WHY DOES BENGALI SOUND SO SWEET?

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By the Ear: All about sound design and engineering and the job prospects they afford

 Sound is an art and a craft that many people appreciate but few know much about. It is the power of great sound that enhances the experience of a film, adds texture and detail to scenes, and has the power to send the audience on an immersive journey.

Today, music and audio experiences are a huge part of the consumers’ lives. People have access to music and podcasts or watch television and movies at home or on the go, making digital audio technology our closest companions.

“Sound design can be thought of as the unspoken hero of a film,” says Glenn Kiser, senior director of Dolby Institute-Dolby Laboratories, US.

Sound design is a creative and immersive art form used in various disciplines such as filmmaking, television production, theatre, live performance, video game development, sound recording and reproduction, post-production, radio and musical instrument development.

A sound designer, thereby, plays an unequivocally important role in bringing all these elements together.

A sound engineer must be proficient with the technical know-how and have expertise in operating involved systems and associated workflows. He or she must come with training as well as experience in the production and manipulation of sound through mechanical (analog) or digital means.

Says Saibal Ray, teaches the technical aspects of sound designing at the Adamas University School of Media and Communication, “Cinema uses sound engineering to a great extent. Suppose the sound designer wants to add sound to a visual of a helicopter; to do this one has to collect the sound first. For this one has to understand the set-up. If the sound of a helicopter exceeds the dynamic range of the recorder, one needs to put a limiter on the recording path to tame the sound...”

According to Ray, typically, in a film project sound is managed by the location sound recording engineer, the sound designer and the mixing engineer. A location sound recording engineer is responsible for the recording sound on location. A sound designer is responsible for the creative design part of the sound track that incorporates music as well. It is to be mentioned here that though music is a part of soundtrack, it is supervised solely by musicians and is not part of the sound department. Finally, the mixing engineer or the re-recording engineer mixes all the tracks to prepare the final output to be combined with the edited visuals. Each of these three heads generally has a team.

Clive D’Souza, who completed his bachelor’s in audio engineering, from Australia’s SAE Institute, says, “Currently I’m more into installations and configuring of audio-visual systems and some of my projects are multi-purpose halls, cinema, acoustics, background music systems, one opera house, recording studios, live sound rentals, and home automation... I would say that this is not a very fast paced income industry unless you are into film audio work.” D’Souza is working with the Hitec Center in Oman.

A course in sound engineering will be suitable for and extremely beneficial to students who have an interest in the art of sound and want to learn different technicalities related to the subject. There are many diploma level courses available, anything between six and 12 months’ duration. For a course in sound engineering, a background in physics and mathematics is preferable. A good ear for sound as well as knowledge and interest in music will be an added advantage. 

Institutes that offer courses in sound engineering: Film and Television Institute of India, Pune; Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute of India, Calcutta; Whistling Woods International, Mumbai; MIT School of Film and Television, Pune; SAE Technology College, which has campuses across India; Ramoji Academy of Film and Television and Annapurna College of Film and Media, both in Hyderabad.

Some jobs that you can pick from: sync-sound recording professional, sound designer, mixing engineer for cinema, installation engineer, studio sound engineer, live sound engineer, studio designer, music arranger, audio post-production, dialogue and music editor, location recordist.

After a BSc in physics, Resul Pookutty pursued law for a bit and, thereafter, applied for a sound engineering course at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. He made his debut in sound design with the 1997 film Private Detective: Two Plus Two Plus One, directed by Rajat Kapoor. His big break, however, was Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black. He has been known to say in interviews that he grew up on a rich tradition of Malayalam films wherein sound represents the cultural context. Pookutty got the Academy Award in 2009 for Best Sound Mixing — along with Ian Tapp and Richard Pryke — in Slumdog Millionaire. He recorded the soundscapes of Mumbai. It was reported at the time that in one sequence he used 25 microphones for his sound harvest. In his Oscar speech he said, “This is not just a sound award but a piece of history that has been handed over to me...” Pookutty has time and again stressed that the job of a sound artiste is to create an “immersive experience”. Today, he has his own post-sound facility and has also created a library of sound effects called The Essential Indian Sound Effects. 

