Who Be Ye!!!

Far Far Away in the year 1888. Prince, an unemployed youth is ecstatic. He just succeeded in making what might be the world’s first motion camera. Using it, he creates a picture that moves. He is extremely pleased with himself and wants to show it to others. He tries to find a theater to screen this picture, but couldn’t find any as most of the theaters were reserved for plays and the owners refused to lend it for some experiment.

All he could find was a small shed. There, he sets up his equipments and gets ready. He himself roams around telling people how better movies (that’s what he started calling them) are compared to plays. The people loves it, and by the end of the week long queues are formed outside the shed. Seeing this success, theater owners come to him with an offer to show his movie in their bigger and better theaters. The “film” become a huge success.

This time, theater and plays dominated the entertainment industry. The stories were of poor quality and there were rarely anything interesting that they had to offer. But because people had nothing else to do, they were forced to go for the plays. So plays were still making money. But the invent of cinema changed all these. The number of viewers for theater reduced drastically. The TDA (Theater Dramatics Association) got together and discussed the new turn of events. They all went for the movie to find out exactly what it had that their plays didn’t have.

But they were dumbstruck. The film was just a 5 minutes long, it had no story, the acting was poor, the people didn’t look at all real, there was no sound, it was too hot inside the room and it was straining to the eyes to look at the screen for long. They couldn’t realize why other people liked it. They decided that people are too poor to make judgements for themselves and didn’t know the difference between art and mockery. If some fool came with something different, even if it had absolutely no quality, people would rush to watch that. They decided that they should make some rules to prohibit the exhibition of cinemas that is deteriorating the quality of the audience.

They talked to the dictator-king of Far Far Away and made a law preventing the screening of motion-pictures.

But Prince had began to love film-making so much so that he just couldn’t stop it. He escapes with the camera to another country called Near Horizon. There he made films and screened it. The local people loved it and it grew very popular. With a new medium came new themes and fresh ideas and the film industry thrived.

But Far Far Away had a totally different story to tell. The year is now 1930 and people still watch plays. They are bored by the repetitive themes and stories, but alas they have nothing else to do.

In 1932, a theater actor from Far Far Away got lost on his way to Near Far Far Away and accidentally reached Near Horizon. There, he saw a cinema and was amazed by its quality. The dictator’s tyranny in Far Far Away was over and now there was a government and people had rights. He took back some films back to Far Far Away and screened them there. The people loved them. Soon a film industry developed here, but alas they were beginners and the films weren’t that great. But they carried on making films. Slowly they were catching up with the standard of films made in Near Horizon.

The year is now 1955. Far-far-away, having excellent film-makers now make good films and are not that far behind Near Horizon. At around that time, a scientist there creates a camera that can capture color. He, being ignorant of the techniques of film making, makes a short video of a horse running. He started screening it in a theater. People loved seeing color on screen and rushed to watch that.

As usual the ADFFFA (Association for Development of Films in Far Far Away) met to discuss this turn of events and went to watch the film. They couldn’t believe it. It looked like some 50 year old movie with color. There was no story, acting was below par, the images weren’t clear, it was difficult to make out a person. They felt that people were losing their artistic sense. They realised they should do something to make people understand the difference between good movies and mockery. One of them knew a top official in the government. They bribed him and a new rule was approved by the government preventing the screening of color-films. The police were also asked to destroy any such color camera if found.

The scientist who had spent a lot of effort on making the camera couldn’t bear to see it getting destroyed. He ran away with his camera to Near Horizon. There, he started showing the local people his colour films. They loves it.

The year is 2010. Far-far-away people still watch black-and-white films and the repetition and lack of innovation were making them bored. But lately they have been hearing rumors of more realistic and life like films being made in some distant country. It wasn’t the old hoax about full length color cinema. Now its something about the things in screen being so real that if you wear some magical glass, you feel they are coming towards you.