Remake the audience, please!

And I finally am on my first assignment for the video piracy class here at Umich!

I finally embark on a journey to hunt down found footage and then using it to say what I'm trying to say! 

I wasnt sure what I wanted to work on, but I knew it had to do with the media. Lately, my views on information gatekeeping by the media have been becoming more and more fierce. Media and news channels, that are one of the most fluent ways of getting information across are getting more and more influenced by different political parties and that's adversely affecting the kind of information that we, citizens, are receiving. 

So after a decent amount of brainstorming, I narrowed down to the entire concept of re-making movies. :)

Why do we re-make movies? Is it because Bollywood is running out of ideas? Or is it because they're trying to preserve classic stories? Or maybe even trying to "educate" the next generation about a classic movie? And maybe the latter two are curtains to hide behind, so we don't have to admit to the former!

How do audiences change? What causes this change and what influences it to take the shape that it does? What effect does this change have on classical stories and the idea of re-makes?? 

There are so many re-makes- and different kinds of re-makes; bollywood re-makes of older bollywood stories, bollywood re-makes of hollywood movies, bollywood mash-ups of many hollywood movies, and director's takes on older movies.

Now there have been soooo many re-makes, there was far too much to choose from. So I came down to a classic novella, that's been re-made more than a few times. Devdas, was first made in 1928, and since then, has been re-made, 9 times! The tenth version of this movie, (well, it's not really a version, but Anurag Kashyap's take on the story- he's adapted it to be far quite modern), is Dev D., that scheduled to release this year! 

What's really nice when we look at these 10 different versions of devdas,that span over 5 or so different languages (including Tamil, Asamese, Hindi, Telgu and Bengali- the original book was in bengali), is the treatment. One can clearly see how the (visual) idea of romance changes, how the sets change, how the delivery of dialogues and the choreography of dances have changed. More than to do with different people, I think it has alot to do with people, society and the way society thinks. The concept of rich and poor, of humiliation, love , sacrifice, promise, alcoholism, anger, dressing, fashion, hierarchy all changes with time, influenced by perception. And it's this perception and re-construction that follows that ignites the spark of curiosity. The older generation that has long loved Dilip Kumar as Devdas, PROBABLY would like to contrast Shahrukh Khan in the same role! And time, technology and audiences have certainly changed from the Dilip Kumar period to the King Khan's reign. And the questions that cause much debate remain- has the charm been maintained? Has the story been preserved well? Has justice been done?

Contributers at Wikipedia were nice enough to put out a list comprising of all the devdases that have ever been, and are to be in the very near future! Here goes:

•Devdas (1928 film), directed by Naresh Mitra, starring Phani Burma as Devdas, Tarakbala as Paro, and Niharbala/Miss Parul as Chandramukhi.

•Devdas (1935 film), directed by P.C. Barua, starring himself as Devdas, Jamuna as Paro, and Chandrabati Devi as Chandramukhi.

•Devdas (1936 film), directed by P.C. Barua, starring K.L. Saigal as Devdas, Jamuna as Paro, and Rajkumari as Chandramukhi.

•Devdas (1937 film) (in Assamese), directed by P.C. Baruah, starring Phani Sharma as Devdas, Zubeida as Paro, and Mohini as Chandramukhi.

•Devdas (1953 film) (also known as "Devadasu") (in Tamil and Telugu), directed by Vedantam Raghavaiah, starring Akkineni Nageswara Rao as Devdas, and Savitri as Paro.

•Devdas (1955 film), directed by Bimal Roy, starring Dilip Kumar as Devdas, Suchitra Sen as Paro, and Vyjayantimala as Chandramukhi.

•Devdas (1979 film) (also known as "Debdas"), directed by Dilip Roy, starring Soumitra Chatterjee as Devdas, Sumitra Mukherjee as Paro, and Supriya Choudhury as Chandramukhi.

•Devdas (2002 Bengali film), directed by Shakti Samanta, starring

Prasenjit Chatterjee as Devdas, Arpita Pal as Paro, and Indrani Halder as Chandramukhi.

•Devdas (2002 film), directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, starring Shahrukh Khan as Devdas, Aishwarya Rai as Paro, and Madhuri Dixit as Chandramukhi.

•Dev D (2009 film), directed by Anurag Kashyap, starring Abhay Deol as Dev, Mahi Gill as Paro, and Kalki as Chanda, Anurag Kashyap's version of Chandramukhi.

