The Art Direction classes: mid way thru

I suppose it was in the fitness of things that one of the Direction students did not have an email ID. In my case it simply meant that I couldn’t send him notes via email, but for his own sake- I mean here was a young man who was studying in English for a course in Film Direction and yet had no access to the internet.

In a way that’s the way its been these past two days, discovering how little this tiny bunch of Film Director aspirants actually knew, whether due to the teaching or due to their own interests. Finally I had to just say OK, if they do not know this, its fine, lets fill in that gap too.

So I’ve ended up watching bits and pieces of movies with the guys, telling them as much the skills of the scriptwriters and directors as of  art directors and production design. But the important concern, from my perspective was that they must have a ‘take-home’ value after every class, learn some little bit that they did not know before.

Once I narrowed my perspective to the levels of the students, things kind of started moving in the class- I could talk of whatever, but they understood it all, as I assumed nothing, just sought to explain things from a very rudimentary level.

I did stumble at times because the classes are in Hindi, even the DVD copies they brought had been dubbed into Hindi or Urdu (and I did not even know you could get ‘Titantic’ and ‘Avatar’ dubbed in Urdu). They will give the final exams in English, most of the terminology used is also in English, but I explain in Hindi. Our discussion too are in Hindi, though at times I stumble and go into English there too. I keep wondering how they’ll answer questions in the exams, but it appears that this is the way it is in North India- for medicine, law, all other subjects- you teach in English, but text books and exams are in English.

Amongst the movies we saw, ‘Vicky Donor’ was obviously the audience choice- when the principles they had been learning were discovered to be applicable there too, the guys understood it all. In ‘Titanic’ or ‘Day After Tomorrow’ it had been a bit remote. They’d understood ‘Mother India’ all right, but it just felt old fashioned to them- though a fantastically written and directed movie.

Now lets see how the class proceeds from here.