Magic spells and wizardry: Cinema Hues from the ’30s till date

Every second of a film, compressed into a line 1 pixel high.
All such seconds fused, into a single image.
The colours of the film, laid bare.

The three building blocks of cinema have been the light, the sound and most importantly, time. It is the relationship that time has with light that this experiment is all about.

When colour first came to mainstream cinema, it brought with it, a quality of realism and reverence. Try to place yourselves in the shoes of those first cinephiles. It would have been mesmerizing to see the first moving colour images on the big screen. What feats of thaumaturgy could conjure visions of such beauty and charm?

The present experiment started with me trying to better understand how cinematography works in telling a good story. A little more study and I wanted to investigate how colour and cinema have changed each other over time. How the cinematography has affected the narrative and contrariwise. The phantasy and the phantasma. The light fantastic.

I came across several fascinating artifacts. One of them were the movie-barcodes. The ones I found available were not fit for study, detail wise and quality wise. There were a few films, for which the barcodes did not exist at all.

So I decided to make my own.

First, I carefully selected the films that I thought were really good examples of cinematography colluding with the narrative. Instances where the camera worked for the story and where the story was better because the cinematography was such. I deliberately avoided ‘pretty’ pictures – where the camera work was extraordinary, but, the film left a lot to be desired (Recent examples: Memoirs of a Geisha, Avatar etc.)

To keep the study within my limits of comprehension, I divided the films into two buckets, those before and the ones after “The Wizard of Oz (1939)” – the first mainstream, widely released, Technicolor event. Historically, there were a few colour films before TWOZ, like The Garden of Allah (1936) which I did analyze, but eventually decided to leave them out, because they seemed like regular films, only shot in colour. TWOZ seemed like the first film that truly justified the use of colour. There’s always something I don’t know, so correct me, if you see a flaw.

I eventually selected the films that represented the cusp of each decade. For 1940, the films were selected from 1939-1941, for 1950: ’49-51, and so on.
From all the possibilities, the choice boiled down to about 30 films.

For each of the 30 films, I then wrote a program, that would extract 3 frames per second, compress each to an image 2 pixels high and then join all these images together. The resulting mosaic was the shape of a tall pillar that looked like the spectal analysis of the entire movie. To view it better, I rotated it by 90 degrees. I finally resized all the film mosaics to the same size – 3ft by 1 ft, 300 DPI. When viewed from a distance these images give a charming insight into the minds that made the movie.

Observed closely, you can almost demarcate different scenes, see how the pace of the film varied. Towards the very right, you can even see how long the end credits were, in comparison to the rest of the film. Endlessly fascinating details come to light each time you see these images.

The first images in this album carry a mosaic of 3 films each, for every decade studied.

To me, they are a new kind of photo. An entire movie sans the fourth dimension.

A photograph of time, frozen in time.

The photographs from the experiment are available on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151266425282880.469852.686507879&type=1&l=fa73ee7b03

RELISH

Him. Her. Car. Traffic Jam. Din. Honks. Headlights. Red light. Rain.
It falls from somewhere beyond the yellow glow of the street lamps into the puddles on the road. It falls on the windshield and the windows. Light, drunk on the raindrops, gets into the car and dances on her shoulder. He can’t help but steal a glance.

A raindrop begins a leisurely downward glide on the glass, it’s shadow inside the car is made of light. A drop made of light glides down her forehead, to her cheek. It comes to rest right at the corner of her lips. A kiss he could never get lives in that corner. He thinks of Peter Pan and Wendy. He realizes that he is staring and turns the other way.

Concurrences and happenstance. The two of them in the same car.

She is mildly irritated. Getting tired of the traffic and noise. The silence in the car isn’t helping. Time, too slow for her, too fast otherwise.

Selfishly, he does not want the rain to end or the traffic to move. He doesn’t even want to stop staring. If only he could say something now.

What interests her? I don’t watch sports. You don’t talk about sports to a girl! What do you talk about? She’s a near stranger. Be funny. Yeah? and say what? What did you say to get in the same cab?

“Oh! you are going there too?”, ” I hear it’s a good one!”, “…we could share the ride.” A little courage, a lot of luck.

So, back to now. He wishes there was a sentence where the words hope, faith and divinity could meld with dirty, erotic, mystery. He could really use that sentence right now.

She is right there, half your wish come true. Now what will you do? 

She impatiently turns towards the window, away from him. Shadows shift amidst the sparkling lights. His resolve breaks, a gaze, just one more.

It’s a white top, no a light pink one, are those flowers? green? Wait, it’s this light, what is the color of her…oh God! his eyes are not behaving themselves.

This is getting awkward, if he could say the right thing now, break the silence, she would be happy again.

And then, they would kiss with abandon. Oblivious of the crowd. And the drops of light would dance. The earth would spin around them and hum happily ever after.

Desires. Dreams. Stop stargazing and start being present. Last chance.

Restlessly she turns back, looks at her mobile phone, dials.

“Hi! Is there another show of the movie today? It’s such a beautiful romance and I’ll miss it because of this stupid traffic right now.”

Red lights turn green. He looks to the road. Cars begin to crawl. A skipped beat from his lower left ventricle goes unheard.

Din. Honks. Headlights. A little drop of light is left behind.

Dreams And The Truth: The Plays of Manav Kaul

1. Too Long, Didn’t Read

I saw two plays – Laal Pencil and Mammtaz Bhai Patangwale by Manav Kaul. The plays are Brilliant! No, they are better than brilliant!
Also, when compared to his contemporaries who murder Ghalib/Faiz and as shaggy haired, mustachioed, pseudo-philosopher-artist-types peddle boring trash, Manav Kaul’s work is not only heads and shoulders above, but also light years ahead in every way.

