Fireball

Yeah, that is how our degrees were distributed last week. We had Former President Dr.Abdul Kalam as our Chief Guest. Our college website said,

“Since the duration of the Convocation is restricted to 1:30 hours due to the limited time of the Chief Guest, only Ph.D. graduates and Gold medalist will receive their Degree / Certificates on the Dias.Others will receive their degrees where they are seated, from the concerned faculty in-charge. Cooperation is requested from everyone.”

Everyone was frustrated. Everyone spammed & kept discussing in orkut groups, but who can change the administration’s decision? Even the deans weren’t happy about this.The administration was also helpless. They had to open and close the convocation in the presence of the Chief Guest, and Kalam had only 2 Hours of time. They could have called some other Chief Guest, but who can let Kalam go Here are some photos :

Ok, if you still have problem imagining the situation there, you can correlate it with the selling of murukku and vadai in a Touring talkies. Dr.Kalam’s speech about linking rivers and water resources was quite irrelevant to the situation. Read the entire speech here, if you are interested. On a surprising note, the whole convocation was live-webcasted! People who missed it, could still see it here. Is it possible to convert it into a youtube video?

And btw, I got graduated! I’m a B.Tech now

Last weekend, 8 of us Yahoos went to Skandagiri. Back from college, I was frust with this Cubicle Life. Skandagiri trip was a nice break for that.

We hired a SUMO and travelled to Kalavarahalli Hills(=Skandagiri). We reached there at around 7:30. When we started climbing, we could see the clouds at the hill-top. As we started moving up, there weren’t any. We missed the clouds.

(Photo courtesy : Vishal)

This was the expected ambience :

(Photo Courtesy : Unknown)

But still, we enjoyed the trip. Nice food from Vinita and Vandana. Incase you are planning to go for a trip, leave early. Try to reach the hill-top by 7:30. It was a nice trip, worth visiting. We also met a dog, Brownie(we named him) who guided us when we were lost on the way.

But, as usual Skandagiri was also crowded. From what I heard, it is less crowded than Nandi Hills. I’m looking forward to go for more treks

Further Reading: Shrinidhi Hande

PS: This post was pending since 2 weeks.

Finally, I have moved to wordpress,thanks to the recommendation from sagaro. Wordpress is way better than Blogger. My RSS Feeds would remain the same, as I would direct the feedburner to fetch feeds from alagu.net. Fireball - very arbit title, but still i like it. It is the name of my Hardisk(Quantum Fireball). I liked the name, so flicked it

I bought alagu.net from Znetindia, while Taggy was kind enough to share his Mediatemple account with me ! Thanks tag! Btw, Wordpress rocks! It was just one click import from blogger to wordpress(the magic button)
I should start posting something other than event summaries, because most of my previous entries is  about some event . All the while I felt my blog was a useless piece of stuff, but still it was mine When I read my archives, I see how bad my writing ability was(not that it is great now)

PS1:I’m still trying to get  familiar with wordpress, so you have to wait till i make some changes to themes and plugin.

PS2:Kicha has started blogging.

Really?

Yeah. Its true

I Reached the venue early. I didn’t notice that Chung wah was the sponsor of the event. Chung wah is a small chinese restaurant on church street near MG Road. An awesome place for Rtffs’.Hasina, the restaurant owner herself was a movie buff. People started arriving, I was one among the first few.

Dhempe kicked off by giving an introduction and everyone followed him, introduced themselves. Then the movies started. What I initally expected was a rooftop festival where some classic good quality movie would be shown,and would be reviewed. BRTFF2.0 was essentially a platform for the local independent film-makers’ to showcase their shortfilms, which was the best thing that could happen. People like Vatsa thanked the organisers for taking an initiative and organise this event. Vatsa’s Mission Zero and Timepass were screened first. Later on, Pawan talked about his experiences in OSIANs movie festival when the power went off. Lunch was ordered from Chung-Wah, and also from nearby restaurants. Then we had movies Hera Kiri,Raghavendra’s Lemon Chai,Deepak’s Don-3,G-4,Playboy, Gautham’s Ad were some of the movies screened. Most of it lasted hardly for 5 minutes. The demography of the audience was something to be noted - Of course, we had Software professionals, but in addition we had a journalist, an assistant director of commercial movies, photograph enthusiasts - which gave a multi-faceted review of movies.Lavanya and Hari were clicking photos throughout while Tej, was live twittering with his WaP enabled mobile.

Vatsa, the indie-film maker (Photo from Dhempe)

Cut-the-Producer:This was one of the Idea brought up by Pawan in BRTFF1 and it was quoted at Brtff2 also. Here is the jist: No-producer. You pay the director 200 bucks just by watching the teaser/trailer trusting that the movie would turn out well. And when the film-maker finishes it, he will send the DVD to you. You help a budding film-maker by funding him, and also you get to see some local talent.

The idea is great,but only in the case of brtff or other film-clubs.It wouldn’t work out in normal-junta who buy pirated cd’s for anymovie. Now, there are a few questions which were raised(I have only the questions)

1.Why should I pay 200Rs to a amatuerish movie when I have a critically acclaimed movies at cheaper rate?

2.What if I don’t like the final movie? Will I get payed back?

3.What is in there for me?

These self-centered questions will be raised by people who aren’t interested in promoting the local talent but to get more out of the movie for themselves. Still,If you have any good solutions for this model to work out, reply to this in the corresponding thread @ brtff forum. Vatsa and Pawan were both budding film-makers who had different motto altogether. Vatsa wanted to do commercial movies, entertain the audience and make a hit. Pawan wanted to make a movie for his satisfaction.

I would be happy if I get youtube links of all the short movies screened, if they don’t come under any copyright issues.

The Highs:
1.Awesome venue
2.Good participation,active discussion
3.Nice Theme
4.Organisation

The lows:
1.Timings
2.Restriction
3.Lack of technical stuff

Looking forward for a better BRTFF3

PS:I’m still not able to make alagu.net work. I wanted to post this on alagu.net