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Design Thinking in Visual Storytelling

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Employing an Animation Understanding in Live-Action Cinema “Cinema isn’t made in a vacuum,” an eminent Indian filmmaker once told me. A realist and an academic, he was right in his own way. But coming from an animation grounding, with an extremely visual storytelling style, I have always been fascinated by the power of cinema to create self-contained worlds that push the boundaries of our imagination. In the Indian context, the government-aided film school training is more cerebral and akin to an academic course in the humanities, where film aesthetics and art is put on a side-burner. Probably this is also because in our current political scenario, it is far more important for Indian filmmakers to make a point through their films, than tell an endearing story with spellbinding visuals. This, I believe, is the reason why Indian cinema is languishing, and is stuck in a bizarre binary – on one hand, we have the “art-house” filmmakers who care less about the visuals than about posing a pol
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Letting Things Play: The Editing Art of Joker

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Todd Philips’ Joker (2019) was a sensation. The film broke all box records, clocking a billion dollars worldwide. It was the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. However, the morality of the film sparked heated debates. While most saw it as a dense character study with a hermeneutical attempt to humanize and empathize with the mind of a mentally ill sociopath, there were many others who claimed that the film valorized and eulogized white male violence. Where I stand, I believe that by treating people like monsters, they will behave like monsters. Criminals too are products of their circumstances, and we cannot blame individuals for their actions till we aren’t in their shoes. This isn’t to say that we should be apologists for their actions – that would only further disrupt the social contract – but in understanding their world, we can find better ways of rehabilitating them. Todd displays immense maturity and insight in writing the morally grey, morally non-absolute character of
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An Analysis of Sharat Raju's American Made

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Sharat Raju’s American Made isn’t your regular clichéd father-son fare. It is an emotionally arresting tale, with engaging blocking and meticulous staging, reminding me of the mise-en-scene approach of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941).   However, it isn’t just that. More so, it a relatable conversation-starter on Westernization, cultural assimilation versus identity, and faith versus modernization. It is no surprise that the film earned 17 international awards in 2004 and was acquired for national broadcast on PBS’s Emmy Award-winning program Independent Lens for 4 years.   The story follows a Sikh-American family as their car breaks down in the remote Mojave Desert highway during their road trip to the Grand Canyon. Tensions rise as Anant must save his family and faces existential questions and a moral dilemma. What makes the film an interesting melee, is that all four characters have non-agreeable objectives and idiosyncrasies. Anant is an optimist who wants to hold on to their S
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An Analysis of Paperman (Disney Short Film)

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       As strange as it sounds, in John Kahrs’ Paperman , the key plot device is the the gentle breeze. It is this gentle breeze that gives life to the corporate paperwork of our main characters George and Meg, causing it to flutter and soar in the wind. A gush of breeze first causes a chance encounter between George and Meg at a train station. She is the woman of his dreams, and he is completely enticed by her. Then, the breeze assists him in reuniting with her at the end of the film. The papers serve as an understated metaphor, perhaps to say that love is the highest form of human existence that brings colour to our monotonous, mundane nine-to-five existence. It is the magic in these papers, after all, that quite literally pushes him out of his boring office desk job to seek out the person he is passionate about. These papers bring a raison de être back into his life. The sentient actions of inanimate objects, which are the papers in this film, remind me of the opening sequence of th
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