By Charlie Karumi
Don’t you just love Tuesdays! The sun is shining in the sky, pizzas are half off at your favorite pizzeria and here you have a brand new fresh #teknikoTuesday issue! A perfect day! If my primary school maths teacher were here, he’d say that this was the kind of day where the only way it could get any better would be if it rained mangos. Oh what a sweet glorious day that would be. But in the absence of such a meteorological miracle, we’ll just have to settle for some delightfully normal weather, cheap pizza and a nice relaxing read.
Today we’re on the Jays… Jay, mko excited? Because I sure am! So let’s jump right in with our first word of the day which is:
Juvenile- a fairly self explanatory word. A juvenile is the role of a young, teenaged male character in a film or TV series (the female counterpart is known as an ingenue). The juveniles and ingenues in top showbiz productions are often categorized as child stars. They are the darlings of the showbiz industry and often outshine even their adult co-stars. Good examples are Macaulay Culkin (the star of the Home Alone movie series), Gary Coleman (Diff’rent Strokes) and our own Baha, Govi, Almasi and Co (the stars of Machachari). Spielworks Media’s new offering Jane and Abel also has its own juvenile in Tony, Jane Kazi’s troubled teenage son.
Popular juveniles!
Jib- a nice fun word. I could say it all day. Jib jib jib. I jib over here, i jib over there. Jibbly jib jibby ju! In film, a jib is, in very simple terms, a mini-crane. It’s a boom device with a camera on one end, and a counterweight and camera controls on the other. It works like the see-saws you were well acquainted with in your nursery school days, but with the balance point located close to the counterweight, so that the camera end of the arm can move through an extended arc. Its often mounted on a tripod or similar support. You’ve probably seen it being used by camera crews covering large events to get aerial footage of the crowd and the stage because of its usefulness in getting high and moving shots.
Spielworks CEO Dorothy Ghettuba helps out DOP Eric Ndungu operating a jib at the Spielworks Studios
Juxtaposition- oh, how the inner Jaluo in all of us quiver at the utterance of this pulchritudinous word! In film, juxtaposition is placing two elements or words side by side and allowing the viewer compare them. This act compares and contrasts the two elements and can show irony, humor or sadness. For example, in the picture below, the irony of police being armed to the teeth is clearly depicted by their juxtaposition with the woman calmly walking past them.
Juxtaposition yawa!
Jump cut- and finally we have the jump cut. For a long time in movie history, jump cuts were often looked down upon as an anomaly, a mistake that should be avoided. But in recent years, editors and filmmakers have embraced the technique to create some very useful results. A jump cut is an abrupt transition from one scene to another caused by the absence of transitional action/effects that makes the picture appear to jump in time, hence the name. It is often used by people doing video interviews to make the final product tighter (shorter and to the point) by eliminating pauses and irrelevant bits in the subject’s speech. Take for example the interview below, the editor has used multiple jump cuts to neatly string together the main content of the interview making it as short and efficient as possible.
Well there you have it, 2 pairs of Jays and you didn’t have to pay Nike a thousand plus dollars for them (sorry Michael Jordan). Hope you enjoyed today’s issue. See you again in seven days, have a filmy week everybody.