Hyderabad School gets Bollywood Bigwigs for 7 Day Film Making Workshop

Hyderabad, February 16, 2016: 7 Day Film Making Workshop, a first of its kind ever held for any School by Bollywood specialists and experts concluded here in at Abhyasa School.

Organized by Abhayasa School located in city outskirts, The Workshop concluded with screening of Five Short Films, made by the five chosen teams out of the workshop participants. Awards were presented to the teams for their outstanding works. The Grand Finale of the Workshop was graced by Allu Bobby, Director of Geeta Arts; Rajkumar Roy, Professor at Ramanaidu Film School, Actor Arvind Krishna and Director and Short Film Maker Vijay Das.

The short films that were made by students include: "Dil Ka Raastha", "No Smoking", "I Don't Know", "H20", "Mera Badla Jahaan".These films of 5 to 7 minutes duration were screened for the 400 plus gathering of students, parents and panel of judges. Subsequently judges announced awards for the meritorious films and presented awards to them “Mera Badla Jahaan" got maximum recognitions. It gotrecognition for Best Visual Design, Casting, Cinematography.

Best Editing, Best Direction went to "No Smoking"; Best Theme to "I Don't Know" and Best Story award was bagged by Dil Ka Raasta.

Sharan of "H20" Short Film adjudged as the Best Actor and Akanksha of "No Smoking", Best Actress.

Prior to the presentation of Awards Abhyasa students showcased a beautiful 'Style Act' by walking on the ramp. The confidence, the personality that they carried on the ramp was the best and comparable to the best of the best professional models, commented one of the parents, who is also into Fashion Designing.

“Film Making is the business of honesty. It is wonderful to get film making into school curriculum”, said Prof Rajkumar Roy of Ramanaidu Film School addressing the students.

“Film Making is a broad subject. I come from film family. I wish i had such an opportunity to study film making as an extracurricular activity in my school” said Allu Bobby, Director of Geeta Arts, who is a son of Allu Arvind.

There is no formal education offered to get into Films. If you cultivate right bent of mind of film making from early childhood, it will work wonders commented Arvind Krishna, Film Star. Story is very important. We need to tell stories in a job interviews, to investors in companies and everywhere. You must understand the importance of it, Allu Bobby told the audience.

Earlier welcoming gathering Vinayaak Kalleetla, CEO & Founder of the Abhyasa Residential Public School said that it was first of its kind of a workshop ever held in any school in the country. That too bollywood specialists and subject experts coming and addressing is something which the school has taken a very conscious decision. He underlined the importance of Fine Arts. It must be made as one of the most important co curricular activity in the school.
Education in Fine Arts is an integral part of the development of each human being. When a child learns Fine Arts, it refines his behavior, changes his or her attitude. It teaches the most important and a rare commodity “Creativity", Vinayaak, who is also associated with film making and also made some films added.

When will our Indian Cinema changes. When will it go global, he questioned. Fine Arts should be inculcated from school level, he said.

Writing story is very important. Let us move away from regular streams of education such as Engineering, Medicine. Students and parents must realize that there is a life beyond those streams. Students must listen and pursue what their heart says. Don’t go by parents aspirations and peer pressures, he told them.

Involvement in arts is associated with gains in math, reading, cognitive ability, critical thinking, and verbal skill. Arts learning can also improve motivation, concentration, confidence, and teamwork, observed Vinayaak. According to Rand Corporation Report published sometime ago, Visual Art Education "can connect people more deeply to the world and open them to new ways of seeing,", he said. Unfortunately with pressure to get good marks in exams has been reducing classroom time devoted to the arts, he said.

Abhyasa, the modern school with Gurukul ethos is known of its innovative curriculum. Moving away from routine activities, Abhyasa School kicked off a 7 Day Film Making Workshop on 13th December with Choreography by Bhaavesh Gandhi, an ace Choreographer from Bollywood.

That was followed by Music and Technology on 20th December by Suresh Peters. Suresh is a Music Director, rapper/Singer whose notable songs include "Chikku Bukku Rayile" from Gentleman and "Style" from the film Sivaji: The Boss.

Fashion Designer, a visiting faculty at some of the finest fashion schools in the country, namely N.I.F.T, Wigan & Leigh, L.S Raheja, S.N.D.T, Ken Ferns conducted a workshop on Fashion and Design on 27th December.

Sriram Iyengar trained students on Set Designing on 3rd January and Nirajan Iyengar, Script Writer, the fame of 'Kal Hona Ho', 'Jism', 'My Name is Khan ran Scriptwriting workshop on 17th January. Milles organized a session on 24th January on Videography and Vivek Ram on VFX and Special Effects on 31st January.

Total 50 students of 8th to 11th standard participated in the workshop. Out of which five teams comprising of 5 members each were selected to produce short films in a duration of 10 days. Given the time frame and limitations, whey have produced some outstanding work which is evident from the feedback and learnings they shared on the dias.

“I am here because of my mistakes” said one of the participants. “I have learnt that Fine Arts is life” said the other student. Digvijay, who directed a Short Film "No Smoking' said that he had learnt that permission is a must if you go outdoors for shooting. And the most worst part was we didn’t know most of the times from where to take those permissions, he said

“It was an eye opener for me to work on the subject No Smoking for my short film, because i have lost my father due to heart attack which was because of smoking”, he said.

Akanksha, best actress said "The Workshop gave her the platform to cultivate talent that she had in her".

Srinivas, Director of I Don’t Know said, that he had learnt that visual must tell the story in the film. I have also learnt that Plagiarism is the serious crime. And we need to be original in our story and concept, he shared with the gathering his experience of film making.

Pranav Director of H2O said that he learnt team effort. You cannot do anything alone. You need to patch up with your friends if you want to produce a good film. I have also learnt that no one should push their own ideas. It has to be the mixture of good ideas of the team. I am here on this stage today because of my mistakes, he said.

H20 film got lot of reception. Crowd was cheering up and yelling. Judges wanted to know the secret behind such popularity for which Pranav said, that they had marketed film well in the campus. Besides, content in the film, you need to position it will he said.

Sharan, who got the best Actor Award said that he discovered to his surprise that he could act well. Now that he knows the hidden talent in him, he wanted pursue acting in future.

All most all the short films made had a very good social message. The budding Film Makers also learnt important lessons from Jury such as "Passing exam is not very great. But getting prepared for life and doing well in it matters the most". They also leant that when they produce a film they must keep in mind the attention span of audience and accordingly they must trim the shots and content.