The much-feted director of ‘Rang De Basanti’ and ‘Aks’, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, enthralled the students of Whistling Woods International at Filmcity, Mumbai with his sharp cinematic sense and knowledge of the art and technique of film-making. In an hour long master-class, he shared the complete process of film-making from concept to final print and the journey of creating ‘Aks’. He elucidated that it was Aks that made him realise the importance of a screenplay, which he felt was the strongest aspect of Rang De Basanti and the weakest aspect of Aks.

After his previous master-class with students last July 2006, Rakeysh had donated all the rush-footage and deleted scenes of Rang De Basanti to the Whistling Woods students library for the purpose of having students use the footage for editing exercises. He was pleasantly surprised when the students gifted him a DVD of several scenes which had been re-edited by students according to their creative sensibilities.

After a general master-class with all students, Rakeysh also conducted another hour-long technical workshop with direction, screenwriting & editing students wherein they analysed scenes from Aks from directorial, writing, cinematography, sound and editing perspectives.

Subhash Ghai thanked Rakeysh for being so generous with his time and lauded his commitment to Whistling Woods. He mentioned that it would be with reverence that these future film-makers would remember all the cinematic greats who spent time with them during their education. Not just Rakeysh, but all the other guest-speakers that vistit WWI every Friday for master-classes - Vishal Bhardwaj, Karan Johar, Ashutosh Gowarikar and Mahesh Bhatt, to name a few…