Last week i had the chance to feel like Simon Cowell. I was judging a set of student films. Phrases such as which butcher did you use to edit that; or was the camera broken; or Is there a point to this; or where is the script; wtf, wtf, wtf; oh god – please let this end; cut, please cut, pleeese – crossed my mind.? ? One of my co-judges leaned across and whispered to me, I know it is ametuer, but does it have to be so bad? And bad it was.
In the four years that i have been teaching, i usually find student films to be quite good. They have a germ of an idea – and they can express that idea. What is usually lacking is technical sophistication – but since we aren’t looking for narrative sense more than visual sense- it is fairly ok for now. But this lot – was just plain bad. I have never seen such an unstructured approach to work. There was one film that had a germ of idea and was fairly well put together – the rest were a waste of everyone’s time and energy (and that includes the people who made them). And it is not so much the students’ fault – as much as those who are supposed to guide them. This is unmonitored, unguided work – and student films are not supposed to be made with no input. And it is not the fault of those who guide – they really don’t know too much about the media – either in terms of theory or in terms of practice.
The fault is of the University of Mumbai for introducing courses like this – without ensuring that there is a) competent faculty to teach it; b) adequete infrastructure to support it. The body of work that i reacted to is part of the Bachelor’s in Media Studies programme offered by the University of Mumbai. One of the ‘paid’ courses. Parents pay an average of around 15k per term for a variety of these so called professional courses. This includes a bachelor’s in Management, Bio Technology, IT etal. The fact that there is a demand in the market for cattle fodder – and these courses somehow manage to fill the numbers – no way deters from the fact that the courses are not really khaas.
Students are better off doing a general BA or a BSc and specialising at the time of their Masters. The courses neither have the theory to give one an academic rigour, nor have the infrastructure to give the practical orienation that is needed, nor indeed industry backing to ensure employment.Courses like Bio Chemistry are run without either faculty or lab. It is someone’s future that we are talking about. End of the day the blogging world may go up in arms against private sector instutes like [tag]IIPM[/tag] for their claims, but what when the [tag]University of Mumbai[/tag] puts out programmes that don’t deliver?
i totally agree with you. unfortunately the mess up in tha paid courses has now affected some of the regular courses that the university have to offer. Some colleges are well equipped with a decent lab but they suffer in the fact that the communication gap is non-existant between the teacher and student. As a result final results at the end of every semister is really “Ghastly”
i used to hire guys out of STACA which was NMIM’s course on advertising. Really bad. Kids after a two year PGDIP course knew nothing about what they were supposed to know. And their families had spent a mini fortune on their education.
But, frankly – that is the problem with much of our higher education system. They are not oriented towards the work place.And the sad part is that parents are getting lured with the ‘professional course’ tag. It is like Aptech and NIIT all those years ago – spend a fortune and end up doing data entry. Today it is spend a fortune and be a call centre operator. Maybe that is what we mean by progress 🙂
yup. it doesn’t really help when already stretched faculty are over stretched even further.
i don’t think that a professional course that promises job can happen at 15k. for more facilities and faculty the monies have to be allocated. Which doesn’t seem to be happening right now. it will be better to charge more and deliver quality than charge this and shatter dreams.
Hi Revi
i think that they have wound up the STACA programme.
i remember the IT craze and the constant bombardment with ads on do IT course and change your life. etal
It was quite a phenomenon wasn’t it?
I strongly agree with ur views ma’am. the neeed of the hour is technology and faculty. I have a question….
“Our these our movies that you saw??”
Have you seen the one on Child Labour???
i blogged about your films earlier!
no haven’t
shit! I am a victim!
I studied in a college where (till i was there) had only two potable water faucets in a building of 4 floors. Our library was manned by such irritating (*&^()^()*^#*&(^ that very few really went there. Our film hall was right in the reading hall of the college which had boards of Silence Please while we played Pather Panchali and Cinema Paradiso. In the Advanced Computers lectures when i saw how things were being taught I had internal bleeding in my heart. Our principal thought we were a pain to ask for tv, camera, and all that. We thought he was a pain.
