The first ever workshop and forum for television scriptwriters in the country gets underway on 20-21 December in Andheri in suburban Mumbai. Bringing together budding writers, creative heads from channels and production houses and filmmakers, the two day event is an initiative that has been begging for attention from the industry for quite a while. Aspiring scriptwriters have scarcely a few options for a serious study of the subject. Qalam 2001 hopes to make a start in filling this void.
Qalam 2001 is not designed to be just a series of lectures. Plenty of interactivity has been built into the event. Exercises will be allotted to attendees on which they will be provided feedback. Participants will get an insight into the rudiments of scriptwriting, character development, dialogue writing, the process of getting scripts approved by TV producers and channels, and the pitfalls in the business.
The first event of Qalam - a TV scriptwriters forum promoted by Indian Television Dot Com Ltd - the workshop will also feature a special networking session on the second day. Indiantelevision.com aims to present a select bunch of bright scriptwriters who will emerge out of the two-day gruelling sessions to the television industry, thus offering a unique opportunity for budding writers to showcase their talents and meet people who count within television -programming heads from TV channels, executive producers, creative directors from production houses and directors.
The cohesive force in the event is eminent scriptwriter and instructor, Joyce Thierry from the Vancouver School of Film, Canada. A veteran who has conducted many scriptwriting workshops in the US and Canada, apart from having written several shows and series for television. Joyce has also been Script Coordinator for movies and has been a jury member of several television awards, like the Banff Television Awards.
There will be ample representation from the cr?me de la cr?me of the Indian TV scriptwriting community to give insights as well as a perspective of what the business demands today. Among the eminent film and TV personalities who will address participants are filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, scriptwriters Dr Achala Nagar, Anjana Sood, Ashwani Dhir, Mir Muneer, Rajesh Joshi, Raman Kumar, Rekha Nigam, Sandhya Divecha, Soni Razdan, Sridhar Raghvan, Vinta Nanda, Vipul D Shah, and Vivek Agnihorti.
Information and television services company Indian Television Dot Com Pvt Ltd in July this year successfully conducted the Indian Telly Awards 2001, the first ever television industry awards.
Says indiantelevision.com founder & CEO Anil Wanvari: "There is a paucity of trained television scriptwriters in India. This is a plaint I have often heard from the TV industry. After the Indian Telly Awards 2001, Qalam 2001 is an effort from our company to start what we hope will become de rigueur in television - training."
