While the production and shoots had us oscillating between adrenaline rushes, discussions at the end of it added value that we carry with ourselves long after the module has ended
Going through five semesters at a mass communication college, each with over ten modules, one would expect that the content would, at some point, becomes less surprising and, dare I say, repetitive. But if there’s one thing I’ve loved being proven wrong about, at SCMC, it is the misconception that a module will stop surprising us.
Come the tail end of semester five, (as is the case towards the end of every semester) we had worn ourselves weary – projects, assignments, MCR / class test induced fatigue and the like. Around the same time, I remember having one other thing stuck like a hamster in a wheel at the back of my head – how will we ever finish the module in advertising filmmaking if we hadn’t even begun it yet?
The advertising batch was going to spend the next four days with the AV batch, working collaboratively with them. And over the semesters, most of us had even forgotten what it was like to have them in the same room.
As we were all settling in, exchanging pleasantries, a tall, bespectacled man who goes by the name of Mr. Wasim Maner walked in, and began the module. He told us about the departments that work to produce an ad film. Next, he split us into teams of 7 to 8, advertising and AV students in almost equal proportion, and I remember feeling a mix of excitement about learning something new and anxiety of working with a very unfamiliar team. But over the next 4 days, much of this would dissipate into pure satisfaction and joy from taking such a productive course and meeting such a wonderful professor.
Right from making a ten frame shoddy, silent ad about anything under the sun, to a much better 90-seconder advertising Nirma and finally the 30-seconder ad on Kit Kat, we watched each other grow and refine our work with each submission. Shooting only on campus, and working on short deadlines meant we did break a sweat once in a while but it all came together as we watched our labours of love screened in class. Prof. Maner, frame by frame gave us feedback and the class weighed in on what each team could have done differently. While the production and shoots had us oscillating between adrenaline rushes, discussions at the end of it added value that we carry with ourselves long after the module has ended.
It is not often that one is able to have hands-on experience of actually making an ad and it is one of the many experiences at Symbiosis Centre for Media and Communication, that I will cherish for a long-long time to come.
Article by: Venkata Pratyusha Varanasi (Batch of 2018)
Photograph: Still from the ad video ‘Nirma’
