Director

The basic you need to know about this term…

In the business of film production, the designation of "director" is a somewhat enigmatic title. Comparatively speaking, most of the other principal creative personnel involved in film-making hold titles that give a fairly clear indication of their professional responsibilities. Generally, one individual is responsible for overseeing the labour that is relevant to a single facet of production, whether it be cinematography, writing, editing, music, sound, production design, or costumes. With the notable exception of the producer, however, the range of the director's tasks is quite broad, and involves coordinating innumerable creative activities throughout the course of developing, shooting, completing, and marketing a film.

It shall be assumed here that the director is the individual who actively oversees the realization of a film from shooting script to finished product, harmoniously coordinating the creative activities of the key personnel involved in the production processes. He or she will liaise with each of these artists, deliberate over various expressive and/or technical options to be implemented, and arrive at a decision that is commensurate with the requirements of the developing work. Correspondingly, the director will also be answerable to the executive body that finances and/or distributes the work and therefore must ensure that production runs smoothly and within an allotted budget. The director's job, then, is twofold: to maintain a consistency of style and quality throughout production and ensure that the production itself proceeds efficiently and economically.

Serving as the funnel through which all of the decisions affecting a film's form and style are exercised, a director's primary task is to cultivate and coordinate the creative contributions of a production company's principal artists. In the interests of specificity and demystification, it is worth enumerating the various duties assigned to the director during all three stages of filmmaking: preproduction, production, and postproduction.

During the preproduction stage, the director's responsibilities can be divided into four principle tasks: (1) collaborating with the writer(s) on the development of the script; (2) assisting the casting director in hiring appropriate actors, and conducting rehearsals; (3) cooperating with the producer(s) in developing a practical shooting schedule; and (4) planning the overall visual "look" of the film with the production designers and the director of photography (DOP).

As in preproduction, there are four principal post-production areas in which a director's input is necessary: (1) editing, (2) visual effects, (3) music, and (4) sound. In most cases, an editor and director will develop the film's pace and rhythm, reinforce continuity between shots, trim moments of unwanted excess, and ensure that the montage generally serves to reinforce the work's intent. The visual effects category encompasses the manipulation of the raw footage by color timers, processing technicians, special effects designers, and an array of digital artists, compositors, and animators. Broadly speaking, a director will convey instructions to supervisors in each of these groups, indicating the specific "look" the director wishes to convey.

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Producer

What does this word mean?

To put it simply: producers are the project managers of the film and television industries. Working on film or television productions throughout the entire project lifecycle, these dynamic individuals use their team leading and organisational skills to make sure projects are completed on time and in budget.

Producers may occasionally provide creative input into the content and style of television shows or feature films, but, predominantly, they are responsible for the commercial and practical aspects of a film or television production.

Producers are responsible for securing funding from a range of sponsors, managing budgets, assigning resources, creating production plans, and hiring screenwriters, directors, casting directors, cinematographers and other vital members of staff.

A producer is also in charge of supervising team members, liaising with the director on a regular basis, delegating responsibilities to assistant producers, making sure targets are reached, and handling any problems in a quick, efficient and cost-effective manner.

The work of producer is not easy but if you are fascinated by the films and television industry and want to step into it. Producer can really be an amazing and creative job.

Although a degree is not strictly necessary for entry into this line of work, completing an undergraduate or postgraduate degree in a relevant subject, such as media studies, creative media production, film studies, photography or broadcast journalism may boost your chances of securing an entry-level position.

Gaining relevant work experience is essential. Many people get their break as a producer after working in another role in the industry, such as runner, broadcast assistant or production assistant as you get to learn the basics there and had observed producers working closely.
It’s also a good idea to get involved with your student You tube channel, radio station or production group at college and fill in some stuff to your production skills.

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Media and Society

 The word media is plural form of ‘medium’. Hence when we talk about media, we are talking about a lot of mediums, mediums for communication and connectivity which are two basic and most important traits of a society. A society is meaningless and lifeless if there is no communication and connectivity between its people. However, what media do is connecting societies on larger scales like one city to another, one nation to another and may be one planet to another planet in future, who knows if they discover life on other planets?

In today’s era, society is so much dependent on media. We look up to media for every small or big information, even if we feel tremors, what we do to confirm is look up to some news web portals if they have flashed such news, if it was really a earthquake.

