Friday Fundas – Raja Reviews

By - rajasaravanan

Master class with Mani Ratnam

Master class with Mani Ratnam I had the extreme privilege to attend the master class with my favorite director Mani Ratnam during Bangalore International Film Festival 2016 in February. As much have been written about it then by the press I had not spent time in penning down my thoughts. Yesterday was his birthday and

By - rajasaravanan

Film Gauge – 65 mm aka 70 mm

Film Gauge – 65 mm aka 70 mm film When I was a kid someone gave me a film roll (negative). My friend and I took this to a room. As my friend lit torchlight I rolled the film in front of it. We placed a lens in front of the film and projected it

By - rajasaravanan

Master Shot

Master Shot In this week’s Friday Fundas I will be taking about a cinematography concept termed as Master Shot. A Master shot is a visual of the entire scene in which the action is taking place. For example in the Harry Potter series the shot involving the entire dining hall is an example of a Master

By - rajasaravanan

Rule of Thirds

Rule of Thirds The movie screen space is a confined one compared to our real life vision. It gives the ability to take a limited view of the scenery and present it to the audience. What the audience view is what has been captured through the camera. The camera position, viewing angle and the position

By - rajasaravanan

Character Arc

Character Arc A gruesome villain who has been torturing people all throughout changes his mind and seeks apology just before the curtain falls. Well this might be a scene that you might have seen in many movies. Few of them would have been convincing and few other leave you wondering what changed his mind. Well

By - rajasaravanan

Eyeline Match

Eyeline Match In last week’s Friday fundas I had discussed about the 180 degree rule that is associated with the spatial relationship of the characters on screen. I had discussed about a scene in which two characters are talking to each other. Now consider the same scene is shot by alternating between the close up

By - rajasaravanan

180 Degree Rule – Can I cross the line?

180 Degree Rule – Can I cross the line? Let us consider you are watching a movie and there is a scene which shows a car running at a considerable speed. You see the car entering the left side of the frame and exit on the right side of the frame on a highway background.

By - rajasaravanan

Chroma Key – How to make Superman fly the sky

Chroma Key – How to make Superman fly in the sky In the previous Friday Fundas section I mentioned Cinema is a magical medium and how optical illusion can create perceived reality with techniques like Forced Perspective. One of the readers had asked an interesting question on how scenes similar to Kumbakarna and the tiny soldiers,

By - rajasaravanan

Creative Geography – How Aamir Khan went from Chicago to Switzerland within minutes

This week’s Friday Fundas covers yet another interesting editing technique in movies popularly known as Creative Geography. Creative Geography is an artificial landscape that is created in movies. This technique was invented by Russian film maker Lev Kuleshov. You might also remember few weeks back I had covered another popular experiment called as Kuleshov’s effect

Diegetic and Non-diegetic Sound in movies

By - rajasaravanan

Diegetic and Non-Diegetic Sounds in movies

Diegetic and Non-Diegetic Sounds in movies When Resul Pookutty received the Academy Awards Awards for best sound mixing for his work in the movie Slumdog millionaire many of us came to know the existence of department of Sound mixing in movies and the background score is not just limited to background music but also includes sound mixing. In this

By - rajasaravanan

Kuleshov Effect or How Hitchcock turned a kind gentleman to a dirty old man

Kuleshov Effect In the last Friday Fundas section I had covered one of the basic units of film grammar Reaction Shot. In this week’s Friday Fundas I am going to cover a related topic called as Kuleshov Effect. Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov demonstrated a very powerful editing technique in cinema during the 1920s. His experiment involved shooting 4 different shots.

By - rajasaravanan

Friday Fundas: Reaction Shot

Reaction Shot In this week’s Friday Fundas we would see one of the basic units of film grammar – Reaction Shot. A Reaction shot is the one where the camera moves away from the main sequence to show the reaction of a character to the main sequence. It could be a response to a dialogue

Tag: Friday Fundas