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It all started off from PFC only and a link in a post not at all related to Screenwriting. A wonderful person had put a link to the workshop and I thought “Why Not?” so promptly wrote off a concept that was brewing in my head for quite sometime and sent it to the jury who, although my concept was written like a teaser & not complete, seemed to like it and called me over to join the workshop at Goa between the 17th and 23rd of March 2008. This article is only about that week and all the fun we have had. There were 10 participants and the event was held in the International Center, Goa. The main sponsors of the workshop were the British Council, Sa Re Ga Ma, Eelenora Images, Business of Cinema & a few others. The workshop was structured extremely well and we had 2 principal mentors who were to guide us on our concepts and also provide valuable feedback on how to take it forward.

The 2 principal mentors were Paromita Vohra & Sabrina Dhawan. Then there were other guest mentors like Abbas Tyrewala, Vishal Bharadwaj & B R Sharan to provide us an understanding of the screenwriting process. The 10 participants came from different parts of India and the world but a large %age of people were from Mumbai, the heart of Indian Cinema. The workshop had 2 parts. The first being the feedback and steps ahead for our script and the second was the pitching of this script to a jury consisting of producers, directors, et al. The Jury was headed by Shekhar Kapur and all the participants had to go pitch their stories to the jury after the feedback sessions with the Mentors. The pitching session for me was quite interesting as this was the first time I was pitching a concept of mine to such an exalted audience. I will not lie and was a tad nervous as I was pitching to Shekhar Kapur whom I consider a mentor of mine. The pitching went well and the Jury was kind and helpful to all the participants.

With regards to the feedback and the mentoring process, Paromita, according to me, was a fantastic mentor and I really enjoyed her session (both the group and my individual feedback). Sabrina’s session was invigorating and lots of fun. The other wonderful thing about the workshop was the guest mentors and their sessions. Abbas Tyrewala took on the Mahabharata & how it could fit into a 3 Act structure. Vishal Bharadwaj conducted a session after we all saw Omkara. The session was very good and Vishal is a modest director who seems like an anomaly when directors not even half his worth rants and raves about their creations. B R Sharan, creative director at Sa Re Ga Ma also conducted a session. His session was extremely informative and he came from the producer’s perspective and some interesting points were mentioned in his session.

The other perspective we got was from British Cinema as one of the main sponsors were the British Council. John Newbigin from Channel 4 & Natasha Dack from tigerlily.com were there to give us an understanding of European production trends, a look at their alternative cinema & TV. They were really helpful and extremely friendly. Since Holi was on when we were at the workshop, we had a major blast on Holi and all joined in the revelry.

The other wonderful thing about the workshop was some of the participant’s propensity to drink and discuss movies (me included) :-). This used to be pretty much the staple diet for all the evenings and the discussion were on anything related to movies.

The fun moments were when we all headed to the beach in the night and we had Vishal with us and he actually sang for us & the other was the personal interactions we had with the keynote speakers and jury members. What a repository of information they all were and how much you could understand the semantics of movies from the way they planned their shots, the way they wrote their scripts…Phew…

All in all one wonderful setup. I am now back at work and trying to look busy and enjoy the mundane job that I do and my mine keeps jumping back to the last week.

I also take this opportunity to thank that faceless person who put a link up on PFC for the workshop. May you get your break quite soon and end up being the best filmmaker ever!!!

BTW, my concept was a dark thriller and it was set in contemporary India.

This post is quite brief and well without photos. Watch this space for more details on this workshop and do ping me if you need to know any more information.

Cheers, Deepak