FTII People

ARRI announces the new ALEXA Mini, a versatile additional tool in the ARRI ALEXA camera range that combines a compact and lightweight form factor with the same unparalleled image quality that has made the ALEXA system a gold standard for the industry. Designed for specialized shot-making, the ALEXA Mini perfectly complements a full ALEXA shooting kit and allows crews to eliminate the complications of working with third-party cameras by keeping everything within a single system that is trusted all over the world.

Equipped with a 4:3 sensor, automatic de-squeeze mode for anamorphic productions and frame rates of 0.75-200 fps, the ALEXA Mini records ProRes or uncompressed ARRIRAW either in-camera to CFast 2.0 cards or to a specially-designed external Codex recorder that can record image streams from up to four ALEXA Minis simultaneously — a compelling option for multi-camera setups such as 360° plate shots. Images from the ALEXA Mini will perfectly match those from all other ALEXA cameras, making the final grade easier and quicker.

As a child what were your early influences towards cinema? Art, literature, graphics, music, photography?
Growing up, my father was my biggest influence towards music and cinema. We were the one of the first people in our society to get a vcr and that is when my love for films started! Every weekend was a trip to the video store to rent 2-3 films and watch them all in one sitting. I remember the first film we saw when we got the vcr was The Wall by Pink Floyd. Not many kids my age got to see that!

How did you first become interested in audiography? Most people don’t know about this field of cinema?
My love for music helped there. My father is a big audiophile and so are most of his friends. One of his friends had this huge Bose system with a CD player(in 1985!) and I would go to his house every evening to listen to music. Loved the sounds that came out of the system. Being exposed to good sound from a young age really helped me train my ears. You know what the result should be, even when you are starting out, and you try and work towards that goal.
I really became serious about audiography when I was doing my bachelors in electronics engineering. It just started with DJing for friends’ parties. Then I got hold of audio software and the tinkerer in me took over.
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An alumnus of the Film & Television Institute of India and Berlin Talent Campus, Pushpendra began his career as an actor playing one of the leads in Amit Dutta’s Venice award winning film ‘Aadmi Ki Aurat Aur Anya Kahaniya’. He then went on to assist Amit Dutta on his next feature ‘Nainsukh’ and the latest ‘Sattvi Sair- The Seventh Walk’. He has also assisted Anup Singh on his feature ‘Qissa- The Ghost Is A Lonely Traveler’. 

His film ‘Lajwanti’ (directed, produced and acted by him) and Ich Will Mich Nicht Künstlich Aufregen Aka Asta Transfer ( as an actor) directed by Maximilian Linz premiered at the 64^th Berlin International Film Festival in 2014. 

Currently he teaches at Film & Television Institute of India in the department of Acting. 

As a child what were your early influences towards cinema? Art, literature, graphics, photography?
I studied in a boarding school where every Saturday we were shown Hindi movies. Occasionally we were shown a Malayalam or an Hollywood film. But, it was during the vacations that once I saw ‘Pather Panchali’ on Doordarshan and related to the images despite it being in Bengali. I started watching regional classics on Doordarshan since then. I looked forward to watching ‘Gandhi’ every October 2nd on Doordarshan.

I was fond of literature since my childhood. Raduga Publications from Russia would come to our school with Hindi and English translations of the Russian folk tales and I started collecting those books.

How did you first become interested in film direction?
It was while working with Barry John in his theatre group in Delhi, we would not only act but even direct small acts based on certain themes. Barry exposed us to Cinema outside India and since then I was interested in directing a film one day.

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Cine Meter II turns your iPhone®, iPod touch®, or iPad® into a shutter-priority reflected light meter, an RGB waveform monitor, and a false-color picture monitor. Cine Meter II works on any iDevice with a camera running iOS 5.1.1 or higher. It expands the original Cine Meter app with several added features:

• Cinematographer-friendly controls let you set shutter angle, ND filter compensation, and arbitrary filter factors.
• Use the front-facing camera for “lightmeter selfies” – use yourself as the model when lighting a set (not available on iPhone 3GS).
• The zoomable spotmeter lets you measure light precisely from a distance (iOS 7 or later only, on iPhone 5, iPod touch 5G, iPad Air, iPad mini 2G, or later devices).
• Add a Luxi™ photosphere for incident-light readings ($30 from ESDevices for iPhone 4/4S or 5/5S; support for other devices coming soon).
  
