Arun Gopalan

Hey Mark, Maybe you can rent it from one of the rental houses here in India. Try southern Indian cities like Chennai or Hyderabad. Would be a bit cheaper there as compared to Mumbai. The scope lens set locally costs about INR 2000/day.

Available for projects across India. Please do have a look at my showreel-> http://vimeo.com/17033422 Your views/feedback on the showreel are welcome. :) Thanks.

Hey Benzi, I am based out of Pune-Mumbai and currently working on projects in Pune, Mumbai and Chennai. The web hoster is currently carrying some upgradation stuff thus putting the site offline. Should be up in a day or two. That's how a free hosting service works.. :| And yes Mr. K.Hariharan- a very senior and respected person in the field- has been LVP's Director from day one. He's a walking encyclopedia (you can talk to him for hours on literally anything and everything)! As students we feel it's our privilege to have a person like him around as our teacher! :)

Yes all the above said schools have their diploma films ahot on 35mm except Whistling Woods International, Mumbai. The diploma film usually is like between 10-20 mins, but then it depends on the student. You can definitely chip in a few more bucks and make a longer movie. At my film school- L.V. Prasad Film and TV Academy- it's a trimester patter- total 6 trimesters in 2 years. we started off with HDVs- shot 3 projects on it. By the end of the first year we were shooting on S16mm- so that was 4 projects in the first year. Second year we shot a documentary on HDV followed by a music video on S16 and the final diploma on 35mm. Apart from this we have the daily practicals. In the third trimester- every day, you would be having practicals on S16mm- Arri SR2 and the second year you would be working on 35mm- An Arri3 in your practicals. FTII, Pune and SRFTI, Kolkata are too very similar but their's a three year course.

If you don't want to spend money on getting a domain, you could get a 'http://yourdomain.co.cc/' thing for free at http://co.cc/ This is much better than free domains like 'yourdomain.webhosters.com'!! Then open an account with a web hosting website which allows users to use their own domain like the http://yourdomain.co.cc/ one. You would then need to create your own html files and start uploading them in the file manager up there. Your 'index.html' file will be the homepage. You can actually learn a lot by just going through 'page sources' (by clicking view page source in your browser) of various websites. Once you get a nag of things it's pretty easy and interesting. And the above said way is free too! :) You may like to go through xhosting.com. They provide pretty decent web hosting services and their forums in there are pretty informative too. That's where I learnt web making for free! :P

Hey Nivash, Thanks for the reply. I did go with primarily 3 kinos, a 5kv and a couple of other tungsten lights(with CTBs) and the image has come out very nicely. Got what I was looking for. I did use the 5217 and 5219 stocks. :)

I missed out on one institute which has produced some very well know professionals. Film and Television Institute of Tamil Nadu, Chennai. It a well known institute but am not familiar with the institute or in touch with any of their current students. So can't comment any further.

Hi Marco, The Film and Television Institute of India, Pune has been around for very long now and most of the current industry professionals are pass out of this institute... you could say almost 90% of them. It's tough to get in here. Each year it gets like around 600+ applications for streams like Cinematography and Direction and they take in like 10-12 per stream. So you know the kinda competition there. But having said this, the institute has lost out now. Have seen students there who are in the 4th yr when the course itself is of 3 yrs. But then you need to be pro-active and complete the projects in time and pas out! There's this other institute- Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute of India, Kolkata. As good as FTII, Pune but not as old. Both these institutes are government run and the fees are very very cheap. They have all the facilities and equipments and definitely worth having a look. Quite a number of private institutes have come up. The L.V.Prasad Film and TV Academy, Chennai is from where I complete my 2 yr course this August. It's part of the Prasad Groups who have been into the film business for decades now. The group has its post-production house, laboratory, equipment rental house, anything and everything that's required in the film business and as students and part of the group we have access to them anytime. The fees is quite high if you compare it with the government run institutes but definitely worth the money and personally I would say better than the govt. run institutes. There's one more institute called Whistling Woods International, Mumbai and is run by one of India's top most Director Subhash Ghai. It's in the heart of Bollywood. But the fees is almost double of what one would pay at LVP, Chennai and almost 10 times of what one would pay at FTII, Pune and SRFTI, Kolkata. These are the top institutes in the country at present and you shouldn't look at others if you seriously considering for some quality education! At other institutes you would end up shooting your diploma film in DVCam or at max. HD! The Pune, Kolkata and Chennai institutes have their Diplomas in 35mm, not sure about Whistling Woods though. Good Luck. Arun

Hmmmm... Thanks Adrian for the replies. Helped me in getting a few things clear. :)

Ok. So you shoot with a 1/60th of a second shutter and turn the flicker reducer on from 60Hz to 50Hz or just shoot 30p with a 1/50th of second shutter, w/o touching the flicker reducer, is it? And thanks for the clarification on the ratio thing. That's what I had in mind too. Mask the frame with a tape for the desired ratio on the LCD for framing and crop it in the post.