Six Sigma Films

Six Sigma Films is a film production house which is located in Mumbai, India. Basically it is owned by a corporate group so they have many business minds with them and they support independent filmmakers if they are impressed by the story. They have highly equiped production team and contacts in the mainstream industry for creative assistance throughout the process of a project. Apart from that they have contacts all around their country for location arrangments and special teams working to fulfill the needs of each and every project they take as they do understand the specific needs of every project they undertake. They have a youtube channel as well where they distribute their films online. They have produced all together 23 projects displayed on thier youtube channel which includes short films, documentary shorts, musical shorts and animated shorts as well of different genres. The owner Mr Anurag Khanna is a seaosonal banker and so he has contacts in the corporate world and with his long expereince in entertainment industry makes him a great combination of money, contacts and creativity.

Six Sigma Films And My Short Film
One important element which I observed about Six Sigma Films and is also there in my film is that they select those independent filmakers or storylines which are some how related to soceity issues like poverty, illeteracy, gay rights, increasing crime. One more reason beacause of which I think Six Sigma Films can support my film is that they have been dealing with child emotions and child psycology also that what things are important for children so they might be attracted tomy film which will be based on a little poor boy in an underprivillaged education system. "Rose" and "The choosen one" are two short films in which they have beautifully presented the nature of children and thier way of thinking along with some very strong messages and representations of the society we live in. "Therefore I win" is a documentary short on the education system and litteracy problem in which all the underdeveloped countries are alike including India and Pakistan. The issue of education is never highlighted in a short film by Six Sigma Films and that is also a reason why I think my film will get support from them as my film will be dealing some issues of education system and a story of a little poor boy.

Representation Of Government Education System

When we studied about representation in our media theory so I thought that the representation which my reference films are dealing and I will also deal in my film should be examined by both the private education system and the government education system itself. In order to do that I interviewed one private school teacher and one government school teacher with very generalized questions so that they are not bound to answer according to my questions and can give their opinions freely. I asked the following 3 simple questions from them:

1. What is your name and how long have you been teaching?

2. What do you think are the problems of the government education system?

3. What do you think can be the solutions to these problems and who should take the initiative to solve these problems?

Private school teacher
Government school teacher

Above are the links of the videos I made of the interviews and below is the translation of the views of the government school teacher as she didn't know how to speak in English.

“My name is Nadia Ali Mohammed, I have been teaching in different government schools since 1975, thus having 37 years of experience. “

“Parents usually do not prefer sending their children to government schools due to the education standard; there is an absence of teachers in most of the schools and even if there are good schools? There would be either one or two that actually fulfills the purpose of proper education.”

“One of the major factors is that there are no regular visits/reviews by officials of the education sector as well as the headmaster/headmistress, thus it makes the teacher lose their talent which should be highlighted most in such a situation.”

“The second problem is that we know that at city district level teachers do not really get paid on the right time either its 15^th or 20^th of the month or even at times a whole month passes by and you do not get paid, also the students that come here to study, comes from different background, they come from places where usually gun fires are heard every now and then, their family environment does not support education parents themselves do not want their children to study …Reason is simply poverty, If there is a boy parents would simply ask him to earn 200/- per month “you want food or you want to study” they would say, so you see that’s the reason that due to poverty there are lesser number of male students. If few girls get education parents would simply say that “do your 10^th and get married”

“I think that the government should encourage parents to let their children come to school and get education, of course when parents will have good jobs they would defiantly want their children to get education. So ultimately poverty and uneducated parents are the cause here that discourages higher education, hardly 3-8 females do colleges here so lack of awareness and harsh environment does not let them study. “

  

Focus group (Audience research )

Focus group (Audience research )

 Above is the link of the focus group I did for my audience research. Basically the reference films I choose and the type of theme which there in the films is related to every educated person. So the basic diversion in my target audience is educated and uneducated. So I choose a educated family which have multiple age groups and people from different fields but one thing which is common in them is that they all are educated and have past the stages of education system which is the theme of my film so they will be able to relate to the theme easily. As the focus group video is bi-lingual so I have translated some important points and reviews given by my target audience.

“This movie delivers a message that everyone has a hidden talent since their childhood and to identify this hidden talent, which is ignored in this movie by the parents. So when parents do not identify these hidden talents in their children so obviously it is difficult for a teacher as well and this is the reason that the child who had this hidden talent could not tell anyone because it was hidden and thus had to be polished. So only one of the teachers observed his talent and therefore it was his talent that gave him his satisfaction/success.” - Employee of a bank

“This movie tells you that the teachers should not harm their students and should treat them properly if they harm their students like this they will lose their interest and in future they would be unable to give more input towards studies.” - Student of 9^th grade

“Ok so I am a teacher too and this is one of my favorite movies and you will find many concepts in this movie that we should really look in to first of all they showed corporal punishment which is to me is a crime. If a child has a problem you should not harm him alright! , there is solution to every problem and secondly they showed learning disability and I think teachers can help students let go this problem. My psychology teacher taught us that a dyslexic child just needs to know right left and he will know his way  he just needs to justify the answers whether he makes b to d it doesn’t matter the teacher needs to  help him to overcome his disability.” - Teacher

Reference film analysis 2

In Bollywood I didn’t found short films on my theme which is education system so I choose a film which is made up of six short films. Although the genre of this entire film is horror but there is a short film in this feature length which can be my reference film as in that there is a story of a teacher who used to harm his students and use to give cruel punishments.

Basically, I choose this short story in this feature length as this short film will help me with type of camera angles/shots I can take in my film as the character of teacher in this film is similar to the representation of the government school teachers in underprivileged societies.

The picture above is a screen shot of a short film in "darna mana hai" which have a low angled shot giving a feel of a dominated/cruel teacher.