Media has become an inseparable requirement of our lives. We cannot keep ourselves disconnected. Either through a text message on What’s app, any post on a friend’s Face book timeline or a notification from a news website is all to engage us and link us to a large community.

Media keeps us informed irrespective of Geo-Location. No one can deny the blessings of media in today’s world. The mass media helps people to remain informed and updated about the various news, events, social activities, lifestyle, entertainment, and advertisements irrespective of the geographical barriers. For example, while sitting in India, one can get all latest news and events of UK, or USA.

Mass media have made profound impact on societies and their culture. It ceases the boundaries of different societies among the individuals and creates ‘Globalization.’ The globalization is a decent case to delineate the friendship of media, since people can witness what is happening in different nations or how they dress up and what their way of life is. Subsequently, they typically mirror what others do.

Thus, it can be concluded mass media have a powerful influence in shaping a persons’ lives and thus the societies.

News Anchoring as a Career

An anchor is a person or a journalist who presents news during a news program broadcasted on the television. An anchor is also called as a News Presenter, News Reader or Newscaster. News Anchors most often work from studio of the channel he is working with.  He may also present the news from remote location in the field related to a particular major news event.

Being a news anchor requires a number of skills, the first of which is a comfort in front of the camera. There’s an element of show business in the job of a news anchor, not only do you need to be comfortable in front of the camera but you need to make people want to watch you. The latter may not be something you can learn but, certainly, gaining comfort speaking to the camera is a skill you can hone.

Here are eight essential “skills without script” that a news anchor should strive for:

1. Knowledge base: An understanding of issues, names, geography, history and the ability to put all of these in perspective for viewers. It comes from the journalist's commitment to being a student of the news.

2. Ability to process new information: Sorting, organizing, prioritizing and retaining massive amounts of incoming data.

3. Ethical compass: Sensitivity to ethical land mines that often litter the field of live breaking news, unconfirmed information, graphic video, words that potentially panic, endanger public safety or security or words that add pain to already traumatized victims and those who care about them.

4. Command of the language: Dead-on grammar, syntax, pronunciation, tone and storytelling no matter how stressed or tired the anchor or reporter may be.

5. Interviewing finesse: An instinct for what people need and want to know, for what elements are missing from the story, and the ability to draw information by skillful, informed questioning and by listening.

Priya Sinha, IAAN alumni as news anchor at Sahara Samay

6. Mastery of multitasking: The ability to simultaneously: take in a producer's instructions via an earpiece while scanning new information from computer messages, texts or Twitter; listen to what other reporters on the team are sharing and interviewees are adding; monitor incoming video -- and yes, live-tweet info to people who have come to expect information in multiple formats.

7. Appreciation of all roles: An understanding of the tasks and technology that go into the execution of a broadcast, the ability to roll with changes and glitches, and anticipate all other professionals involved.

8. Acute sense of timing: The ability to condense or expand one's speech on demand, to sense when a story needs refreshing or recapping, to know without even looking at a clock how many words are needed to fill the minute while awaiting a satellite window, live feed or interviewee.

News anchors may maintain a hectic and challenging work schedule due to the need to cover breaking news or present feature stories on strict deadlines. Additionally, some news anchors may be required to travel in order to conduct interviews and gather information.

Scope of Social Media

 The social networks have reached an extraordinary peak knowing them to manage, can be beneficial to many areas of some companies. Fundamental to them is the knowledge of user behavior to determine the scope of our message and relevance of them.

We are in the era of new media in many social networking sites in existence having millions of members from all over the world. People are now spending a good amount of their time on social networking sites in their ‘online social life’.

The list of social media tools is almost infinite. Some of you may have accounts with these services. Others may be wondering what this list is doing in Interpreter. Some of the examples are Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Linkedin, Instagram, YouTube etc.

Simply social media is a means to have a conversation, 24/7, using web-based tools. You can join or leave "conversations" at your leisure, contribute knowledge and content when appropriate, and receive (and give) real-time updates about events, causes and issues that matter to you. Social media is a newer way to discover, read and share information apart and in collaboration with traditional media.

The scope and work closely with relevant metrics, helping you determine the effectiveness of your campaign and how to improve your interactions. It is not only how many people are coming, but if you’re heading to the right audience and relevant at a time.

Facebook is the world’s biggest social networking site and Indians needs to understand its value as marketing platform by creating brand pages and promoting it on facebook.

