Prevalence of Increased Rapid Editingin Action Sequences After the Advent of Sophisticated Film Making Tools in Tamil Cinema
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High Technology Letters ISSN NO : 1006-6748 Prevalence of Increased Rapid Editingin Action Sequences after the Advent of Sophisticated Film Making Tools in Tamil Cinema S Parthasarathy1 and Dr. V. Sundararaman2 1Ph. D Research Scholar, 2Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, ManonmaniamSundaranar University, Abishekapatti, Tirunelveli - 627012, Tamil Nadu, India. Abstract In Tamil movies centered on mass heroes, rapid editing helps the Filmmaker to make the audience believe the completely unrealistic action sequences into realistic presentation by engaging them. In action packed movies except few action sequences, which are in real, majority of the action sequences are built with intensified continuity editing with rapid cuts. In Tamil Cinemas in most of the movies, traditional Hollywood continuity style of storytelling are employed in representing space, time, and narrative relations in sequences. Largely action packed Tamil movies adhere to the premises of Classical Continuity with the intensification in Editing. Factors, whichfavour the intensified continuity editing, are the availability of NLE Softwares and tactics of different styles of camera work. To achieve this Continuity editing rules are strictly followed to hide the cuts and to give more emphasize on expression of the actors involved in action. Continuity editing is vital to maintain the perception of spatial and temporal ellipsis. Keywords: Average Shot Length, Classical Continuity, Continuity Editing, Non Linear Continuity, 180o Rule, Action Continuity, Over the Shoulder Shot, Close-up Shot I.INTRODUCTION The Evolution of Tamil cinema industry dates back to 1987 when the first ever cinematograph show in south India was screened by M Edwards in Victoria Public Hall near Cental Station in Chennai. Very significant abut this is that this was just a year after the Lumiere brothers had demonstrated their inventions in France. Now Chennai nerve centre south Indian film Industry popularly known as Kollywood has developed as one of the major centre for production of Films in India. Kollywood has always been using the best available cinema technology for production, which make its one of the sophisticated centre for Filmmaking. With the advances, in camera Techniques and quality of production with the arrival of computer technology, Kollywood is successful in producing pseudo realistic scenes to create sense of reality in the Psyche of audience. By the sense of reality that is created by techniques employed in cinema to tell the story audience are taken to the realistic world. The heroes in action packed movies are portrayed as superman able to do unrealistic things on the screen, which a common person cannot do in the real world. Volume 26, Issue 10, 2020 860 http://www.gjstx-e.cn/ High Technology Letters ISSN NO : 1006-6748 One should understand the popular and commercially successful movies are constructed from thousands and thousands of individual camera shots and are then spliced together to give impression of continuous sequences to narrate the story in the screen. Information across individual shots filmed at different times and locations have little resemblance or no resemblance to the real world. Camera Techniques and continuity editing rules are strictly followed to make the audience believe in the actions happening in the screen space. This research paper is intended to understand how Film Editors keep the Time and Pace of Editing to make the narration forward making the action on the screen believable and realistic to the audience. This study is limited to the measuring ASL of 5 different movies and measuring ASL in six action sequences in the recently released Black buster Tamil movie Bigil Directed by Atlee and actor with the huge fan following IlayathalapathiViajy who has done a male protagonist. II.METHODOLOGY To study the rapid editing in Tamil films the Average Shot Length of the five films were analyzed by the researcher. In all the five films chosen by the researcher to study the male protagonist role is played by the Mass Hero of the Tamil movies who have huge fan following. Directors who have proven record of directing Block Buster movies with commercial success rate directed all of these movies. The following are the movie Name & year of Release. Table.2.0.List of movies and the year of Release Year of Movie Name Release Thalapathi 1991 Thuppakki 2012 Petta 2019 Viswasam 2019 Bigil 2019 Series of discussion papers the researcher went through the Cinemetrics website, which has large data of Hollywood and other foreign language movies ASL data has interested him to do Intensified editing style in Tamil Movies especially in Action packed Mass Hero movies. The average shot length (ASL) has been the most widely used quantitative measure of film style, as we need to know only the duration of a film and the number of shots in it. To further study deeply in finding the Intensified Editing, the researcher has analyzed the commercially successful Block Buster movie Bigil where Vijay has played the lead role. The researcher has analysed six different action sequences in the movie to find the Average Shot length of the six different action sequences. 