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Arri just announced the Alexa 65, available exclusively from a global ArriRental network.

With a sensor larger than a 5-perf 65 mm film frame, ALEXA 65 harks back to the golden age of 65 mm widescreen filmmaking in the mid-20th century, when this newly introduced format captured the imagination of cinema audiences around the world. 65 mm grew into an inspirational format, providing an epic frame within which the biggest and most visually impactful stories could be told.

With an open gate resolution of 6560 x 3102 photosites, ALEXA 65 offers the same incredible sensitivity, high dynamic range and natural colorimetry as ALEXA, but far greater spatial resolution. This results in images that will look stunningly life-like on the largest cinema screens, with pristine clarity and incredibly fine detail.

Launched as an integral part of the ALEXA 65 system is a range of high-performance 65 mm prime and zoom lenses that do justice to the exceptional levels of detail capable of being captured by the camera. The 50-110 mm Zoom 65 and the eight Prime 65 lenses, ranging from 24 mm to 300 mm, utilize state-of-the-art optics from Hasselblad, housed in classically robust and uniform lens barrels co-developed with IB/E Optics.

n common with ALEXA XT, ALEXA 65 captures in the ARRIRAW format, which delivers uncompressed, uncompromised, unencrypted images. ARRI Rental has worked closely with Codex during the camera development to create a new high-performance workflow unique to the ALEXA 65, which processes full resolution uncompressed ARRIRAW 65 mm images. Depending on your shooting environment and location, the workflow can run on either a purpose-configured ARRI Rental Vault S or the new high performance ARRI Rental Lab 65.

This new, optimized workflow can also generate high quality ProRes 4444 HD dailies masters in real time to provide a very quick dailies solution given the large format nature of the recorded image. These files can then be further transcoded, if required, to other formats.

Full details on Arri Rental Group website.

ABOUT “NOW”

“Now” is an association of artists based in Mumbai which include actors, directors, musicians, dancers, writers etc. The basic concept behind putting the name of the group “Now” is that we believe that an artist always has something to say, something to express, but most of the time the idea remains in his head or reaches his friends. We under “Now” propagate and support these kinds of people, to take up the challenge of realizing their ideas in the form of a project NOW whether it is a film or a theater performance or a musical night, anything which can be delivered in front of an audience.

ABOUT THE PLAYS

We have recently produced two plays; one is “A/126, Vrindavan Garden”, written and directed by Vinay Sharma and the other is “a b j”, directed by Shashi Bhushan which is an adaptation of the short story “Bade Bhaisahab” by the celebrated author Shri Munshi Premchand,.

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JK (on the left)

JK graduated from the FTII in around 2005.  In 2008 he won the National Award for Best Cinematography for his short film ‘When This Man Dies’. His IMDB page is here.

As a child what were your early influences towards cinema?

My first impressions of watching a film were magical transformations happening on a massive screen. Watching Sunday afternoon regional cinema showcased on DD, I began to immerse myself in studying and understanding the craft behind the poignant and dramatic portrayal of these narratives. Discussing with my uncle Sivaji Rao about how the height of camera placement affects the way a character is perceived, I realised I wanted to be a film maker.
Did you start with photography? If yes, why did you choose to leave photography to take up motion picture professionally?
My fascination for motion picture photography was the foundation for my interest in photography.
I wanted to join FTII and decided to enroll myself in a Bachelors in Photography at JNTU college of Fine arts in Hyderabad.

