Goa: A seven day script writing workshop organized by Saregama, British Council and Eleenora Images concluded on Sunday evening. Four winners have been selected; they are Megha Ramaswamy, Suhani Kanwar, Jasvinder Singh Bath and Laxmikant Shitgaonkar.
Ten shortlisted finalists were taken to Goa for the workshop where they were mentored by Sabrina Dhawan (writer of Monsoon Wedding) and Paromita Vohra (writer of Khamosh Pani). Abbas Tyrewala and Vishal Bhardwaj also guided these students for a few days and gave them guidelines on the craft of scriptwriting.
On the seventh day students made final pitches of their scripts to a panel comprising Shekhar Kapoor, Sabrina Dhawan, Paromita Vohra, Saregama creative director B R Sharan and British Council’s John Newbigin.
These four winners will continue to work on their script till the month of June under the guidance of Sabrina Dhawan and Paromita Vohra. After this they will be expected to pitch in their scripts to industrywallas.
Saregama head of films Madhu Varma says, "We at Saregama have identified 3-4 scripts from these ten which we ourselves would be interested in making." He further adds, "As individual producers we have loved stories and made them into films, but we have not invested resources in development and marketing. Now with the corporates coming in we have an opportunity to do this and someone needs to take the initiative. I am proud that Saregama has taken this lead."
Eleenora Images’ Madhab who has conceptualized this initiative says, "Even though India produces most number of movies, the scripts fail to reach the global audience. With this workshop we aim to have a global script of Indian cinema. Now since our movie culture is moving formula flicks to more evolved scripts the time is right to conduct workshops like these."
Through the six days of mentoring and guidance, Dhawan and Vohra felt that the participants were beaming with fresh ideas, but lacked the craft of writing the script for the cinema medium.