Media Literacy-2

As discussed in previous write-up of media literacy, there are few basic attributes that may help in learning media in every of its stage. We would be discussing them now one by one.

1.     Critical awareness of the media influence on individuals and society:

A media aspirant should know how media affects the thinking of audience/listeners/viewers. Which kind of stuff will leave what kind of impact on one particular age group or how does a particular write up effects the decision making of common citizens. It is very important to understand this factor so as to produce meaningful content for the public.

2.     Understand the nature and operation of media industry as well as the medium characteristics:

Understanding working of media i.e. the professional attribute of media organizations is also very important. You should know in advance, the structure of kind of organization that would become your working place in future.

Also, one should keep in mind the medium for which he is working. Preparing content is different for different media and hence you should keep in mind while producing content whether you are working for print media, Television, Radio or web. Choose the one you are best at and practice it.

3.     Media analytical skill:

While a learner, you should also learn to analyze the media content. How media is dealing with a particular subject, is it impacting the audience in the right way? What may be the forces behind production of any specific content produced by an organization or what is the channel’s or news paper’s political or social ideology? You should have an eye to see behind the walls to apply it on your working in future.

4.     Critical appreciation of the media:

While analyzing the media content, you should learn to rate the content. Use it to enhance your skills. See for what content of media is least visible and which one is more highlighted. Differentiate all the negative and positive sides of organizations and their content. This will definitely help you to produce the right kind of content and choose the right place for you for working later.

5.     Learn through the media:

Observation keeps an important place in media literacy. Since, you are learning about media, working of media is required to be observed. Not everything can be learnt within the walls of classroom, you have to build your own classroom without walls and grab as much as you can.

6.     Creative expression:

The most important thing that is required if you want to get noticed is creative expression. Everyone knows how to speak but speaking that attracts people is rare and that has to be developed. Whether you are writing, speaking, sketching, clicking, don’t be ordinary. Clean a corner of your mind and let the creativity build its home there.

7.     Media monitoring and media criticism skill:

Like earlier said, you should keep an eye to see behind the walls. You have to prepare yourself before going there so they do not have your replacement.

8.     Practice media ethics:

In general life, using our social media handles or discussing issues with friend or families, we do not take care of our words. We would just say whatever we want to say but in media, there are some ethics. You have to express yourself but in a defined way. You have to choose your words carefully. You have to respect privacy of individuals and there a number of ethics that can be discussed widely.

All these have to be taken care of so you do not go beyond the media ethics.

9.     Constructively apply what has learned from the media to everyday life:

Without planning or preparing, you cannot apply it and without applying, you cannot judge yourself. So, whatever, you observe in media, whatever you learn through its content, apply it on your daily life. See around yourself, what event can be converted into news? What can make a beautiful picture? And not just that, whatever you do share it with your friends, family and enemies because while family and friends may hide some of your flaws, your enemies would never do that and that gives you more scope of improvement.

Memorize these basic formulas just like you did with addition and subtraction in class 2, they are surely going to help you forever.

Happy Learning!!!

Media Literacy-1

The media represents a crucial part of everyday communication and it has become an imperative of time and lifestyle, for which educational systems have to prepare students for. However, due to never stopping developments in media sector, educators offering media education/media degrees/media training, face a challenge of how to successfully integrate all forms of media disclosure and how to change the educational system adapted to the period in which students are developing and the one they are preparing for.

Concerning the fact students are exposed to media influence, and since the time of schooling is a time of learning and acquiring important skills as well, it is important to form a critical attitude towards media content which is being offered to students.

Acquiring media literacy can be truly successful only if we consider the relationship between specificity of media and the way those specifications are understood by those getting education is parallel.

In this type of continuously changing scenario, there are some characteristics that remain unchanged. A media literate person is supposed to have the following competences no matter what age of media they have seen during learning:

1.     Critical awareness of the media influence on individuals and society;

2.     Understand the nature and operation of media industry as well as the medium characteristics;

3.     Media analytical skill;

4.     Critical appreciation of the media;

5.     Learn through the media;

6.     Creative expression;

7.     Media monitoring and media criticism skill;

8.     Practice media ethics;

9.     Constructively apply what has learned from the media to everyday life.

These 9 points would surely lead to have successful media training. We would be discussing all these points in our next post.

Happy Learning!!!