The series of Disinteresting Days coming to an end

Well the title might suggest you that our session at DD was over, but no, it wasn't and the interesting thing was that the DD guys or all the officials who were our in charge also seemed quite bored and they did not seem to have any idea how to keep us amused. Finally they did find a way out and it was the old traditional school days way of killing the time,Singing, how adorable !!!!!.but have to say this session did bring out a gem of a singer  in shreya (RTV). She sang like a pro, and what a voice, it was soothing.Also shatabdi ,jitendra joined the singing bandwagon and we also were privileged to hear one of the DD staff singing a classic Hindi old song. Well the crux of the matter was we were killing time but in a very good manner indeed and as it was in the last day the mood was quite jovial.

The other most happening thing was that we all met our future partners in crime, meaning to say the guys from NIC who were supposed to be posted along with us at the venues and the IBC. And yes, they were guys ,surprisingly all the 100 NIC people were guys, not a single girl, not that I was disappointed but talk about equal sex ratio.

But anyways, we were moving on for sure and getting closer to the CWG games. Though the negative reporting by the Indian media persisted but we all knew that its gonna happen for sure.

The Interesting Day in the series of Disinteresting days

By the 4th day, we had been fooled twice,we were told that we would be going to IBC (International Broadcast Center)but damn,security problems u know, but anyway, as I said it was one of that interesting days in the series of disinteresting days, and I largely owe it to Mr. Avinash Acharya.,a rare species of one of those full of life character in the otherwise dull and lifeless Doordarshan. Mr. Acharaya was here to have session on camera shots, and boy, it was a session worth remembering. Chari Sir had inscribed Zettl in our minds and Mr. Avinash Acharya engraved what all is there in Zettl. And If I had to speak frankly, this was the first productive class that I felt worth attending in Doordarshan.

And yes after that session everyone was in a jolly mood and were looking forward to something much more benifical and gratifying.

The series of Disinteresting Days

Here, by disinteresting I mean to say the disinterest developed due to the fact that we will be doing a volunteer work and nothing related to media so all those things which were being fed to us seem quite useless and to be honest very irritating as well. But saying so we had the opportunity to get ourselves acquainted with various high officials of Doordarshan Kendra from all  around India, or more precisely mostly from South India, which meant that we got to hear and would be hearing a lot more in the future words like "Anly" in place of "only", "Saaar" in place Sir, "Egg-nest" for "Against" and all other special edition south Indian English terminologies. And well I being a South Indian can justify that kind of a pronunciation comes from the way we treat every other things, in its bare literal form. So basically pronunciation also becomes pro"noun"ciation for most of us. Now enough of the linguistic bashing, that is Prof. Hemant Joshi's work and lets leave that to him.

Coming to the more boring part,Oops sorry the more serious stuff, what were we learning? Well the our coordinators Mrs.Sita Ratnakar and Mr. Vijay Saradhi did talk about the inside stuff  relating to Doordarshan and how the public broadcaster still enjoys the tag of being a pioneer in the broadcasting scene of India. They also roped in officials working in the news wing of the Doordarshan to have some interactive sessions regarding broadcast production,sports reporting and camera techniques. Most notably of them was Mr. Rajaram, a highly experienced camera technician with Doordarshan and he mainly concentrated on the creative aspect of camera handling that is the non fiction genre where you have the creative liberty pushing the aesthetics to the back seat. He talked about the various camera shots one could use in a documentary or a serial which is no way can be used in  ENG (Electronic News Gathering) production. Also he explained to us in detail the need for a bunch of good camera shots when you are sitting in the post production. Various questions regarding camera equipments and camera positioning in a sports coverage were put forth and he also briefed us about the latest equipments used for such coverages like for e.g spider cam.

there were quite a few sessions like this and I would be writing about it in my next post...so keep watching this space

Adios 

The Day 1 Shocker

It was a Day 1 shocker for us IIMCians for sure. It was our first day at Doordarshan and we all thought of this as an internship opportunity with the public broadcaster of India and obviously everyone had that buzz of being a part of media and experiencing that professional setup as such. It was a beautiful morning and as our professor Mr. Sebastian Roberts would have put it, 'the sky was overcast'. But unfortunately that was one of the few good things I could observe the entire day. The Doordarshan building is  quite an intimidating structure and  I  adored its architectural  arete at ease because I was at the wrong end of a long queue. The queue was for the entry pass and apparently this daily entry pass will be a routine. So I will get ample time to just adore the intimidating Doordarshan building.

So moving on, I figured out through my sources (sources are not to be revealed) , that it was the 6th floor were we will have the orientation.Now the next sentence is quite a long one so I hope you will be able to follow it. So here it goes; I asked the Watchmen there, where should I be going, he guided me to the other building, I went to the sixth floor and asked another person and he re directed me to the first building were that watchman was standing so I climbed down went to the other building and took the 6th floor lift, there again I saw this gentleman and asked about the conference room for interns and he re-re-directed me to the other  building, though I, with the help of my friends figured it out that the conference hall was hardly two feet from where I had asked that gentleman. Basically I was misguided. Well the point I narrated this incident, not so briefly is because I feel this incident is quite symbolic to how the entire Doordarshan works. But its just my view am not trying to offend anyone and maybe, later on my views could be changed.

So in the conference hall Mrs.Vinodini greeted us and put her best foot forward to familiarize us with Doordarshan and how it works, she talked about CWG (Commonwealth games), asked questions about it, basically it was a light fruitful session. And as the day went by many speakers came in talked about why we are here, how lucky we are to be here. Also came in a certain Mr. E.S.Issac, A senior official at Doordarshan and one of the Directors ( Programme). And it was Mr. Issac who acquainted all of us with the word "Volunteers". He went all guns blazing talking about Volunteers, Volunteer-ship and how being a volunteer changes you as a person and how volunteer-ship should be carried out in its purest of all forms. He tried to instill in us the fervor, the spirit of being a volunteer and told us we as volunteers are the  bosses as well as the servants.

 Now, this is were the confusion started, we? Who are these 'we' ?Are these 'we', 'we' the IIMCians ?  Well it was quite evident, the 'we' here pertained to us the IIMcians and yes we will be the volunteers for commonwealth games provided by Doordarshan. We were given out handouts which clearly stated our work profile and at PG level 'we' could quite easily figure out what we all will be doing for the next one and a half month.

Well, thats about it for my first post though i had a lot more to write, but will surely update about the second day, till then 

Adiós