by Santana Fell

Read the original post on The Telegraph 

WE CREATED AL QAEDA: HILLARY CLINTON

 YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/r3pDCxzC_k0

INSIDE A FILM PROJECTION ROOM

A REVIEW BY SAIBAL RAY

Kaal Ratri is a monotonous movie. The real challenge of the director is to depict the monotone perfectly. I would say, he is quite successful in his effort. The movie is a real combination of an effective sound track and chiaroscuro of the camera, though the editing pattern does not follow the dialogues. Instead it follows the camera movement. This is quite experimental. The acting is awesome. Mainly it is a heroine-centric movie and the actor performed purely monotonously. The use of minimal props is quite appropriate. But the dialogue has the actor's visual description at one place and the face is not so visible through out the movie. The camera concentrates more on the chiaroscuro. The use of music is unique. It creates the mood for the audience not to get bored of the sweet monotone. But it could have been more touchy rather than experimental. The room reverb is not realistic, though it adds extra dimension to the story. However I miss the presence of a sound designer in the movie. Over all the movie is enjoyable for them, who like to think because certainly it provokes human thought.

COMBATTING POST-TRUTHS, FAKE & FALSE NEWS

Post-truth represents a situation when facts take a backseat and, emotional appeals and personal beliefs begin shaping public opinion. Post-truth politics (also called post-factual politics and post-reality politics) is defined as a political culture in which debate is framed largely by emotional appeals, and by the repeated assertion of talking points while ignoring factual rebuttals. Post-truth differs from the traditional contesting and falsifying of truth by relegating truth to be a concern of secondary importance. In 2016, 'post-truth' was chosen as the Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year, subject to the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election.

 In 2015, media and politics scholar Jayson Harsin coined the term 'Regime of Post-Truth' covering many aspects of post-truth politics. He argues that a convergent set of developments have created the conditions of a post-truth society: the political communication informed by cognitive science, which aims at managing perceptions and beliefs of segmented populations through techniques like micro-targeting which include rumours and falsehoods; the fragmentation of modern and a more centralised media; the attention economy marked by information overload, user-generated content and fewer trusted authorities to distinguish between truth and lies, accurate and inaccurate; the algorithms which govern what appears on social media and search engine rankings, based on what users want and not on what is factual; and, the news media which has been marred by plagiarism, hoaxes, propaganda and changing news values.

  

With regard to fake and false news, there is a conceptual error here. When we cite fake news, it is presumed that there is an original piece of news which is being faked. However, it is largely about false news, news that does not exist or perhaps exists in a totally different form.

The digital culture allows anybody with a computer and internet access to post their opinions which may be legitimised through echo-chambers. Content may be judged based on how many views a post gets, creating an atmosphere based on clickbait that appeals to emotion. Content, false or post-truths, which get more views, is continually filtered around different internet circles, regardless of its legitimacy. The internet allows people to choose where they procure their information from, allowing them to reinforce their own opinions. In the present era of post-truth politics in India, cow smugglers are lynched, every Hindu-Muslim marriage is love jihad, becoming a Hindu is Ghar Wapsi, anyone questioning the efficacy of an army act is considered an anti-national, slogans of freedom from poverty are considered to be secession calls and the likes, Priyanka Chopra meeting Rohingyas as a humanitarian cause is vilified and she is shown in a burqa, Sushma Swaraj taking a perfectly right step on the issue of an inter-faith couple's passport issue is viciously attacked online. 