And along with this, I though I would put out a couple of you-tubers, that propped up in my research!

I'm not sure if this one is the telgu version of devdas, starring "superstar krishna"- can someone please confirm it for me??

And last but not the least, P.C. Barua's version, i think the 1936 one;

loud and fun

There's not much for me to say today! Obama took his presidential oath! yay!! Once again, his speech was full of promises, I hope he doesn't let us down. It was good fun the way he spoke of pettiness and all other such things in the time of bush's reign, if I may put it that way, in such an indirect and political fashion! We got to watching the entire thing in our class "Society", at the stamps auditorium, and for the love of god, I could not stay awake! I tried, but I would doze off! I think the music peice "Air and simple gifts" did it for me, I was sleeping like a baby! Lucky for me, I woke up just before obama took his oath!
And now I need to go attend this discussion class based on today morning's polsci class, (I dont know why, but I'm auditing that class anyway! Not to mention, sittting with a bunch of freshmen! :P) And I have no clue who my GSI is, or where the discussion is, what time, yada yada.I'm going to wait till 2:45, till the time I have to return a bok at Shapiro library, and if I get no news, I'll end up missing it!
LSA's really huge, and there are so many sections, that you barely get time to talk to the prof, almost like being on the sets of a talk show- yeah, the prof, prof. alan stam, is ridiculously funny, but that works, he makes a boring subject interesting!
I'm trying to finish this HUGE burrito I got last night, and unsuccessfully again! Aaahh! it's going ot be my midnight snack, and I've been wanting to buy a UofM coffee-sipper., and I just cant seem to lay my hands on one! aaah!!!

More till later, I have classes till 10pm, and I could really do with a small power nap and a coffee! grrr!

the awe in all the slobbery!!

So I am in the land of the big brother and the big apple. While I am living off it, pardon me if I may critique it at the same time. While the systematic way of life does awe me, at the same time, some of the trends, do disgust me. Every space has it's pros and cons, right. Start from the sugar. I need to pour in double of my usual intake. It just isn't sweet enough! And it's probably made less sweet so that people use more, therefore need more, therefore buy more. A not-so-surprising capitalist way of developing a false demand. GMO'd food, and it's immense availability makes me pull my hair out at a kroger's - "CAN I PLEASE GET GODDAMN REGULAR APPLES AND ORANGES??"
Makes me ask myself a question; Do I really need that much choice? Do I need to differ my juice-oranges from my salad-oranges from my regular fruit-oranges? While the central air conditioning system may work beautifully, the system of offering choices does not! I'm sure I can do with having my oranges, simply oranges. Pure oranges that taste like the sun, the way they're supposed to. I should be able to peel them using my fingers, and eat them, and spit out the seeds that later on are used to grow more orange plants. It was the way of nature; our human hands were made in such a way that we can peel oranges, and orange peels were made in such a way that they can be peeled by bare human hands. Our tongues and lips endow us the ability to spit out any seeds in our mouth, and seeds were made bitter and hard and weird so that the human could spit them out into soil, and help them grow. You know, like the nature-balance kinda thingy?? Like when, like one thing is dependent on like, another thing, to like, regenerate and stuff??!!
Then I don't exactly fancy having to watch a video which starts with a girl sitting on a couch, cross-connected, and her mouth wide open, and hand in the air. No, I'd like to navigate immediately away. Maybe a silent smile into the camera would be more inviting than an over-excited teen! Calm down, we all love energy, but energy in the right places. And some of the advertisements- sheesh! Whatever happened to good advertisements these days? While the consumer may buy into certain things that you say, the consumer IS NOT DUMB! They dont need to be spoonfed! Isnt the whole idea of advertising supposed to be "food for thought/thought-triggering", to get the audience curious about a product or service so they may try it out. Whatever happened to the sensuality of mystery and the thrill of drama? Is the consumer really that dumb and lazy?

A funny thing that happens around the house is weird noises- moans, groans, farts from the garbage system, the central vents, yada yada yada. In all this weirdness, there's fun, and there's a lot of awe and respect that I have for this system here! Cars stop for pedestrians, and pedestrians for cars *Yayyy!!*

*sigh*

And today, I got a pillow, a bulb, cola and a burrito, and some goodies from bath and body works ! Yayyy!! *content*.. I think I touch 75$ for the month. And I need to spend another 73 on a book tommorow morning. And I just got a computer. Ahh! I think after the book, I stop! I need to LIVE ALSO! aaah!!