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As a child what were your early influences towards cinema? Art, literature, graphics, photography?
My earliest memories are of reading. And of watching films. I grew up in the heart of Bombay’s film land, around Grant Road, where all the film distribution offices used to be, and where there was a cinema hall on every turn of the street. My parents, specially my mother watched films regularly. I grew up watching 1-3 films a week, this in the time when there was no television. And reading at least 3-5 books a week, thanks to the multitude of lending libraries around. Art was drawing classes in and outside school, or the embroidery and crochet the women around me were so adept at.

How did you first become interested in film direction?
As a child, reading film magazines, I would often play at giving interviews myself. I play-acted at being an actor. I had no concept of a film director’s job. Just after college, I got a role at FTII in a student diploma exercise. After that, I acted in several student exercises. But from my very first experience of a film shoot, I was clear that I did not want to be an actor. I hated being instructed. I knew that I had to be the one giving instructions.

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OPEN HOUSE W. I. C. A. & W. W. I

Invite you to a day of commemorating and celebrating the works of two leading Cinematographers of our time,

Mr. V K Murthy & Mr. V Babasaheb
The following films will be screened:

‘Life in Full Open’ (Documentary on V Babasaheb)
Dir: Avinash Deshpande
DoP: A S Kanal

‘Ganga Jamuna’
Dir: Nitin Bose,
DoP: V Babasaheb

‘Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam’
Dir: Guru Dutt
DoP: V K Murthy
VENUE : WHISTLING WOODS AUDITORIUM
TIME : 10.30 am Onwards
DATE : 10th May 2014

WICA Office Numbers: 2635 5926, +91 88792 14579
E mail: info@wica.in

Antara was born and brought up in Kolkata. She completed her schooling from La Martiniere for Girl’s and college from St. Xavier’s, Kolkata.
Prior to working in Mumbai, she directed a magazine style non fiction daily programme for Doordarshan Bangla. In Mumbai she wrote scripts for and directed MTV MotoAlert.
She graduated from the FTII in 2008 with a diploma in film editing.
In the same year, her diploma film “Narmeen” (directed by Dipti Gogna) won the HBO Short Film Competition Grand Jury Award in the South Asian International Film Festival in New York, and in 2009 Best Short Film at the Indian Film Festival in Los Angeles. Her documentary project “A Call Too Far” (also directed by Dipti Gogna) won the Silver Award at the 2007 IDPA awards.
Antara has assisted on projects like Ghajini, Daayen Ya Baayen, Road Movie and Jhootha Hi Sahi. Her independent feature film projects are Gattu (CFSI), From Sydney with Love (Pramod Films), Mere Dad Ki Maruti (Y-Films) and Bewakoofiyaan (YRF Studios). She has edited a documentary for PSBT entitled ‘Gandhi Lives’.

As a child what were your early influences towards cinema? Art, literature, graphics, photography?
I grew up amidst myriad creative influences. My grandmother was a graduate of the National School of Drama. My mother is an independent artist and one of the best read people I know. She encouraged me to read from a very early age. Also in my family, most of us have trained in some form of dance and/or music. So most of my childhood was spent shuttling between the library, dance/singing lessons, my mother’s art class or play rehearsals in school. While all this was tremendous fun, my one bone of contention was that my father was super strict about TV and film viewing. So much so that my sister would stand guard at the stairs while I watched Chitrahaar, and at the first sign of my father returning from office we’d switch off the TV and run to our room. The few times I was actually allowed to watch a film, it would be an an old English film playing on Doordarshan (read: Casablanca, Ben Hur, Ten Commandments). There was no cable or VCR allowed in the house. I think ‘Tridev’ was the first Hindi film I watched, that too at a relative’s house. The second film I distinctly remember watching was the Tom Cruise film ‘Cocktail’ at a friend’s house and I remember feeling more than a little scandalised at the waterfall scene.

Somewhere along the way I figured the only way I could freely watch films and TV was to actually study them. That was the sole reason I applied for admission into the Mass Communication dept at St. Xavier’s Kolkata. I celebrated by watching Biwi No.1 seven times in the theatre.

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