Tackling propaganda 
Globally, in the Western world, rumour cascades are usually investigated through six independent fact-checking organisations (snopes.com, politifact.com, factcheck.org, truthorfiction.com, hoax-slayer.com, and urbanlegends.about.com) by parsing the title, body, and verdict (true, false, or mixed) of each rumour. Investigations are then reported on the websites. Both technology companies and governments have undertaken efforts to tackle the challenge of 'post-truth politics'. In an article for the journal Global Policy, Prof Nayef Al-Rodhan suggested four particular responses: Improve the technological tools for fact-checking. Greater involvement and visibility for scientists and the scientific community. Stronger government action. The most important challenge here is to ensure that such state-led efforts are not used as a tool for censorship. Securitising fake news. Psychological solutions include the so-called fake news 'vaccine'. India, one of the biggest internet markets in the world, has its share of troubles with fake news; but, Indian society has also birthed important initiatives to tackle the issue. For instance, The Quint has started a section called Webqoof that debunks fake news. Some of the leading grassroots citizens driven anti false-news initiatives include: (1) Boom FactCheck (BFC), established by Govindraj Ethiraj; (2) Social Media Hoax Slayer (SMHS), started and run by Pankaj Jain; (3) Pratik Sinha's Altnews.com and (4) check4spam.com initiated by Shammas Oliyath and Bal Krishn Birla. With the news of two Indian soldiers allegedly beheaded by Pakistan, several thousand WhatsApp groups came alive. A video purportedly showing the beheading, one by a chainsaw and another knifed in the throat while singing Vande Mataram, went viral. A week later, it turned out that the video was shot in 2011 and the men were Spanish drug dealers. It was exposed by Mumbai-based businessman Pankaj Jain who runs SM Hoax Slayer. In 2015, for instance, the police said WhatsApp messages had led to the lynching of a man in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, and four beatings in nearby Gandhinagar. Mohammad Akhlaq was murdered by a mob in Uttar Pradesh the same year after villagers said they had seen pictures on WhatsApp proving that he had slaughtered a cow. Forensic reports later proved that the meat was not of a cow's. WhatsApp messages have led to the lynching of more than 30 Indians in the last three months across India, largely on baseless rumours of child-lifting, found untrue in all cases. Experts say fake or false news falls in two categories – so-called news articles and videos published by various websites, Twitter handles, Facebook pages and YouTube channels; and the other, WhatsApp forwards that go viral. But how do these hoax-slayers dig out the lies? While software tools are used to trace videos on YouTube, keywords are reverse googled to find the original context. Pratik Sinha of Altnews.com explains, "Sometimes, I break a video into frames and then search for the original. It can take an hour or a whole day." Data scientist Rishabh Srivastava says fake news in India has a deeper concern since it is primarily spread through WhatsApp. Data analytics can show us the ethnicity and gender profile of those forwarding a certain piece of news, helping us determine its falsity; but the nature of WhatsApp encryption makes it difficult to counter, he adds. One of the most common techniques of the fake news industry is to take images out of context. Fake news with stolen and doctored images are found worldwide and could even lead to real social strife. In India, some of the most out-of-the-blue cases of images taken out of their original context include a story claiming that an old Hindu temple carried images of modern technology – such as an astronaut – or that researchers unearthed the 80-foot-long skeleton of Ghatotkacha, a giant described in the Mahabharata. The fake news slayers have to be particularly good at using reverse image search engines, such as TinEye. A reverse image search enables the searcher to locate when the image had been used before – if it had – and, obviously, finding earlier sources makes it possible to compare the images and identify the adulterations. Pratik Sinha reveals how he breaks videos into frames and then puts these stills in the reverse image search. As revealed on SMHS, the image of the astronaut on the 'temple' turned out to originate from the New Cathedral in Salamanca. The astronaut and other modern touches were added to that church during the 1992 restoration. The skeleton of a 'giant' was, in reality, a sculpture by an Italian artist. Reverse image searching also helps counter the doctors of doctored images. Photographs are not just stolen – they are also morphed or altered. A clever combination of two historical photographs created the image of members of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh saluting before the British Queen. The hoax-slayers also refer to verified accounts on social media such as Twitter or Facebook. This method may have its limitations: many times, well-known people such as politicians or journalists share fake news and doctored images accidentally. Yet, looking at the social media user profiles, while not necessarily helpful in judging the credibility of the news, assists in uncovering the agenda behind the news. Going beyond the web by contacting official institutions to verify a story also assisted a number of cases. For example, Ethiraj and Jacob of Boom FactCheck recommend contacting the local police when the news clearly relates to a smaller locality. Boom FactCheck did exactly that in assessing the validity of a story about a violent abduction in Rajasthan. The importance of verifying a story with the authorities was recently confirmed when a school bus was attacked by goons in the city of Gurugram. While it was widely believed that the attackers came from a fringe, right-wing Hindu group called the Shri Rajput Karni Sena, many netizens shared the news that the men pelting stones at the school bus were Muslims. The Gurugram police, however, denied that any followers of Islam were arrested in connection to the event. As dystopian as it may seem, the fake news problem in India is very real. In all, seven people lost their lives in two separate incidents in Jharkhand, in a fury based on falsified social media information. A couple of months after the Jharkhand incident, amidst a communal flare-up in the state of West Bengal, a BJP leader, Vijeta Malik, shared a screenshot from a local feature film showing a woman being molested by Muslims. Multiple videos were circulated on WhatsApp allegedly showing Indian Muslims celebrating the victory of Pakistan. All except one of those videos was genuine; it was from Indian-administered Kashmir, as one of the exposes finds. The only driving force in fake news is the existing, strongly-held bias among people. What this means is that, often, social and mainstream media feed off one another to grab eyeballs. However, the larger issue is one of media literacy and the fight against fake news still needs to be led by mainstream legacy media. People segment organisations into those they trust and those that they believe are for entertainment. There is a higher onus on those that they trust. This could be as simple as breaking down an article and educating readers. It can be as basic as distinguishing an opinion piece from a news piece and breaking down articles and identifying things like sources, facts and analyses. Finally, it is the protracted efforts of the civil society, assisted by a movement for Media Literacy through academia and alternative media that can, to an extent, combat the menace of false, fake, post-truth news and trolling.