The character of the student is also somewhat similar except the gender difference that is of an innocent student who is harmed by the teacher as the homework is not complete. So the type of shots used to deliver the feeling of that little girl can also help me in designing my shots at the stage of pre-production.

The diegetic and non diegetic sound of this short film are great which will also help me at the time when I will select or make sound for my film. Although the type of music used over here is not much related as the genre is horror, but the editing would be helpful to me as this is also a short film and I will be making a short film too so cut to cut editing will be required in which this short film would be of great help.

Reference film analysis 1

The theme discussed in this film is basically somehow similar to my theme which I thought for my portfolio which is about the problems in education system. Although in this film the main character of a boy Ishan has a dyslexia problem but despite of that, the type of teachers shown in the film is very much similar to the teachers in the government education system in many underprivileged areas of underdeveloped countries. The makers of this film have played very cleverly and have proved that they have done a responsible production as first they created a general perception of teachers and then showed one teacher who was different from others and helped that boy with a learning disability. Therefore, they proved that neither all the teachers are same nor all the students are of same capabilities. This correcting of a representation was an inspiration for me and that’s why I kept this film as my reference film although it is not a short film but a wonderful and great art/drama film.    

This film gives a representation of these types of teachers who are cruel and who harm the students through strict punishments without discovering the problems of the students. This representation is aided by the camera angles and shots as well for example in the entire film where ever there are some shots of the cruel teachers so they all are low angled shots thus reflecting the over dominating personalities they usually have and almost all the shots of Ishan are high angled shots in order to give a feeling of depression and low moral which that boy have in this film. There are many close up shots as well in this film where ever the audience needs to know the feelings of that boy which are happy/fun filled in the beginning, sad and low at the boarding school and then again happy/artistic towards the end when his talent is discovered by a new teacher. Mid-shots are used similar to other films but all the establishing shorts have great meaning and signs/symbols given for the intelligent audience to judge the feeling of that boy.

The editing and music/sound of this film is simply awesome in some places as some animations and special effects are also used to represent the feelings of all the characters. The song “bhejha kum” is a great example where the sound, music, editing and animations were a great aid for the director to deliver the frustrated feelings of that young little boy after the torture of government school to the audience.

The mise-on-scene of this film is very much related and interlinked to the film in every scene of the film. For example all the scenes of boarding school had a spirit of strictness all over before the entrance of the new teacher and to develop this spirit mise-on-scene played a very vital role. In the first half of the song when the boy is in his dreaming and when once he bunks the schools and enjoys/observes all the things and people on the road are some of the scenes which had great mise-on-scene in order to represent the character of a creative young little boy who is full of imaginations.

So these were all the elements due to which it is my reference film and one of the best “complete package” inspirational movies I have seen so far. I have to make a short film in this year’s portfolio so it won’t be possible for me to inculcate all the elements in my film because of certain limitations of resources but I will try my best to inspire people and correct a miss representation of our society as this film did.

Magazine front cover Analysis 2

In this magazine cover also many of the conventions are same but there are some differences as well. Firstly this cover of the magazine has more business on it as compared to EMPIRE. The biggest font size is of the title of the magazine along with the issue number on the magazine and date on which it is issued with the price also given in pounds. It has the list movie reviews on the left side and some title of articles on the right side with the picture of the main characters of King Kong which is their head preview for this issue. In this magazine front the bar code is also given but with a brand name “Future” which is maybe the distributor of this magazine.

Magazine front cover Analysis 1

First convention of the magazine front cover which I observed in this empire magazine is that as it is a film magazine so it has reviews of many films which form a sort of index on the left hand side telling about the articles inside the magazine. The name and online address of the magazine in this case is always on the top of the cover page with a tag line that it is “THE WORLD’S BIGGEST MOVIE MAGAZINE”. There is an attractive line which reflects the articles inside the magazine and attracts the audience to buy the magazine. In this case the line is “MASSIVE PREVIEW SPECIAL”. Another big attraction in this case is the picture of the main character of Harry in a different role in Harry Potter 6 as compared to previous Harry Potter movies that in this one he will be involved in a fight which is also reflected by the picture in the front cover of the magazine. On the extreme right downside of the magazine there is a bar code also. Last but not the least some other important movie names are given on the bottom line of the magazine front cover with small picture on the left downside of the cover.

Poster analysis 2

Poster analysis 1

Genre Analysis (Drama)

Genre introduction and Audiences

Drama genre is my favorite genre amongst all the genre reason being that it is the most realistic and easy to relate genre that’s why I usually call it an audience genre. The target audience of this genre is extremely vast, reason could be that the audience can easily identify this genre and relate to it or maybe the reason could be that in today’s world amalgamations of genres take place so often, where drama always exists in almost all the films sometimes as a major genre and sometimes as a sub genre. When we talk about genre so there are many elements/conventions which come under the umbrella of genre after which a film is made and sold.

Narrative and Characters

Drama is a genre where firstly the characters, story and narrative structures are very much related to life. They are realistic, with small problems/conflicts and conflicts are always resolved in the end or in other words we say that majority of the drama films have happy endings with dialogue like “and they lived happily ever after”. In a drama film the audiences get emotionally attached to the characters who are the protagonist or ‘hero’ of the film. In order to maintain the interest of the audiences the drama films are written, shot and edited very cleverly. Drama films have some peaks and troths and sometimes climaxes and anti climaxes are also there in the film to seek complete attention of the audience.

Iconography and Setting

Drama is the most vast and diversified genre that’s why the iconography and setting is not specific but role of both these elements is extremely important in drama genre. As when icons, symbols, different props and setting are used properly in conventional manner so it creates a real life feeling for audience and audience gets involve in it for example sets of romance drama and action drama are made with high budgets and lots of meaning to do justice with the audience.