Hasta La Motion!

Playing games on computer screens during a meal may decrease the amount of food a person eats, according to research, published in the Journal of Nutrition. The found that when 119 young adults consumed a meal while playing a simple computer game for 15 minutes, they ate significantly less than when they ate the same meal without distractions.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US evaluated the food consumption of participants on two separate occasions – one day when they played the game while eating, and on another day when they ate without distractions. The game, called Rapid Visual Information Processing, tests users’ visual sustained attention and working memory, the researchers said.

It has been used extensively by researchers in evaluating people for problems such as Alzheimer’s disease and attention-deficit disorder. The game randomly flashes a series of digits on the computer screen at the rate of one per second. Participants in the study were instructed to hit the space bar on the keyboard whenever they saw three consecutive odd numbers appear.

It’s fairly simple but distracting enough that you have to really be watching it to make sure that you don’t miss a number and are mentally keeping track,” said lead author Carli A. Liguori from the University of Illinois. The participants, who fasted for 10 hours before each visit, were told to consume as much as they wanted of 10 miniature quiches while they were either playing the game or eating quietly without distractions for 15 minutes.

The food was weighed and counted before and after it was given to each person. After a 30-minute rest period, participants completed an exit survey that asked them to recall how many quiches they had been given and the number they had consumed. They also rated how much they enjoyed the meal as well as their feelings of hunger and fullness.

Liguori found that participants ate less when they were distracted by the computer game. The participants’ meal memory — their ability to recall how much they had been served and eaten — was less accurate when they were distracted than when they ate quietly without the game.

However, participants’ consumption on their second visit was affected by which activity they had performed during their initial visit. The people who engaged in distracted eating on their first visit ate significantly less than their counterparts who did not experience the distracted eating condition until their second visit.

“It really seemed to matter whether they were in that distracted eating group first,” said Liguori, who is a visiting faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh.“Something about being distracted on their initial visit really seemed to change the amount they consumed during the nondistracted meal. “There may be a potent carryover effect between the mechanism of distraction and the novelty of the food served,” she said. The results suggest that there may be a difference between distracted eating and mindless eating.

Although the terms are often used interchangeably, Liguori hypothesised that they may be distinctly different behaviours with nuances that need to be explored

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India is a land of diversity. We are diverse in our cultures, traditions and languages and yet we believe in Unity in Diversity. We are perhaps the richest country in the world, in terms of spoken languages. Exhibiting a baffling range of linguistic diversity, India is a home to many. The languages and dialect spoken here is huge. However, 96.71 per cent of the population in the country have one of the 22 scheduled languages as their mother tongue.

In a country of 1.2 billion people, Marathi became the third most spoken language. There are about 42 different dialects spoken in Marathi in the western part of the country, including Goa and Maharashtra. It is actually amazing to know that Marathi alone has more than 8.7 crores speakers in India.

Media and Entertainment Industry was not late in recognizing the potential of the Marathi Market. And that is the reason we have plethora of content, shows and channels available for this region. Right from reality show to Marathi movies, from Marathi dubbed movies to entertainment shows, everything is already on the platter. But for some reason, the kids segment in the Marathi market is yet to be explored. We don’t find much players catering to the regional kids’ market.

Realisation of this gap brought One Take Media Co. to thinking and OTMC is finally here with its newest category to serve the market; Marathi Kids. One Take Media Co. has more 500 hours of kid’s content available in Marathi. It is regardless to say about the variety and the quality OTMC promises in the kids’ genre. All the big titles like Bablu Dablu, Bablu Dablu Cubs, Gattu The Power Champ, Beet Party, Jungle book and many more are already added to the Kids Marathi list.

One Take Media Co. has more than 10,000+ hours of content and covers almost all the genres. It has a varied range of content involving Hollywood Movies, Kids content, Cooking Content, Korean series and many more. The wide range of content are available in English and in all the Indian regional languages. These include Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarati and Bhojpuri.

One Take Media Co. founder and CEO Anil Khera said, “The greatest relief, when you are in other country is to bump into someone who speaks your native language. It gives us a sense of belonging and a sense of home. Similarly, a person best enjoys the content when delivered in their own language. While everyone is enjoying Marathi then why not the innocent minds. We promise to delivers the best of animation content in Marathi to the kids.”

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VES India recently organised meetups at Mumbai and Bangalore which saw attendees from all spheres of the AVGC industry ranging from VFX artists to animators to technology aficionados.

VES event at Mumbai

Hosted by Oscar-awardee and VFX veteran Tim Mcgovern, the event at Mumbai kicked off with a welcome address and an introduction to the VES (Visual effects society) which has played a catalysing role in the growth of cinema, nourishing the VFX scenario all over the world.

Speaking about the proceedings of the event, VES chair Abhishek Krishnan shared, “We are gathered here to meet and greet our regional members and artists who want to join the visual effects Society of India. We recently finished our 2020 elections for the office bearers and also wanted to introduce them to the gathering here.”