WHITE-OUT!!

Yayyy! Finally I'm in Michigan, and the University is absolutely brilliant! I'm loving UofM, and I'm already feeling bad that the next 4 months are going to fly by! I've got absolutely fantastic housemates- Manisha aka Mommy, Komal and Sophia, and a bunch of absolutely crazy neighbors- Alap aka Aaloo, Jay and Prasad (aka Sadman- for his sad jokes). And there's the crazy engineer gone nuts Sameer, who, btw, is also from Bangalore, and ou can make that out almost immediately; his accent is still very very Bangalorean (READ BISHOP COTTONS, even though he's not from there)!

I got a bunch of amazing classes; and while I'm still trying to convince MAIS to promise to buy a book of me (only then it's worth buying the book, really.), I got a Mac Book Pro 15"- it's called the spoilt apple, because I'm going to SPOIL and PAMPER it no end! And with it, *evil, wicked grin* I GOT ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE MASTER COLLECTION F-O-U-R!! Buuuhuuuhahahahaa! I'm probably the first person in Srishti to have got it, and guess what, it's my very own edition! (it's registered with this computer, so only I get to using it!) So lots of new things, even though I'm missing something far beyond what I could imagine- Jigglie!!

The craziest thing about michigan- is wherever you go in Ann Arbor, or A-square as it's fondly known, is YELLOW AND BLUE! yep, the varsity colors, the colors of the wolverines, and the way it's pushed is CRAZY! The patriotism that the kids here have towards this place is immense, only to be heightened by the football season! The place is huge. Sadman and Jay think probably more than 50K. I dont know for sure, I've only seen one smaller part of campus!

It's freezing here- today's high was -5 degrees celcius and today's low was -9 degrees C. Luckily, even the buses here and centrally heated (and free for UofM students), and very frequent. So getting around becomes really easy. And contradictory to popular belief, I'd like to believe that you dont need a car with such a system in place. Free cabs to take you home at night after mindight or 1 am or something like that. Why cant srishti have that??

The campus is split into three- south, central and north. South being the mainly the athletics area, central is the biggest, and has all the "cool places" and north is the quite abode of the artists and engineers! I actually have a special corner for north, I though I would be dying to go to central, but north is just fine. The duderstatd library is really inviting, and the best thing is that most of the buildings are connected in weird ways- it took me a week to get to know some of the routes, not all of them, and for someone with a very good sense of direction, it's all messed up for now! They have microwaves all randomly places, so you can heat your food! And bagel toasters, and grills! And coffee EVERYWHERE! Oh, it's glorious. Srishti could do with a couple of those; even though I do think we have a microwave in New Campus, in the kitchen. I'm not sure.

The best part about america- PEDESTRIANS do NOT walk on highways and busy roads. They love thier lives, and there's a certain respect between pedestrians and drivers! The indian fraternity is huge here. Lots of Indians. And I've learned so much in this one week, i'll probably come back a full library down in my tummy!!! Practically all the information you could possibly need is available online, through various sites and networking setups.

It's insane, but it's fantastic! Srishti could learn a thing or two about michigan, and michigan could do with a little bit of srishti! :D

And as for me, I could do with both anyday- only, a little less snow!!

Brute Force Limited Edition Shirts!

Onseed now loves Brute Force as well!! :)

Soon after Tu and I managed to crack the Brute Force Logo (it's turned out fantastic, but I'm not going to reveal it till the end of this post! :P), Onseed announced that not only would we have submerge shirts at the flea market at sunburn 08 (which, I WILL NOT BE ATTENDING! :@), but also a limited edition Brute Force Series!

So i jumped up, booking myself one, and asking ryche if he knew the ninja story; he didn't, just like u guys!


When we were figuring out the font, Tuhin wanted a certain font called "Hirosh" which looks like what's on your left, which would make Brute Force look like an oriental restaurant! Not that I have anything against Hirosh, it's a perfectly nice font, only, not for Brute Force. This is how it was looking! :D Imagine Tuhin, in a ninja outfit, mixing hakka noodles instead of music on the console! hahahaa!!



