Filmmaker’s Companion: A unique filmmaking course for Ashoka students, all semester long

The new course called the Filmmaker’s Companion will be a semester-long, 13-week workshop course starting from January 25, 2020, teaching Ashoka students the art of filmmaking. 

Describing the Filmmaker’s Companion, Head of Ashoka’s Media Studies department, Professor Vaiju Naravane said, “This unique collaboration has produced an exciting course taught by luminaries from the Indian film industry on every imaginable aspect of filmmaking”. 

The course has been curated with the help of film critic and author Anupama Chopra and her popular portal Film Companion. Chopra is also the Director of the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival with Star in Mumbai. 

Ms. Chopra said, “There has never been a more exciting or challenging time for storytellers. The entertainment world is changing at a rapid pace and with this in mind, we have created the Filmmakers Companion, a course that brings some of the industry’s top professionals to the education sector. We are thrilled to facilitate and curate a course in which students get the unique opportunity to learn from the best in the field”. 

This is a one-of-a-kind course for the spring 2020 semester. Specially designed for Ashoka with the help of India’s finest film journalism platform, the course will introduce young minds to different aspects of filmmaking with heavyweights from the Hindi film industry invited as guest speakers to conduct seminar/workshops on topics like direction, cinematography, sound design and production.

Starting with an introductory class by former Director of the National Film Archives and Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) professor Suresh Chabria, the department will host industry experts like screenwriter Juhi Chaturvedi, popular songwriter Amitabh Bhattacharya, cinematographer Jay Oza among many others for three-hour-long workshops. While Chaturvedi has written screenplays for films like October and Piku, Bhattacharya has songs like Iktara, Emotional Atyachar and others to his credit. More seminar-workshops on direction, production and film composition will follow.

The course will enable students to gain expert-level understanding of what goes into making a full-fledged cinema production. Such a holistic experience is unprecedented in Indian education at the undergraduate level outside specialised film schools and will prove to be an enriching experience for young minds interested in filmmaking. 

“This is hands and mind full throttle and has me on my toes,” said Shivangi Jalan who will serve as the Teaching Assistant. “The course has been oversubscribed and is already proving hugely popular. We are having to turn down students every day. So I hope there will be a repeat in the semesters ahead.”