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| Sketch by Rhyv Cota |
-Brian Mendonca
It is quite amazing what teens are into nowadays. Faced with the task of turning out a Project on a topic of their choice in the final year of the undergraduate course the choices they came up with were remarkable to say the least.
There was a penchant for visual media given the fact that they were weaned on a film studies course in the run-up to the third year. What came across most strikingly was that the projects were so contemporary. All credit to Andrew who was their mentor.
Kannavi did her project on reel making - the in-thing nowadays with the youth. She was into preparing promo reels for a few clients as well. She spoke of how watching reels was a compulsive activity for many even seniors. The USP of reels were that there were short - 60 seconds to be precise. Reels were an example of Short Form Content (SFC) and that was the way the world was headed, she felt.
However she observed the addiction to reels is leading to health issues at a young age. She needed spectacles (though she does her reels as a presenter without them). Regarding traction on social media she said that a person may be happy with 10 views, but another may be unhappy with 1 lac views. She was handling content for zeitgeistgoa, which was looking at local news. She worked with software like InShot, Canva, and more recently DaVinci. She was prescient enough to discern that much content put out by influencers, though technically good, may have dubious content.
Manga was the province of Lee-Ann. She weighed in on the Japanese Manga series Record of Ragnarok and was keen to understand if it could be seen as an Open Educational Resource (OER). Regarding the liberties with the depiction of personages she preferred the term 'creative imaginings' to 'misinterpretation.' She felt happy that Shiva was included in an anime series. The fusion music from Tandava Karma transports you to another world.
She observed that due credit was given to Indian concepts like chakra in the series. She was intrigued by the criminality of Jack the Ripper - one of the characters in Ragnarok - and pointed out that he had not been found. She conjectured that she would consider Mahanand Naik of Goa as a contemporary match. This year saw the release of a movie on him titled The Dupatta Killer (2025).
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