My recent Workshop on Filmmaking – Part 1

Earlier last month, I returned as a short film expert at Sharda University at Greater Noida to conduct a workshop. The goal was to introduce the students to the basic know-how of short film-making in 2 days! Those innocent faces looking up to you for inspiration and drive makes you feel responsible, at once. And yes, the clock was against us, it daunted me, especially since I had been away from academia for a couple of years.

I wear responsibility well, I believe.

And so it started. Students poured in. It was a class of 20. I usually spend some time getting familiar, knowing a little bit about every one, winnowing in the mind, the trite to the remarkable. Here, I found almost nothing unexpected. To call it spade, I found a collective passivity, a lack of urge, at first. Then the jokes began. And, the group started lighting up. At one point, I had questions competing for attention. I realized that the class had truly begun!

I showed the class my recent documentary on Dilip Bam, the first man to have crossed the Sahara Desert on a motorbike. It struck a chord with the assembly. We then decided to make a film, a short one minute film.

Now, we went through conceptualizing, scripting, dialogues and drama. I usually interlace my lectures with anecdotes and personal plus imaginary experiences. Stories are the easiest way to remember a concept, we storytellers know it! I drew wild tangents into literature and theatre but seeing the audience befuddled, returned to reality at the speed of light.

Ideas were thrown it. Most of them threw a hat into the ring. Some of them were imaginative and sounded like genuinely worthy of consideration. However, we were short of scope and time, which was turning out to be an advantage since it made us approach the subject of short filmmaking with a tunnel vision, no meanderings at all, except of course lunch breaks and some snappy occasional, intentional digressions for obvious reasons.

We spent the day on theory, setting up the stage for next day where we dive into some action!