KREC videos
It's been 10 years since I graduated - or it will be on July 13th - and I was getting nostalgic on a Saturday morning. It's called National Institute of Technology, Surathkal (NITK) now, but was Karnataka Regional Engineering College, Surathkal (KREC) when I was there (1992-96).
I spent some time with the Wikipedia entry on KREC and then came across this video:
It's a very sadly edited amateur video but has some of the elements that trigger a bout of nostalgia.
It begins with "Lamhe" (moments) - a mirrored render of 3D text using, I think, 3D Studio. This is what we used to do in college for our annual fest, Incident. The machines were so slow that we would painstakingly map all the points, figure out the right textures, colours and lights and pre-calculate the movements of the text, camera and lights - all on paper or in our heads, because a "render" took upwards of 8 hours. We'd then use the lab machines at 10 PM, when everyone was done, and set the render to run through the night.
Today, the same darn thing takes less than 2 seconds.
But I digress.
The video has some "moments" - of the hostel rooms, "Samudra Darshan" (SD), Classrooms, Copying in sessionals, stealing glances at the opposite sex, a kinda weird human "IT" formation in the main garden (Why???), bonfires at the beach, the ring ceremony, the farewells and the class photos. They'd look cheesy to most of you, but for me, they all trigger some memory or the other.
There's also an attempt at humour - the "muggus" (bookworms of sorts) arriving early at 8:05 AM, and the cooler dudes strolling in at 9 AM. The coolest dudes, such as yours truly, were usually there only in time for the 9:50 break.
Things that show how old I've gotten:
- Hostel rooms seem to be much better - cupboards with doors that aren't propped up by duct tape, beds that can actually be slept in and all that.
- Paved roads and painted footpaths! Wow. Though that might only be the walk from the girls block to the main block.
- SD doesn't have the smokers anymore. Smoking is banned there. Kinda sad - the cigarette + chai was my favourite thing in the 9:50 break (and what used to wake me up).
- There's no mention of Cresendo, Incident or Phoenix (Cultural and sports festivals). And no SAC. No Gate, no sunsets and no laat sessions in the hostels. Maybe all that has changed; it was SOOO much of our life then.
- There are way too many girls in a class. That many would have been the sum total of the girls in our entire batch. Not that I'm complaining. Wait. Maybe I am - Why didn't we have these numbers???
A few of us from the '96 batch are driving to college on July 13. Hopefully there will be enough alcohol to help us remember....and forget.
6 Comments:
I was there last Oct for campus recruitments. Have fun !
-Prajwal (EC'97)
Cool, Prajwal...I guess recruitments would've changed quite a bit since we left.
They sure have. We were #61 and all CS/EC guys already had 2 jobs. So we took in 0 from CS/MCA and 1 from EC.
Also found Sat is not a working day under NIT. And in the screening test, I asked for hostel room num or mobile num. The latter was most common !!
~Prajwal
Hi,
This video was made by me along with 3 other friends.
We did it in Pinnacle Studio. It's actually raining videos at KREC right now....every event has it's video and even general variety/dance events during crescendo use projected video.
It all started 2 batches earlier to ours ('03 batch).
We did this as part of our final year "Smruti" CD. Each branch has it own branch video and this is "IT" branch video. 3 minutes approx for each branch, so everything will fit into a CD!! Videos for crescendo and Inci were made separately. Inci used videos heavily and Photography Club is almost becoming defunct now !! All participants could order a video CD of their shows. Another one hour video covering entire 4 years of our stay was made by hiring professionals.
In all, total videos volume made in our final year amounts to more than 20 GB !!
....we didn't have the luxury of having computers which render in 2 seconds ;)
Since, enrollments started via AIEEE exam, girls are more in number now than in our batch. People no longer envy manipal :) (well almost).
Would appreciate it if you left me some specific comments about the editing stuff :)
Initially, IT formation in main garden was because every other branch was doing one :) Even though we really weren't too keen in having it in the video, that was the only place where most faces were visible, and we could finally say, everyone is covered!!
Gubbi,
Amazing! Any way I get a hold of a Smriti CD? This is good stuff, that all branches make a video :)
About the editing, it's not really your fault. Real editing tools cost tremendous amounts of money, and pinnacle is a simple kind of tool. Also video editing is a very long drawn job, and smoothness is quite difficult to achieve. Check out the Manipal video on youtube.com - that's a professionally edited video, and you'll see the differences.
Basically issues with editing relate to how long you pause on a scene for it to make an effect, using proper filters on scenes to enhance their quality, and flow between scenes. There's also directional elements like camera movement, focus, framing and zoom/pan.
You're not professionals, so obviously there will be directional issues (and you won't retake a thousand times!) and editing requires money, time, tools and training.
Don't worry about it - I liked the video for it's content. The rest are stuff I can easily ignore.
Post a Comment
<< Home