Wikipedia:Peer review/Eega/archive2

Eega

Previous peer review

I wish to restart working on Eega after withdrawing my previous FAC due to an unfortunate incident. Eega is an Indian film which narrated the story of a simpleton reincarnating as a fly to avenge his death. This article has been copy-edited by Dr. Blofeld and Baffle gab1978 post the withdrawal of the FAC. I expect some constructive comments and suggestions that help me make this article a better one before renominating it for a FAC.

Thanks, Pavanjandhyala (talk) 05:33, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

I'll add comments here as I go through the article; it might take me a day or two to finish. I'll do a bit of copyediting; feel free to revert anything you disagree with.

• "Eega won two National Film Awards—Best Feature Film in Telugu and Best Special Effects, five Filmfare Awards, and three SIIMA Awards": suggest either another em dash after "Best Special Effects", or change it to parentheses instead of em dashes.

  I prefer parantheses. :)

• "He is in love with his neighbour Bindu, a micro artist who runs an non-governmental organization (NGO). Bindu also feels affectionate towards Nani." Two rather jerky sentences, and it's not clear whether either of them is aware of the other's feelings. Perhaps "He is in love with his neighbour Bindu, a micro artist who runs an non-governmental organization (NGO), and Bindu returns Nani's affection" would be better, if it accurately describes the situation.

  Rephrased.

  Looks like you didn't change anything. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:14, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

  I could not. Because, Bindu never expressed her feelings directly and maintained silence until Nani's death. I instead removed the next line.

  Again I don't see any actual changes to the text. If her feelings for Nani are clear to the viewer, I think you could say something like "though she does not express them"; if the viewer isn't sure of her feelings, I agree you should cut it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:38, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

  How about "Bindu also develops feelings for Nani though she does not express them"?

  I think that would work well. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:20, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

• "Project 511" is presumably the name of Bindu's NGO, but you don't say that in the plot section.

  I've added it.

• "a contract affecting his professional life to be nullified" -- this is too vague to be useful; what does the contract say?

  People have expressed issues with this in the past as well. I guess it is better to remove that.

• "Sudeep takes Bindu to his home and abuses her": too vague again; this could mean anything from "shouts insults at her" to "rapes and beats her".

  Actually neither. By the time they actually reach the house, the fly arrives and stabs a needle below his bare foot. :)

• "because the script had less dialogue than others": presumably what is meant is that the script had less dialogue than most films; suggest rephrasing to make this clearer.

  The actors had lesser dialogues to deliver as the film actually focuses on the fly, which obviously cannot speak.

  Yes, that makes sense, but I think it could be made clearer what is meant. How about "because the scenes with the fly meant Eega contained less dialogue than most films"? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:14, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

  Agreed, but due to close repetition of the film or its title, i chose "because the scenes with the fly meant limited dialogues to be used". Hope this is better.

  I had a look at the source, and I don't think it supports what you say, to be honest. The quote is: "Why did you decide to make the film a bi-lingual?" "From the word go it was a bi-lingual. The fly, the protagonist, doesn't speak so there is no dialogue half the time." That doesn't say it was because the fly doesn't speak that the film was made in two languages; he simply comments on it. I think the most you could say is that it made making a bilingual film easier, but if I were you I'd just drop it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:38, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

  I've removed that dialogue portion and have just mentioned that he decided to make it a bilingual.

  I think that's an improvement. I tweaked it a little. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:20, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

• Suggest linking Noel Sean.

Linked. :)

• Nani completed his scenes in 25 days, but does that refer to both the original version and also the complete reshoot Rajamouli decided on?

  Let me make it clear before we talk further about the scrapped version. Rajamouli spoke about this in an interview. Until then, there was no information about this in the media. Hence, we cannot speak about when it was filmed, when it was scrapped, etc. Coming to Nani, the newspaper's interview only mentions that he has completed his portions in 25 days. Beyond that, we could not know anything else.

  Fair enough, but the reader needs to know that. I think perhaps a note attached to the 25 days sentence would be good, saying something like "Rajamouli reshot the entire film, and it is not clear from the interview whether the 25 days includes both versions of the shooting schedule". Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:14, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

I've added a note as per your suggestion.

• Can we get an approximate date for the completion of the first version and the decision to reshoot? That would be useful context for the subsequent filming and post-production section. Does "first shooting schedule" refer to this first version?

  Explained above.

• "The lens aperture was greater than f8.0 instead of wide apertures of f2.8 and f4.0 that are used for low-light conditions": I don't follow. By "greater" do you mean "higher f-stop number"? To me, saying the aperture was greater means it was a wider aperture, which means a lower number, but that doesn't make sense here.