So yep, we came up with a ninja artwork for the shirts! And guess what, ryche wanted me to design a tag which would have my name on it, and would go on the shirt, stating that it was my artwork! How cool, how sooper cool of onseed! So this is what I quickly put together: a happy griffy, and the pugo! :D

I thought I'll make it funny, and all wobbly, like a balancing act. And to go with the illustration, I picked the font brouss for my name! (font courtesy: www.dafont.com - do i get something for advertising them on my blog?? :P)

So make sure u get your Limited Edition Brute Force Shirts at sunburn before they run out, and DO NOT MISS SUNBURN- it's on, just as planned.. ALL of the artists have been very supportive, and have not canceled their gigs because of the Mumbai Shootout. I guess the only thing that got delayed was Markus Schulz, same dates, next year!
And as I promised you guys, a glimpse of the new Brute Force Logo from a flyer:

Tell me what you think about it! Leave your comments behind!

*In a formal tone*
Your feedback will be deeply appreciated!
:P

leaves! During raghu's drawing studio... I didn't have the time or patience to finish this, but looking back, I prefer this particular piece unfinished!

I was terribly bored on a flight to Delhi, and the nerdy bloke next to me was reading Bridges of Madison County... such a co-incidence, my favorite book, but the guy simply didn't see the beauty in it! *jackass!*

My first encounter with Julie Fairless- an illustration for a class "Hierarchy" she took with us sometime in 2nd year, 2nd semester.

Paper I made at Visthaar! :) Always makes me happy, getting myself messy!
Unfortunately, I can't find the paper that Aastha and I had made, and forcefully stuck an ant in that paper. Boy, are we sadists!

For "Hierarchy", again, even though it wasn't used in my book, I was just having fun, lazily doodling around, wasting my time in class.. I think someone had used the word juxtaposition, that's all. It isn't supposed to reflect the meaning of the word either!

paper I made at visthaar, in december 2006!



This doodle comes from Avy's course- communication theories; I was trying to decode a coded message as a part of a class assignment on codes!



Once again, rahgu's studio!


Once again, Raghu's studio.. this was actually the plant (RIP) that had grown in between the granite slabs at the amphi-theatre.. such plants always catch my attention!


Raghu's studio.. it's actually this red flower, I might use it for a digital mixed media artwork soon.
Everyone was drawing it in color, I got a little adventurous and tried to interpret it in black and white. Charcoal!

repair

when the lights go out
usually the start of a celebration in marked

a young life reacts to schizophrenic lights
the old repairs it with a candle

some show duality
some oblivion

HONGUSKYIE!!!

Yes, that dreaded word! ;)

We had three weeks with Mahendra Bhai Patel, this absolutely fantastic type designer, who also teaches at SCOD, Pearl, IDC Powai, and a whole lot of design institutes, and has been around at Srishti since forever.. We finally got to having him as our facilitator, after two years of listening to our seniors go on and on raving about him!

We covered alot, from the history of letterform design, to working with quill pens, reed pens (not to mention making them as well- only the quill pens were makeshift!) and brushes. Rustica, serifs, san serifs, decorative, geometrical, humanist, what all we covered! And guess what, we actually (well, almost) designed out own fonts, and in matching vernacular scripts! I'm not excatly sure if I should be using the term vernacular, but yes, local scripts! Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and English were my main languages - not in that order, and I also to experimenting with Arabic! As it turned out, the font I had designed *can i call it HONGUSKYIE PETRIFIES! :P* would look best in arabic as a matching font!

Another assignment made us experiment with our initials and serifs, of course, we were free to do whateva-the-hell with them, as long as the height remained the same! And guess what! I managed to crack a logo (till I find a better one) for myself!! :D :D

While developing our own fonts, we had to use the letters H, O, N, G, U, S, K, Y, I, E.. not a magic word that means anything, really.. but magical! At times, annoying and exasperating! oh! the moans and groans in New Campus from our batch, post 6pm! :D Honguskyie, is mahendra bhai's signature word- only for the reason that it's the perfect combination of vertical (H, I, E), diagonal(N, Y, K) and curvilinear letterforms (O, S, G, U)! put in that order, it's easy to tell how well the letterforms work as a font! There are so many intricacies involved, everything needs to be looked at, questioned, put in place, corrected.. joints, curves, drops, angles, width, height, consistency in style, visual centers, baselines, caplines... everything needs to have a reason, but then again, that pretty much happens everywhere when you're a visual communicator! :D