Academics

Programme offered under an agreement with Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development- an Institute of National Importance

The objective of this 3-year, 6-semester programme is to help create professional screenwriters. They need to develop writing skills that will help them write for a wide range of genres, for cinema as well as television, with some basic understanding of the craft of writing short films, corporate films, documentaries, and advertisement films. The deeper aim of this course is to help student-writers discover their own voice, free up their creativity, hone their intuition and impart to them the skills through which they are able to write their own original as well as others’ stories. The course makes students learn screenwriting by actual hands-on writing, with active mentoring from faculty, combined with a study of the widest range of cinema and narrative literature, via intensive theory classes, workshops, and interaction with many senior and experienced writers and writer-directors. Apart from this, the course offers other educational inputs from the field of culture and arts, especially from theatre, and from ancient narrative traditions like mythology and folk tales.

The first year of the course is the Foundation Year. In this two-semester foundation programme, all students are exposed to the many disciplines of filmmaking – Screenwriting, Producing, Direction, Acting, VFX, Cinematography, Editing and Sound Design. Students receive instruction through a powerful integration of student productions, classroom theoretical instruction, motion picture screenings and analysis, workshops and interactions with global filmmakers. Along with core filmmaking courses, students also take classes in Contextual Studies (General Education).

The film foundation semesters develop within students, their own unique story development and filmmaking perspectives and vision. The course also promotes individual professional conduct, communication skills and leadership qualities.

The rest of the four semesters of the course will develop screenwriting skills in students to make them ready to become professionals in the Indian Film Industry.