A Week With Anjum Rajabali, Sriram Raghavan and Anurag Kashyap
I’m still running a slight fever as a write this – I have it since the last two days of the Sankalan workshop. The fever could either be due to an information overload or a food and tea overload. We, the dozen plus two chosen writers, were treated to luxury which at least I’m not used to. We’d be taken to the venue, Digital Academy, in an AC minibus, fed breakfast, have a session, then a tea break, then session, then lunch – session – tea break – session – and finally goodbye tea and snakes – I mean snacks. Our hostesses (cum bosses 
Anupama, Arti and Sushmita (more power to women!) declared that they intended to make us at least one or two kilos heavier by the end of the session. Unfortunately for me, who’s struggling to get rid of the last extra inch or two on my waist, they’ve succeeded. I’ll remember the cookies and the final day tikkas most of all.
Twelve writers were chosen for the workshop, plus two more from videsh because their concepts were too good to be left out. We became friends, as can be expected when you spend a week together.
Darn, I’m having a bit of trouble writing this! It must be the burden of expectation, since I know that this is kind of the semi-official PFC write-up on the event, and everyone at the workshop at least is going to read this.
The first evening, we watched Ardh Satya, which was then used as a kind of case study for various points during the workshop. Anjum Sir was there six days out of seven. The man is a wonderful performer and teacher, with his solid booming voice and impassioned speaking. He taught us about structures, the hero’s journey, scene design and dialogue and a million other things which have hopefully been embedded in my subconscious. He was very emphatic that it’s very important that we don’t consciously try to fit our scripts into predetermined structures. I couldn’t agree more when he said that certain screenwriting gurus have done a great disservice by providing easy hamburger formulae for screenwriting. Ironically, a couple of days after he said this, I received my Promising Minute Award for PFCOne last year – a DVD of Syd Field’s Screenwriting Workshop! (By the way, thanks, t!)
The instant I saw Sriram Sir my mind immediately said ‘Cast him as Commissioner Jim Gordon.’ He’s one of those people who have a mischievious twinkle in the eye, which comes through even his powerful specs, and I’m not the only one who feels this. He can listen to a person with the utmost sincerity on his face in such a way that anyone else watching will find it comic. We learnt several on-the-job things from him, the most important one for me being about not having to spell out every logical step for the audience. We also watched his FTII diploma film, ‘The Eight Column Affair,’ which I understood only on the bus ride back home – very tube lighty of me.
Anurag recommended two films for us to watch – Korean blockbusters Memories of Murder and The Chaser. Both films were a treat to watch in terms of structure at least, because they defy most conventions of the thriller genre. The Chaser was also the movie which aroused the sharpest debates because of its violence. Anurag came to the workshop wearing a T Shirt and a checked half chaddi whose pattern was exactly the same as the dining room curtains, and in fact one of them was already missing! One memorable thing he said was “If there’s someone you idolize, don’t get close to them or you’ll be very disillusioned.” Even Navdeep Singh had said the same thing: “You shouldn’t meet your idols because they also have feet of clay.” Kind of tough for me, ‘cause most of my previous blogs will show that Anurag himself is one of my idols.
One thing I was awestruck by is the sheer range of knowledge that these three filmmakers have. They know what they like and don’t like, what works for them and what doesn’t, and even if they don’t agree with something, they have solid reasons for it.
Other movies which were discussed as reference included The Sixth Sense, Being John Malkovich, Sideways, Rang De Basanti, Deewar, Dil Chahta Hai, Sholay etc apart from of course, our instructors’ own movies.
On the last two days, each of the fourteen writers narrated their stories, within an oft-broken limit of five minutes, and then received feedback from everyone else. I had an unfair advantage here since I’m an actor as well. That also reminds me, even if my script doesn’t make it to the screen I hope I get a decent role in at least one of the eventual films ;-)
Tags: Baiscope, sankalan, Screenwriting Workshop, Writers
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
all the best buddy.
all the best
kuttey kamineeeeeee kennyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
am so jealous :(
all the best buddy anyways …
Now please give us the breakdown of how “Ek Hasina Thi” came about that Sriram mentioned to all of you at Sankalan!
i don’t get this… rang de itself was written with the help of syd field’s structuring… so how can it be a model script if you are throwing syd out of the window??!!
Nice one Kenny…all the best…!
Well, That’s great Kenny,
Only i know how much i am missing all that you guys did.
akki
Good Luck to the all of you guys :-)
you got it right when you say how sriram sir listens to anyone…
Kenny dil maange mmore….
details details maaaaaaaaaaaaaaan
saala pnu tho likhta nahin hai
and u r all gushy gushy1!!!
tum log bhi..