While MPC Film 2D supervisor Vijay Selvam shared his work on the VFX Academy Award Winning movie 1917 and also his first-hand experience of representing the Indian Team at VES AWARDS 2020 in Los Angeles, MPC Advertising Compositing Supervisor Rashabh Bhutani shared his experience on winning the VES Award for” Qutstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Commercial for the creation of the famous Samsung 2018 Advertisment Ostrich at Bangalore.

VES meetup at Bangalore

For the unversed, The Visual Effects Society, a global professional honorary society and the entertainment industry’s only organization representing the full breadth of visual effects practitioners including artists, technologists, model makers, educators, studio executives, supervisors, PR/marketing specialists and producers. VES has over 4000 members in more than 40 countries worldwide contribute in all areas of entertainment like film, television, commercials, animation, special venue, games and new media.   Headquartered in Los Angeles, the VES has member Sections in Australia, Bay Area (CA), Germany, India, London, Los Angeles, Montreal, New York, New Zealand, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington state.

Elaborating on the future plans, he said, “VES in India plans to further grow the awareness and reach of its functions and volunteer-work to other artists and friends. For example, we continue doing free film screenings for our members and friends. We would continue doing ‘Making of’ events and share as much as possible for the community to grow and learn from each other.”

VES Meetup

VES plans to promote the arts and science of the craft by spreading the knowledge and techniques amongst professionals and students from across the globe. Recently elected members that will be taking charge of the operations are as follows :- Chair Abhishek Krishnan, Co-chair Keitan Yadav, Treasurer Srinivas S and Secretary Devrishi Chatterji.

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The outbreak of coronavirus has become a global concern now. The first case of coronavirus infection was recorded at a live  meat market in Wuhan, China, in December. It has since spread to more than 101 countries according to WHO, including the European regions, regions of Americas, Western Pacific region and parts of Asia.

The Indian government has started cancelling visas of the people coming from China, Italy and Iran. As the number of the coronavirus cases increased to 43 the government has ordered all telecom firms to make a 30-second audio clip on coronavirus as a caller tune of mobile phone users to create awareness among masses about the epidemic — an order that state-owned BSNL and Reliance Jio have fully complied with while other telcos are to follow.

The virus can infect anybody coming in the radius of less than one meter ( three feet) of the affected.  The fear of infection has created a panic scene around as people are cancelling travelling plans, social meetings, gatherings, airport visit and many more where the virus could spread from one to many. In addition to that many companies have called off their names form the participation list of big events as there are high chances of spreading infection.

International
The coronavirus outbreak has become a worldwide phenomenon and because of which events are being cancelled and postponed around the globe to prevent further spread of the coronavirus. The first major cancellation was Mobile World Congress, which had expected to draw 100,000 people to Barcelona.  The cancellation of events continued with Intel’s Intel Labs Day then Facebook’s annual Global Marketing Summit in San Francisco and more. The remarkable one which has tremor the gaming Industry was the postponement of The Game Developers Conference (GDC), San Francisco.

The event, which has run since 1988, was expected to take place from 16 March to 20 March but the outbreak has made it organisers to postpone the event. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, companies like Sony, Microsoft, Epic Games, Unity, Activision Blizzard, Amazon, and Facebook, including Oculus, all cancelled their plans to attend the show, citing health concerns related to the spread of the novel coronavirus.

This was followed by MipTV, the international television conferences and markets have been cancelled due to concerns related to the coronavirus. The event was scheduled to take place from 30 March to 2 April in Cannes. Organisers Reed Midem said Wednesday that all of the events surrounding MipTV, including Mip Formats, Mip Doc and Canneseries, have also been cancelled.

Multiple esports events of several different games are currently being affected by coronavirus, they are either been postponed or have been cancelled. The Overwatch League has officially cancelled all matches in February and March scheduled to take place in China, due to the coronavirus outbreak. In a statement on Twitter, the Overwatch League said the decision was made “to protect the health and safety of our players, fans, and staff.”

Some organisations have begun to cancel events, these include the League of Legends Pacific Championship Series opening, which was set to begin on 8 February and has now been indefinitely postponed. A Pokemon Video Game Championships event in Hong Kong scheduled for 2 February has been cancelled entirely. The WESG Asia-Pacific Finals for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, set to take place in Macau, have also been cancelled Followed by PUBG League, CrossFire, CrossFire Mobile, and so on. Also recently AESF announced the postponement of the inaugural Asian Esports Federation (AESF) e-Masters Chengdu 2020 due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.

The FMX Conference on animation, effects, games and immersive media has just cancelled their upcoming edition because of the worldwide coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic. In a publicly released statement, the organisers wrote: “Taking this step has been very difficult for us but necessary as the health of our international and national partners, guests, speakers, visitors, and team members are our highest priority.”

Then recently Rocket League developer Psynoix has cancelled next month’s World Championship event over the spread of novel coronavirus The live event was due to take place at the Curtis Culwell Center in Dallas, Texas from April 24 to 26 as part of the game’s Season 9 esports activities. But the developer has scrapped this competition to protect the health and safety of its players, fans and staff.

 Indian

Internationally, coronavirus has called off dozens of annual festivals and events, and now Indian events have started getting cancelled/ postponed due to the epidemic.