  Rephrased it to "higher than". I'm not at all familiar with cameras and lighting. :) Pavanjandhyala (talk) 16:26, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

  I just took a look at the source, and you need to rewrite the sentence as you've misinterpreted it. Briefly, an f-stop number tells you how big the hole in the camera is through which light passes -- a low f-stop (such as 2.8) means a wide hole; a higher f-stop (such as 16) means a small hole. For shooting in low light conditions you need a wide hole, in order to gather a lot of light, but the lenses used for Eega had a minimum f-stop (i.e. a widest possible hole) of 8.0. So they couldn't get down to the low f-stops normally used for low light. As a result, they had to use more lighting, so that f-stops of 8.0 and above would work. As you currently have it, the article says they used higher f-stops, which may be true but isn't the point. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library)

  Thanks for explaining it clearly, Mike. I've rephrased the sentence as "According to Senthil Kumar, high intensity lighting was employed to utilise lens with an aperture of more than f8.0." Hope this is better. Pavanjandhyala (talk) 04:01, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

  Better, but still not quite right -- the key point made in the source is that the minimum f-stop available for the lenses they used was f8.0, and it's apparent that this is a consequence of other decisions made about the lenses -- from the previous paragraph it's clear that the need for close up shots led to the lens choice. It wasn't that they wanted to use small apertures. I think you need to convey this if you're going to mention this point. Also, I'd avoid saying "aperture more than f8.0"; since aperture gets bigger when f-stop gets smaller, this is a very confusing way to put it and the source avoids this mistake. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:38, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

  How about replacing that sentence with "As regular lens were ineffective due to constraints related to sizes, Senthil Kumar had to use special lens (with a minimum aperture of f8.0 or more) to capture proper close-up shots of the fly"?

  Better again, but it's not quite right just yet -- the constraint wasn't really size, it was aperture, which is more specific. Here's the relevant bit from the source: In photography terms, wide apertures of 2.8 or 4 are ideal for low light conditions. The lenses used by Senthil’s team had a minimum aperture of 8 or more, which called for more lighting especially for slow motion scenes. “We had to light up an entire room with high intensity lights, which emitted a lot of heat,” he says. One problem is that they don't really explain it very well -- they just say wide apertures are "ideal" for low light, but in fact it's more of a mathematical relationship -- assuming every other variable (sensitivity of the film is the main one I can think of) remains the same, any given light level will lead to dark film if shot through too small an aperture. If you increase the light level you can get enough light through a smaller aperture to get acceptable shots. So since they had a hard minimum f-stop of f8, and hence a maximum aperture size, because of the lenses they were using (and this is probably because of their choice mentioned earlier in the source to use lenses capable of close ups, though this connection only hinted at), they were forced to increase the light level above what would have been normal for certain scenes, in order to get enough light through the aperture of the lens. So it's not quite right to say the lenses were "ineffective"; they were perfectly good lenses; and it's not quite right to say "constraints related to sizes" (and "related to" is awfully vague); and it's definitely not right to say they were forced to use special lenses to resolve the problem -- quite the reverse; the lenses they used caused the problem; and finally it's not quite right to say this was to capture close-ups; the problem arose in any scene where low-lighting would have been normal, though this did include close-ups. A related point: the reason slow-motion scenes were a particular problem are because in slow-motion, the film moves faster through the lens, not slower; it takes more frames per second. That means each frame has less chance to gather light -- so it needs either brighter lights or a wider aperture -- so the aperture limitation forced the use of brighter lights "especially for slow motion scenes", as they say in the quote.

  I've gone on at tedious length about this because I think it's important. I know you're an experienced editor, so I hope you'll forgive me if you feel I'm lecturing you, but I think this is a really key point if you plan on doing a lot of content contribution. If you suspect you don't really understand the content of a piece of information you're adding to an article, stop and do a bit of quick googling (or reading related Wikipedia articles!) and try to understand it. It rarely works well to add material that you don't fully understand. If you like, now that I've bored you to death, I can try to put together a version of this sentence that works, or you can make another pass at it if you prefer. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:20, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

  I respect your comments for sure. I must admit that my curiosity towards cameras has increased after this conversation. I'll try to get it right once again. If i fail, you may proceed with a version that works. How about, "Senthil Kumar had to use special lens with a minimum f-stop of f8.0 or more; their wide apertures required high-intensity lighting to get acceptable shots."

  Much better. I took out "or more", since I think that's redundant with "minimum", and I made it "the wide apertures", since f8 implies wide apertures so we have effectively already referred to them. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:31, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

• "sequences in which conventional cameras were restricted": I don't follow; what was the restriction?

  I went through the source, and rephrased it accordingly.

  Yes, that's an improvement. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:25, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

• Shouldn't the Hindi-dubbed version be mentioned in the infobox? Since it's only a dubbing, I can see this might not be necessary; I'm not sure what the usual practice is for film articles.

  As per Template:Infobox film, the primary languages used in the film are supposed to be listed in the language parameter. Since this is a bilingual, Telugu and Tamil were listed.

  OK -- wasn't familiar with the template. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:25, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

• Why did Gurwara translate the dialogue into English for the Hindi version?

  The source quotes Gurwara saying, " I had the Telugu script with dialogues roughly written in English and I sat on the job for four days taking care to see that that the lip syncing was perfect."

  OK, but why does translating it into English help with that? Am I missing something? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:25, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

  Perhaps, he felt it would make him rework on the dialogue in a better way. But as the source does not explicitly state the same, i have no proper clue of what to do.