“One memorable thing he said was “If there’s someone you idolize, don’t get close to them or you’ll be very disillusioned.” Even Navdeep Singh had said the same thing: “You shouldn’t meet your idols because they also have feet of clay.” Kind of tough for me, ‘cause most of my previous blogs will show that Anurag himself is one of my idols.”
maybe they should have said “do not idolise anybody” :-)
Was waiting to hear about the Sankalan Workshop from you and Pnu.
Great to read that you were fed well, with both food and knowledge !
I was disappointed at not making it to the round of 12, the opportunity to attend such a workshop won’t come again very soon.
From my brief interaction at the pitching session I could perceive that Anjum has a treasure trove of screen writing knowledge and Shriram has a sharp analytical mind and is a patient listener. Anurag told me one very important thing – any changes that come in your stories have to come from within you as outside help doesn’t come by easily.
I would have loved to attend this workshop!!
Wish you all the best for the next round. I hope you keep serving platefuls of Kung fu !
I envy you! Wish I could be a part of it..damn me!!
hey kenny!
glad u found it worthwhile….hope the rest felt the same too
for me it was wonderful to see such a pot pourri of ideas and points of view. so many stories waiting to be told. and SUCH TALENT !!!
food to gyaan….if SANKALAN gave u an overdose of it…well…am now waiting for all those story – treatments to soar higher. desperately need an overdose of great Big Idea driven scripts from u bunch.
as i said at the workshop i repeat it again – for all of us at Baiscope , SANKALAN’s biggest take home will be 12 kickass scripts…which make every stage of shortlisting a tough task.
WRITE ON…
Hey all you aspiring writers there is one more screen writing workshop organised by NFDC.please check out more on www.nfdcindia.com. i was one of the participents last year.last year we had mentors like
Danis Tanovic (writer-director ‘No Man’s Land’)
Bend Litchenberg(writer-Good bye Lenin)
Olivia Hatrid(writer-The Girl with a pearl earing)
and our own
Anjum Rajbali
AllThe Best..!
Hi Kenny,
According to our contracts we’re not mentors but tormentors.
Stop PFCing too much and concentrate on your script
Thats so true Kenny
Beware! Sriram just summed up your destiny for the next few months at least……
“Cast him as Commissioner Jim Gordon.’”
KENNY I LOVE YOU….what an observation SIRJI……
Sriram, what happened to your next movie with John and Aishwarya? I read an article a few months ago and then have not heard anything about it since then.
@Pratim D Gupta
I don’t know the backstory behind the scriptwriting of RDB, but I don’t see how it follows Syd Field’s formula of Plot Point I at page 20-30. RDB’s first true inciting incident is Madhavan’s plane crash, and that comes well after an hour, maybe even more.
@DPac
I can’t help being gushy man! I really look up to these folks
@Arun Prakash
Thanks a lot, and good luck to you too for future endeavours.
@Kapil
Maine aisa kuchh nahi kaha. Do aur do paanch karna padhne wale ka kaam hai ;-D
@Sriram Raghavan
Sir, You commented on my blog! Hum dhanya huwe. Yes, I’ll be concentrating mightily on my script. “..not mentors but tormentors.”…ha ha ha ha
@Anupama
Kyun dara rahi hai?
@ Kenny (20)
I think there’s no point in trying to fight the Syd Field formula. I think any story will ultimately end up fitting his structure theory in some manner or the other…
For eg. in RDB I could say the first plot point would be when the group decides to take up the roles of Bhagat Singh and other revolutionaries for the documentary etc…
70-80% of mainstream movies will definitely fit into the three-act structure, which isn’t Syd Field’s invention. Folks as far back as Aristotle were aware of it.
My favourite counter example is Life is Beautiful, which is composed of two distinct parts, both of which can exist independently. And things take a turn only on page 70 of the screenplay, which is more than half the length of the movie
Kenny, who were those undeserving Videshis?!
@ Naram garam
Very funny. For public knowledge: Naram garam was one of them ;-)
hi kenny, thanks for your post i came to know about this screenwriting workshop you went and i need somemore information about it.i am a struggling screenwriter searching for a writer to work with. and by the way i believe attending a screenwriting workshop will boost up my confidense to compleate two of my uncompleate scripts. if you know any guys who need a collaborator or assistent to work with, please let me know. anyway thanks once again for your post and i like your writing style.
Samlee duke.