FIFS Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS) GamePlan 2020 which was scheduled on 5 March 2020 at Le Meridien, Delhi has been postponed. The recent developments with regards to coronavirus, Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS) have decided to postpone the conference. We shall get back to you within a week with rescheduled dates for GamePlan 2020.

Indian Gaming Expo just like every other major public gathering event is reportedly shutting its doors for its IGX 2020 instalment. The event was scheduled from 21 to 22 March at NESCO. According to multiple sources, a lot of sponsors have now raised concerns about the ongoing panic caused by coronavirus (COVID-19). The organizers are likely to take a call on the well-being of the people due to the concerning international health emergency.

Earlier FICCI FRAMES partner country Italy has been pulled out and now the official site of  FICCI  FRAMES reads in view of the public health concerns and the recent advisory of the Ministry of Health and  Family Welfare, which has strongly recommended to avoid mass gatherings, FICCI has postponed FICCI FRAMES 2020. They have chosen to take this decision in the best interest of our participants and they are looking forward to coming up with the new dates for FICCI FRAMES.

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Where are all the women in the VFX industry? It is a question we shouldn’t have asked in 2020. But we do. Why? Because there are fewer women all over the world are associated with the industry. What can be the reason is dedication? Tight deadlines? Inflexible work hours? What is it?

Taking an example of myself- I am a woman with a progressive frame of mind, an avid explorer and curious about visual content, especially behind the scenes. Being the curious self, I landed at a place where I had the opportunity to explore and give my curiosity a shape through my words that’s how I started my journey with the VFX industry. No matter how progressive we think the fact is undeniable that there are still lesser women professionals in the VFX industry and women in leadership in the same is even less. To understand why it is and how acceptable the VFX industry for women leaders we reached out to Technicolor India head of studio for film and episodic visual effects Kranti Sarma.

Technicolor India head of studio for film and episodic visual effects Kranti Sarma.

“My journey has been a long one, but also a good one at that! I have had bosses and mentors who believed in me. And I also believed in myself. However confident one is, there will be people around us who will criticize, pull us down as well as those who push us to do our best and nurture us. One gets mixed emotions while at the workplace. I have always focused on the positive, and on what helps me move forward. There is a difference between men and women, however, at work, we are all the same. I would say whoever pushes the bar with conviction and dedication moves forward irrespective of their gender,” Sarma shared how she started her journey.

Sarma spearheads the India operations which have witnessed a growth of strength from 500 to 2000 artists and technicians who are today estimated as the crucial team that crafts visual marvel across all channels of entertainment including studio features, international co-productions, and high-end episodic series, connecting larger audiences. Definitely, to manage such a huge team it is not easy so we were curious to know what strategies she applies to manage the team. She replies, “There have been a few, such as being part of the team, fostering an environment of learning and growth, instilling trust, empowering an individual in challenging projects, driving through accountability and most importantly running a business with heart in it.”

Many might have this preconceived notion that for a woman at a leadership position it might be a challenging task. Is it? Breaking the stereotypes she said “I would not term them as challenges but rather define them as opportunities of learning to adapt. Every individual faces challenge and challenges are not gender-specific. Challenges are thrown at a ‘role’. It’s up to us, as to how we perceive it and take it on. My male colleagues have been very professional and supportive of my career. They push my limits and foster an environment for growth too. I think we are in an era where our counterparts treat us with respect and equality.”

We live in a democratic country where men and women have equal rights. But are we? Let’s not get into the cases of moral policing, body shaming and thousand others which are cocooning women behind the societal walls. And above all the fear within us has been the biggest culprit to the walk-in route of achievements. To actually ride upon the societal walls and our fear we have to first empower and accept ourselves the way we are.

And it is true because of it there are very fewer women in specific industries including the VFX industry. However, the scenario has started evolving as Sarma said, “Earlier women have not chosen VFX as a choice of career. It’s both a career option and an industry that’s matured rapidly over the last decade. Historically, the work hours restricted women from entering VFX, but companies are creating new policies that are making it more attractive for women to participate. There has been a lack of women in leadership roles and a lack of awareness of what is required to it as a career option. Technicolor has outreach programs at schools and at the college level to try and make women aware of VFX as a career option. Technicolor has added appx 600 women artists in India in the last few years. We are always striving for more.”

She is the woman leader in the VFX Scenario leading a workforce from India that strives to seek creative excellence and bringing accolades to the studio. She believes that “leadership is a responsibility and behavior “and her secret leadership mantra is “I think, I represent – strong emotional intelligence, passion, and accountability.”

She further enlightens that to empower more and more young female minds it is crucial to have outreach programs at schools and colleges and educate about the VFX industry. “It will be necessary by giving more women a chance while hiring freshers would be a good place to start,” she added.

On account of women’s day, she shares this inspiring message to those women who want to take VFX as a career option that, “Every challenge has an opportunity. Believe in yourself and grab the opportunity. Women have a natural flair for creativity and in bringing passion to what they do. These attributes are a great start to your VFX journey.”

With her I pledge to break the monotony and would try to empower women for crossing that boundary and take the route of achievements which they have desired to become one day.

Happy International Women’s Day!!

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