  I think I would cut it, if I were you; if we can't say what significance it has to the reader, why include it? We don't include every fact that we find; some editorial selectivity has to be present. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:08, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

  I agree. I've removed it. :)

• "Makuta VFX approached animation consultants in Armenia, China, Iran, Israel, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States": "approached" doesn't mean "engaged"; were consultants from all these countries used? If not, I'm not sure this is worth including in the article.

Rephrased.

• "Mohan compared the film with Apoorva Sagodharargai": I assume this is Crazy Mohan, but since the last Mohan mentioned is V. Srinivas Mohan I'd suggest making it clear.

Done.

• "Film critic Baradwaj Rangan wrote for The Hindu that unlike the animated films by the Walt Disney Company, Eega's protagonist is realistic except when it displays a few anthropomorphic traits." Is this worth including? It's a pretty facile comment, and doesn't really add to our understanding. If the point is that the fly is actually much more like a fly than, say, Jiminy Cricket is like a cricket, then wouldn't that be better conveyed with a small fair-use image of the fly? I know it's visible in the film poster in the infobox, but that's easy to miss (I missed it first pass) and I think a small image of the fly used in the theme section would be quite justified.

  The second paragraph of the Themes section lists Eega's comparisions with other animal-based films, and i don't think so that in this context Rangan's comment comes off as a facile one. I backed out from using a fair use image before as it was a film critic/scholar's opinion and moreover, the director himself had something more important to say.

• Several of the comments towards the end of the themes section seem more suited to the critical reception section -- all but the first sentence of the third paragraph, to be specific.

  I beg to differ. Scholarly analysis is important for a Themes section, and the comments post Rangan's "ghost template" one are trying to suggest its similarities with films other than animal-based ones and its similarities with stereotypes in Indian films. :)

• "On the theme of Tantrism, Kruthi Grover of The New Indian Express wrote that the sorcerer who tries to help Sudeep kill the fly with a ritual dies in turn": I don't know enough about Tantrism to see why this is a relevant comment, and in any case the rest of the sentence simply repeats something we know from the plot, without amplification. What's the intended point here?

  Tantrism, to an extent, indicates the impact of the paranormal on the fate of our protagonists. It is relevant (i've seen the film and can be sure about that). I have tweaked the sentence.

• "Kungfu Housefly" is presumably just the translation of the Chinese title; if you have the original title I think it could be included.

  It actually is the film's Chinese title (It does sound funny, but is).

• "Rajamouli considered it a relatively higher amount considering its pre-release business": I'm not sure what this means.

  I guess he didn't expect that it would earn such an amount.

  Your rephrasing is a distinct improvement. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:08, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

• I don't know what a TRP rating is; could this be linked to something that explains it?

  Linked it to Target rating point.

• Suggest cutting "(now ScreenAnarchy)"; the linked article will tell the interested reader that the company's name has changed, if they want to know.

  Removed it; also changed the wikilink to Screen Anarchy. Pavanjandhyala (talk) 17:12, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

• In the box office section, I understand the interest in first weekend nets, but I don't think we need second weekend nets -- just first weekend and totals, by country, is plenty of detail.

  IMHO, i don't think that it would pose a problem. Removing those may pose a problem in terms of comprehensiveness of the research. :)

• "Rajamouli said Makkhi was poorly presented and did not reach its audience": I'm not sure what "presented" means here; is he referring to the film's marketing to the Hindu audience? That doesn't seem to fit with his response, which is to collaborate with a Hindu filmmaker.

  He actually is commenting on the lack of a proper presenter. I've added a note about a presenter's role in films there.

• In the accolades section, I don't think you need to give Rajamouli's name in parentheses after the Best Director award; there's no co-director to make things confusing.

  Removed.

• Can you just confirm that it's usual for an actress such as Samantha Ruth Prabhu to be referred to as "Samantha", as you do, rather than "Prabhu"?

  Prabhu is a patronym and not the actress' surname. Hence, she is being referred to with her first name Samantha.

• I must be misunderstanding something, but I would have thought that the Filmfare Best Actress awards in the Telugu and Tamil categories always went to Indian female actresses; what am I missing?

  They were awarded to Indian actresses. But, this was special because an actress received the same award at the same ceremony for both Telugu and Tamil cinema.

• Why do we need to list all the Tamil films shows at the Chennai International Film Festival?

  I've restricted it to a select two or three ones.

  But why are any listed at all? What does it provide to the reader? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:09, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

  Removed them. :)

• Is the Madrid International Film Festival worth a redlink?

  Someone has delinked it. :) Pavanjandhyala (talk) 16:29, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

-- I'll read through again once you've responded. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:44, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

One point remaining above. I'll read through again today. I have two remaining concerns about the article for FAC. One is the prose, which I think is less than fluent in places. The other is the accuracy with which it reflects the sources. In a couple of cases above, the text in the article either didn't really reflect the sources (the f-stop discussion) or was included despite the fact that it's not clear why we care (the translation into English). This isn't something I can easily check, but please try to eliminate any similar issues elsewhere in the article. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:09, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: Sure. After closing this PR, i will rework on such instances and shall request for another copy-edit at the GOCE. Thanks for your valuable contributions to this article. Pavanjandhyala (talk) 13:42, 14 August 2016 (UTC)