But i am sure my BMM was not a disaster, and this is thanks to many people who were very altruistic. All the visiting faculty who were there to fuse enthusiasm in us and encourage us were not there for the moeny. So if i had to chose between a few clones of Meenakshi the dead as a dodo in house faculty to teach me some 200 year old BA and people like Harini Calamur, Victor Manickam, Uday Shankar, Rohan Korde, Pramod Sharma, Alka Khandelwal, Bhattacharjee and many more such people who inspite of having their own jobs woke up at 5 am and came to my unimpressive college to give us something then I chose the second option. Right now I am so pissed off after college, i wish i can have a 1 month stint back in BMM to reenergize myself.
Sure after BMM right now i feel so friggin disillusioned but its okay.
Ok, i really shud add Madhavi Tangella to that list of names.
I think that Madhavi was quite wonderful. She attracted and retained some good teachers. I think many of us came in because of her and stayed on because of her enthusiasm
btw Sriram – tnx – really nice of you. made my day 🙂
I don’t think that it is a question of a disaster, but of delivering what is promised. And ein the case of careers there better be delivery!
of course ur welcome mam.
Abt college films. We were very enthu because at that time we wer actually being given a mesage, “what was only fun and timepass and extra curricular, the u can do it after u’ve done with everything else can now take centre stage.” And that was very interesting.
In our first year’s summer vacation my pals and I used some internet lessons on short film making – script writing, story boarding and some technical stuff. We started making a film in the vacation and Madhavi mam helped us initiate. We din finish it. But we learnt quite a few things and had fun. And those internet lessons on film making really helped later on. And here it is if anyone’s looking for it.
http://www.exposure.co.uk/eejit/
also visit, simplyscripts.com to download popular film scripts.
HAA! I am so relieved. By the ways, Mr. Jagdish Ratnani from our college also shares the same views. He teaches us Internet issues and is really amused by the fact, that there is no internet provided to teach the subject. And he really frets and fumes when after asking all the permissions we do get a connection and, it takes half an hour to download a page. hehehe.
megha – i rest my case 🙂
Mam, Thanks for the honest opinion you have given. I just managed to check out your blog and yes, even though it seems tough, I think youve been fair. According to me, we are surely lacking on some quality guidance, as you rightly mentioned and more or less that has been summed up in all our movies. It was more of a ‘going-through-the-motions’ time when we did the project than something we put our blood, sweat and soul on ! Unfortunately, our films were a reflection of our class. Totally disjunctive in thought and action, cliched to a large extent and last minute work.
Hopefully, this post by you will spur those “wannabe” film-makers to go and do a better job and I am sure with ur guidance, it will turn into reality.
Hi Venket
am not sure whether we have met or interacted, tho’ ur post leads me to believe that we have.
I don’t mean to be harsh on the students. I am sure that they don’t want their efforts to be wasted. I am more critical of the lack of guidence. the first question that i invariably ask when someone comes in with an idea is – why will the audience want to watch. The process of answering this question – usually gives shape to the idea. If you can’t think of a single good reason for why people will want to watch – then a new idea is needed 🙂
Absolutely….
Our concepts were accepted on an ad-hoc basis and that is something that baffled all of us. It was more of a “KC-is-doing-so-why-not-We?” exercise, that probably led us nowhere. I somehow felt tht instead of 2 movies, 1 would have been a much better option. Commitment would have been hell of a lot better and so would the effort. I think we erred badly on that count and this exercise surely gives us students a food for thought.
hello maam.i have made a first attempt on documentary film making. i m not doing any film making course. infact m an engineering student. i wud like 2 show my work to you once it is complete. would u agree??
sure…..drop me a line when you are through…
what will help is that if you showed it at the story / script stage itself…..
you really don’t need a film making course … some of the best films i have seen are people with a passion for film making (not necessarily a degree in the same….
hello maam
its been a long time since the last time i wrote to you. now i am doing a film making course but i had completed the docu long time back, in 2007 itself. i have provided a link to it. would like to know your opinion regarding the film.