Orange City Film Foundation workshops in July, November

NAGPUR: Buoyed by the response its first film appreciation workshop received last year, the Orange City Film Foundation plans to hold two such events this year, one in July and the other in November. The foundation had organized a one-day workshop in August 2016 as a run-up to the first Orange City Film Festival which was held in January this year.
Giving details to the media, Dr Jabbar Patel, coordinator of the festival, said that the two workshops will focus on technical aspects of filmmaking and significance of sound and music in cinema.
“During the last workshop we observed that the average age for cinema understanding has come down considerably. Nagpur is an educational hub and we want to tap young minds. The workshops will be thematically different and will deal with various aspects of filmmaking and appreciation,” Patel said. The dates for the two workshops will be announced later.
Noting the fact that there had been a surge in number of short films being made in the city and region, Patel said the thrust of the workshops would be to provide a vision to aspiring filmmakers.
“A filmmaker has to define a story through scenes, dialogue and how it would reach a climax. He has to visualize how the film will look at the mixing stage. How a director treats the script and creates scenes are crucial to the final output,” Patel said.
Terming synchronization between those who prepare the skeleton of the film and those who provide it a body as important, the veteran filmmaker said, “A workshop tells how a director interprets the different fragments of filmmaking like positioning of the camera, the different styles of narration and dramatization of scenes which may be just two liners on paper.”
Terming the quality of entries for the short film contest held last year as poor, Patel said that the ideas and their implementation was inept. “We have to compare the works of directors like Raj Kumar Hirani or Adoor Gopalkrishanan with what they made as students and what work they do now to properly understand how training has nuanced their skills,” he said.
Adding that films today also go beyond cinematography and direction to include special effects for which there are production designers, Patel said, “They are the ones who decide the look, mood and the sound of the film and how to balance it all. In a workshop, the faculty teaches all this using examples from the works of international masters.”
The workshop will be conducted by faculty of MIT School of Film and Television, Pune.