Wednesday, January 08, 2020

InFest T20 - Cineaste (Movies Quiz) - Report

InFest T20 - Cineaste (Movies Quiz)

Set by - Avaneendra Bhargav and Aniket Khasgiwale
Conducted by - Avaneendra Bhargav
Date: 5 January 2020
Venue: Academic Complex, COEP
Format - Elims: 25 questions; Finals: 36 Questions on IR plus 3 written rounds (6 questions each)
Flavour - Movies Quiz

Results:
Winners: Team 5 - Govind Grewal, Devang Ghia and Anuradha Dhanwadkar (draft)
Runners up: Team 1 - Rajiv Rai, Abhishek Kapoor and Pranav Pawar (draft)
2nd Runners up: Team 4 - Vansa David, Nadeem Ansari and Ranajeet Soman (draft)
Other finalists: Team 2 - Brajendu Bhaskar, Pathikrit Basu and Rahul Surana (draft), Team 3 - Kunal Sawardekar, Aditya Gadre and Vibhendu Tewari (draft); Team 6 - Ritoban Maitra, Chinmay Deshpande and Abhinav Dasgupta (draft)

Report:
This was, if memory serves, the fourth edition of Cineaste with the only common factor in each edition being Avaneendra Bhargav. This time, Avaneendra and Aniket (all the way from Straya), served up a great set of movie questions without ever being obscure. As an armchair movie watcher and not really a big-time buff, I found all answers relatable and significant.

The quiz overall went off shockingly quickly and we finished on time at 7:30 against all odds on account of Avaneendra's rock solid QMing, and the crispness and clarity of question framing.

The elims were a short 25 question affair with a few Indian and several nice Western fundas and were largely driven by recent famous movies. The crowd no doubt found the elims  accessible as the cut off was quite high with some stalwarts like Vibhendu, Abhinav and Anannya failing to qualify. On the bright side, we saw some new young, local  teams in the finals.

The finals had a good mix of Western and Global cinema while never going too much into random unknown unreleased film type territory. The questions were well framed and clear on what was required as answers. All the answers were names of people or movies - which really helped in checking pounces at a brisk pace. The quiz was on the easier side which made it fun for everyone involved (all teams crossed 200 points!) in the finals. The written rounds were interesting if a bit hardcore. Aside from a misguided attempt to move things along at a higher pace and introducing a kamikaze element for about 5 questions, Avaneendra did a fantastic job of conducting the quiz. My only real quibble with the quiz would be the relative lack of representation of Indian movies.

While the quiz was always high scoring, the top two teams - Rajiv, Kapoor, PP and Govind, Devang, Anuradha were neck and neck and the lead went back and forth several times. After several nail-biting exchanges, we went into the final written round - where Govind and co held on to their slender 5 point lead to win the quiz.
All the other teams were more or less even for most of the quiz, but Vansa, Nadeem and Rana just pulled out a few good answers and took the third position. 

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