wrong about my judgment on many occasions. Today I believe a film is fine if the director tells the audience what he wanted to tell in a good way. That's one thing that probably should be kept at the top of one's mind while reviewing movies. You don't expect everyone to like a film. I hated Housefull; some loved it. I loved Tere Bin Laden; some hated it. That depends on what kind of humour you like. I found Golmaal Returns better; my friend and fellow-Commitscion Victor Mukherjee found Golmaal 3 better. The point to be considered is this: Did the director manage to do what he set out to do? And if he didn't, what were the issues?

That brings me to something very important: Reviewers cannot take their preconceived notions into the cinema hall. While reviews are supposed to be opinion pieces, reviewers have to be ready and willing to critique all kinds of films. It is their duty to watch the film and give a perspective to the audience on what the film is about and how to look at it. Just because I hate horror films doesn’t mean I can slam every film in that genre. What I should ideally do is tell people that this is a horror film and if you like the genre, this is for you. If you don't like horror films, you need not watch it, but, nevertheless, the film has been made well.

"More often, people end up bashing a film, completely ignoring anything good in the film. Even RGV's Aag, which seems to be the epitome of trash for many, had good things about it."

But, more often, people end up bashing a film, completely ignoring anything good in the film. Even RGV's Aag, which seems to be the epitome of trash for many, had good things about it — for instance, it had better sound than many of his previous films. And then there are people who just can't stand an actor or a director and slam the film. One trade person panned MNIK so severely he used exactly 3,242 words to tell readers what he thought of the Shah Rukh-starrer.

Finally, all the above holds good only for true-blue media outlets. For me, I cannot be dishonest in my reviews. I write what I think is right. And if the readers find that I am in sync with their tastes they will continue going by my opinions. Many media houses are already losing followers because the ratings — the "stars" awarded to each film by the reviewer — are for sale, and, apparently, Rs.1 lakh per star has become the norm. I learnt about this "star" racket when someone once asked me if I had been offered a 'package' after I said I liked a film that many others had panned!