16 participants successfully completed a three-week course of six workshops, entitled ‘From Script to Screen’, as part of the British Council Nepal’s Creativity Series.
From a pool of scripts submitted by the participants (16 Directors and Screenwriters), two interesting scripts were selected which have now been produced into two short films: “Phota” and “Departures”. The workshop was conducted by filmmakers Subarna Thapa from Nepal and Andrew Rajan from UK who guided them through script identification and conversion to a shooting script.
During the first week, the initially selected scripts by Abhishek Subedi and Vinesh Raj Maurya respectively were rewritten with the input by all the participants. 'Phota' is a coming-of-age story about a young man hoping to fulfil his father's only wish while 'Departures' concerns a couple welcoming their son back from working overseas.
Sagar Pyakurel, one of the participants expressed, “I really enjoyed the workshop from the initial stage of analysing a script, writing dialogues, to shooting on location. The training delivered by our facilitators was very detailed oriented which helped me grasp quickly. Now I feel more confident in scriptwriting.” Additionally another participant Shiva Sharan Koirala also exclaimed, “The programme was very effective for budding filmmakers like us as it gave us the opportunity to meet people, share our ideas and experience the first-hand the different aspects of film-making – such as sound, design, camera, direction, identifying locations, understanding actors.”
The trainer from UK, Andrew Rajan shares his experience of shooting on location with the participants. “Working with the Nepali participants was great. They really had an appetite to learn, a thirst for knowledge and were excited to be on a set with a Red camera and a proper crew, gaining an understanding of what went into a shoot able script, a schedule, a shoot and the myriad complexities of Post Producing picture and sound.”
However, although the experience was very enriching, few of the participants voiced out that the time frame of the course at times made it difficult to better understand all the different aspects of filmmaking. Many also hoped that such kind of workshops should be continued and they are now more eager to enhance their skills in scriptwriting and filmmaking in an advance level.
After completion of the post production, “Phota” and “Departures” which is 10 minutes duration each, we also screened at the local Theatre Village. On the day of the premiere, a long queue of audience was eagerly waiting outside for it to kick off. The movies has been highly appreciated and applauded and we now hope to qualify to screen the films in the bigger international festivals and showcase it to a larger audience.