2.1 An Insight into the Movies Chosen for the Study First movie to analyse the ASL was Thalapathy released in the year 1991 Directed by legendary Director Maniratnam and acted by RajiniKanth who has a huge fan following in Tamil Nadu as well as in overseas. Mammooty a leading Malayam Film actor shared the screen with the iconic actor Rajinikanth. This film also saw Arvindsamy a new actor who later acted in the movies Volume 26, Issue 10, 2020 861 http://www.gjstx-e.cn/ High Technology Letters ISSN NO : 1006-6748 directed by Maniratnam. The total duration of the movie is 9134 seconds and has 1568 shots and the ASL of the movies is 5.8 seconds. Unlike the recent movies that are, shot by sophisticated modern day digital cameras, which gives scope for taking more no of shots and diversified editing decisions in NLE edit rooms this movie was shot using film camera and yet giving the astonishing ASL value of 5.8 seconds. Second movie to measure the ASL was Thupakki directed by AR Murgadoss and acted by Vijay who also has a huge fan following among the young Tamil cinema Audience. However, many individual shots of longer duration are present in the movie ASL of the entire movie is taken for our study. It is identified that some action sequences had more no of shots especially stunt sequence with coin flipping with light on/off technique had ASL value of 1.9 seconds which is well below against the ASL value of 4.6 seconds for the movie. This movie has a Total duration of 10817 second and 2327 shots. Lethal combination of Actor vijay and AR Murugadoss later who knows actor’s strengths and uses him quite effectively to pass on the message to an immensely wider audience keeping in mind the expectation of his fans. Thupakki is the movie most appreciated for its screenplay and stylistic making. Third movie to measure ASL was Petta an Action Drama directed by KarthikSubburaj and has a Rajinikanth in lead role, co-acted by NawazuddinSiddiqui, Vijay Sethupathi, Sasikumar, MalavikaMohanlal, Trisha and Simran in prominent roles. Story and plot of the movie which sticks to the Rajini’sfomula and reinvention of Superstars biggest hit Baasha is a successful movie and feast for his diehard fans. This movie has ASL value of 3.5, which has higher value of ASL when compared to the movies Viswasam and Bigil. The higher value is attributed to the lengthy shots taken by free ranging cameras, which had shot duration of more than 15 to 90 seconds at several sequences. Whereas in action sequences the ASL value of the movie is less than 2 seconds. This movie has total duration 10020 seconds and 2900 shots. Fourth movie analysed for ASL calculaton was Viswasam acted by Ajith Kumar has a huge fan following comparable to Actor Vijay is the lead role directed by Siva. Sticking to the regular template for mass hero movies it is presented in such a way to satisfy his and family audience. This Stereotyped movie though has a predictable plot is kept moving forward by rapid editing techniques and has more close up shots which lasts for brief seconds to keep the audience engaged. This movie has a ASL value of 2.8 seconds. Fifth movie to be analyzed for ASL measurement is recently released Box office hit movie Bigil acted by Vijay and Directed by Atlee. Director has paired up with Vijay for the third time after their ventures Mersal and Theri. Atlee who has tasted success with Vijay in his last two ventures has presented commercial movie Bigil to satisfy the Vijay fans. This movie has also adhered to the Mass hero formula to engage the young audience. A predictable movie plot is packed with action, emotional and romantic sequences for the seamless flow of movie watching. This movie has a ASL value of 2.6 seconds which is slightly lesser than Viswasam movie with the ASL value of 2.8 seconds. This movie was taken for deeper study for research to understand how the action sequence in Mass hero movies undergo intensified editing style to engage the Audience. During analyses in most of the sequences rules of continuity editing are strictly adhered to make the cut invisible to the Audience with a few exception in some sequences where violation of 180* rule, Eye line mismatch, Directional Continuity and match action is noticed. Surprisingly in this movie, first opening song has an ASL value of 3.1 seconds which is much higher than ASL Volume 26, Issue 10, 2020 862 http://www.gjstx-e.cn/ High Technology Letters ISSN NO : 1006-6748 value of the movie 2.6.