If you’ve not seen his plays, try to catch them at the earliest.
They are, in one word, magic.

2. Not Nostalgia

This year started with me making a trip to my home town after 7 long years. A place of painful memories and fortuitous events.

There, the dried up carcass of the swimming pool, I had so loved once, wanted to talk to me. Today’s fat Shaurya floats, unlike the lean shark that rocked those waters of the past. I also visited my school and touched the trees that still stand in its playgrounds. I found myself thinking of the things gone by.

I week later, I was back in Mumbai and watching Midnight In Paris for the umpteenth time. Somehow, Cinema Paradiso, Amelie and Waking Life also kept cropping up in conversations.

Already on an overdose of, what I thought was, fond nostalgia, I got a chance to witness two plays – Laal Pencil and Mammtaz Bhai Patangwale by Manav Kaul. This shook me up enough to bring this blog out of its stasis. It was not nostalgia that I was brooding upon. It was romance. A different kind of romance, that I found the two plays echo as well. Read on.

3. The Writer/Director

A good director, in my humble opinion, must be a courageous, honest, thieving, cheating, immoral, arrogant, rouge Saint. To an extent, this applies for a writer as well. He must know how to channel his talents or passions through hard work and honesty. To be able to objectively grade his work, be a litmus for his own benchmarks and yet love it all like his own baby.

Like a snake with a sweet tooth, a vampire in love, a kind carnivore or a benevolent dictator, the director must be a dense, charming bag of contradictions. Manav Kaul, comes close.

He is the best that Prithvi has on offer, today. While some of his ilk are craftsmen of repute – their work all polished and sanitized, Manav Kaul represents the other end of the spectrum, the very best of art – fresh, spontaneous, ripe with meaning and a sense of purpose.

I am a fan, you should be too. Further, for your sweet reference, check out: Aranya Theatre’s Website, Manav Kaul’s Blog.

4. The plays

Laal Pencil and Mammtaz Bhai Patangwale – like a young, confident magician, whose sense of romance is still alive yet one who wields complete control on his craft and expression, Manav Kaul has woven two beautiful tales of dreams and truth. They are full of metaphors, of multiple layers of message and meld truth with beauty. The narrative is immersive and engaging, it is extremely uncommon to find a play where the transitions carry as much coolth as the scene they flank, this is that rarity.

Laal Pencil – The red pencil in ‘Laal Pencil’ is a metaphor for all the false facades, the superfluous skills, that we acquire choosing to mask our incompetence and emptiness instead of addressing the problem directly. It is a metaphor for the easy way out, for the quick and dirty solutions, for the grab-job mentality. Like pivot tables and charts a McKinsey-ish MBA ponders on instead of trying to understand how to actually run a project. Like the over-rated, unneeded ‘educational’ degrees we acquire to vainly adorn our resumes with. Like the photoshop filters or CGI that a photograper uses to mask the flaws of a photograph. There is a red pencil for us all. There’s one in your pocket and in mine too. The play then urges you to reject these facades and embrace the truth. To recognize the beauty of truth, like the beauty of grand, rock-hard, cut-you-hurtful, dangerous-cliffed-yet-grand mountains. Recognition of the beauty in the reality, it is a difficult fist step towards true greatness. The nobelest of pursuits, even if it demands the rejection of the immediate praise, prizes and validation of your peers.

Mammtaz Bhai Patangwale – Mammtazbahi’s kites are a meataphor, a mirror, of dreams as well. Representing our desires. The play plays upon the constant struggle between living for the art/dreams vs. the livelihood of commonplace existence. Mammtaz Bhai Patangwale’s protagonists need the constant din of jokes to insulate themselves from being reminded of their dying dreams. Meaningless cheap comedy, jokes, funny SMSes – anaesthesia to the painful tedium that we tie ourselves in as we ‘grow up’ – marriage, vocation, money, matters material and mundane. The grown up Vivek a perfect counterpoint to the child Bikky.

The scenes of intentional cacophony and gibberish dialogue carry more meaning and emotion than pages of philosophical monologue (like this post). They are not only surprisingly musical, but also, poetic (sometimes).

The best part of the plays are the endings. They leave a hole in you, that may egg some of us to wake up and act. Try to live and break the status quo.

I found the plays talk of a different romance. The same way Peter Pan is a romance. They were intricate romances of reality, told in fables and dreams.

5. The Cons

There has to be a negative right? A friend keeps telling me to not dwell on other’s shortcomings too much. So I’ll keep this short. There’s very little to complain anyway.

The biggest sore thumb in Laal Pencil was the performance of ‘Pinky’. WTF? She delivers her dialogue like a spoilt little brat. Always whiny and complaint ridden. Fumbling and forgetting her dialogues, uncoordinated movements and wierd graceless gestures are jarring to your nerves. Like nails on a blackboard. One bad performance lets the stellar efforts of the rest of the cast down. Folks sitting around me (and I saw five different shows of this play – yes the play is that super-good) never stopped complaining. It is to the director’s credit that this harsh sore is reduced to a mere road bump for the over all play.

In the case of Mammtaz Bhai Patangwale, the music left me a little cold. Although, in all fairness, I still found myself welling up in several scenes (all credits to the cast and the writing). I have just seen one performance of Mammtaz Bhai Patangwale, so I am hoping the music will grow on me.

6. All In All

Great Plays! Awesome work! Wait, WTF? Didn’t you read the beginning of this post?

Coins for an airplane fare

Reblogged from storiasenzastoria:

No wings and a dire need to fly,

I need an airplane

and the fare is high.

Though I have been collecting for a while

in  boxes made of mud and wood

my money, is all in small coins

unspent on other desires since childhood.

For the flight

I pay the fare in coins

and after the rise I walk out of the plane,

Read more… 121 more words