India's incredible shot makers.

Looking at the latest "Jeetey Raho" ad. for ICICI, if you don't notice anything wrong with it, you could be forgiven for not being a student of cinema. But if you noticed what is awfully wrong with it, with a pesky little issue called screen direction, and the violation of the screen axis, then you'd be laughing at the way the idiot who directed it is clueless to one of the most basic rules of cinema grammar.

If the fool were to defend his work saying he voluntarily violated one of the most basic norms of film making, then he should be lined up and violated over a slow fire. Not because his freedom to experiment should be threatened, but because the commercial doesn't work visually. It is poorer for the lack of attention to detail, and crippled by one of the detestable breeds that have infested Indian cinema for some time now - "shotmakers".

Shotmakers are people who have no clue how to put a film together, and all they're bothered about is the "shot". Not that their shots are poetry all the time, and they don't have to be, but the reason not everybody attains mastery in cinema is because it takes a lot to understand what works and what doesn't work. Once in a while even the masters create something that doesn't quite work, but shotmaking in lieu of filmmaking is never going to work.

The obsession with the "shot" is a disease in Indian cinema. This is a reflection of Indian cinema's cavalier attitude towards depth - of knowledge, of substance, of merit. You can actually get away with making mediocre crap! In fact, if you can't make something mediocre, you probably wouldn't be able to convince anybody of your understanding of what is required!

Where does this obsession with the "shot" come from? It must come from an enormous famine of creativity. It must come as a rescue from abject ignorance of cinema, and it must come from habit - listening to others waxing eloquent over shots, while missing the integrity of the movie. It must come from fear, for in India we are afraid of looking bad by venturing into territories we don't really have much knowledge in. We wait for the gurus to show the way so that we can all follow by copying if not by learning.

There are tons of grammatical flaws in cinema that comes out of India in all forms - commercial theatrical features, advertisements, and short format television. Not that the rest of the work flow from script to screen is flawless! But the shotmakers are calling the shots and leaving the film to the dogs. It doesn't take any talent to put a bunch of shots together and "jazz" it up with CG and music and really inflict the audiences with volume! The sad part is, it doesn't work. If you can't tell a story in cinema, if you're cluless about the various art forms and conventions that need to come together to make a film, I'd suggest you don't try. It is the greatest contribution you can make to art. And if I may add, to the sanity of Indians who have precious little other than cinema that we can be economically entertained by.

In Indian cinema there is still an opportunity for those who aren't creative. Many retards survive because of opportunity created by the sheer volume of our consumption and the favourable equations of numbers currently allowing for a fair amount of mediocre fare and a childlike, forgiving audience. This won't last long, though, given the influence of excellent fare on television, which Indian product would find very hard to match in terms of quality.

We hear every now and then about "technical" aspects of cinema and how good Indian "technicians" are. SO? If you can pull focus as well as your Hollywood counterpart, it doesn't mean your film is as good as the best from the rest of the world. Cinema is essentially "art" and although there are enough and more technical components that support it, it must work at a basic art level or it is not going to work. Nobody comes to the theatres to see your bloody shots. They come there to see the movie, for an experience that goes far beyond what you intend when setting up lights all day long for one shot that shows up in a song sequence.

It is no secret that we respect cinematographers more than we do scriptwriters, and it should surprise nobody that we respect directors only when they are commercially successful, not because they have abundant talent. We have no way of seeing great new directorial talent, with the precious little that comes up on view! We are stuck! Slowly, this is bound to change. Until then, god bless the editors who rescue most of our films from the bowels of uncreative garbage and elevate them to the level of processable crap.

Music, thankfully, is much more of a subconscious, and therefore mathematically representable art form. There are scales and notes and tons of rules in making music. If you don't follow these rules, you will make noise not music. Noise sounds horrible and you don't have a future if you don't learn the basics properly. Cinema, with its current level of audience maturity, is much more forgiving. But let's not make that an excuse to put up with shotmakers pretending to be film makers.