                                                                                                                                  by   Ujjwal K Chowdhury

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What is the difference between progressive and interlaced Scanning?

There has been a lot of talk recently about the differences between interlaced and progressive scanning in digital video. This article isn’t meant to be an in depth technical explanation of the specific details, but instead a brief explanation of the most important points for filmmakers who are not interested in the in depth technical explanation but instead are interested in how the two shooting standards will have an impact on their films.

If you decide to do further research on this subject you should understand the vocabulary and short forms that are used. First of all, you often see “i” to represent interlaced and “p” to represent progressive. For example: 480p or 480i.

Interlaced scanning

Interlaced scanning is simply displaying alternating sets of lines. First even numbered lines are displayed and then odd numbered lines are displayed. Each even set of lines are displayed for 1/60th of a second and then the odd lines are displayed for 1/60th of a second. This process is repeated over and over again. Each time an odd number series of lines are displayed it is called a “field”. The same name is given to the even set of lines. Because each field happens so quickly we are given the illusion of a whole image. However, we are only being presented with half an image and very quickly after that we are presented with the other half of the image.

Progressive video on the other hand displays the entire image in 1/60th of a second.

The consequences of using interlaced are predictable. Because you’re only capturing half of the image at a time, movement within the frame (due to either camera movement or subject movement) may cause motion artifacts. This happens especially when the movement is quick enough to cause noticeably different positions of the fields. For example, if you’re filming interlaced from a moving car you’ll notice motion artifacts.

Progressive scanning

Progressive video, as stated above captures 1 entire image per frame. This means you’ll avoid the problem of motion artefacts. That being said, progressive video is not mainstream yet because it’s more expensive. However, there are a few camera models that are reasonably affordable for independent filmmakers. For about $3000  you can get the Panasonic AG-DVX100 which shoots progressive video. The Canon XL-2 is another option for shooting progressive video.

Progressive video is desired by independent filmmakers because the look of progressive resembles the look of film. Progressive scanning results in a clearer image and as mentioned above, progressive scanning handles movement differently. The cameras mentioned above also have the ability to shoot 24p which also helps give your video the “film look” making it desirable to many filmmakers.

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