Learnings — India Film Project Season X — Day 2 — 38 Lessons I Picked Up

Day 2 of MTV’s India Film Project Season X is here, and to me, it was quite the scintillating way to spend Friday. Where am I going to go really? There’s a pandemic outdoors. Not to mention thunderstorms (if you’re in Bangalore).

This 4-day event has a diverse range of noteworthy speakers taking the stage and sharing their interesting tidbits and learnings over their experience. There’s also a bunch of challenges, contests, and other partner giveaways — but truth be told, I’m not too keen on them. What I am keen on, are the conversations and the roundtables.

Here are my learnings from Day 2 of IFPX.

India Film Project X — Day 2 Schedule

These were the conversation I attended on Day 2:

1. Masterclass on Nuanced Storytelling ft. Suhasini Maniratnam and Vishal Menon
2. Scripting Success! ft. Hitesh Kewalya, Anjum Rajabali, Smita Singh, and Nikhil Mehrotra
3. How to be a Better Podcaster ft. Amit Doshi and Kavita Rajwade

Masterclass on Nuanced Storytelling

(Damn! This session! Wow!)

1. Write from your heart, not from your head. Writing should satisfy yourself before it satisfies an audience.
2. Now there are a lot more reviewers who critique your work. Don’t listen to them all. Be picky.
3. The ‘Black Sheep’ may turn out to be the most talented sheep.
4. Relationship quirks create nuanced characters.
5. Characters are mostly reactive, just like people.
6. Characters try to make up for lost time when they meet characters from the past. Again, just like people.
7. Science, logic, humanity, and approach to situations, are four different things. Treat it as so.
8. Take as many references as you can. References help create more relatable characters. Settings help create more relatable worlds.
9. Stories exist in everyone’s head. Stories can come from anywhere. It’s the creator's role to put it out.
10. Do anything, and everything, you must to put yourself out there. To create.
11. Sometimes writing the last scene can help you figure out the entire flow of your story.
12. Writing a script is like falling in love. Direction is like going out and earning your bread and butter. Acting is like doing household chores.
13. There is nothing on the stage if there is nothing on the page.
14. Writers are observers. Good writing helps you lose your sense of identity. Get into your character's shoes.
15. Writing involves rewriting.

Scripting Success!

1. Empower yourself to learn. Give compliments to get critiques.
2. Have the vision to create. Be in love with your vision, and shape it into creation.
3. Only if you enjoy the entire process can you maximize success and what you derive from it.
4. There’s nothing more powerful than a story being explored at the right time in history.
5. Writing for the screen, means you think about the audiences. It’s about building a bond with your audience. Writing isn’t an exercise in ‘one-shoe fits all things’.
6. Self-criticizing isn’t the same as underselling or undervaluing your own work.
7. Don’t try to prove yourself with your writing and your work. Scripting and movies are about the audience.
8. There is no criteria or yardstick for uniqueness or correctness. Don’t tailor your creativity. Creativity comes from what you are, and what you hold dear.
9. What makes a story interesting is what enriches the theme. Not the other way around.
10. Writing every day is the best way to get around writer’s block.
11. The right length to a podcast — as long as it has to be; no shorter, no longer.

How to be a Better Podcaster

1. The practicalities of a good idea — timelessness, positioning, story-telling, be likable, build your brand, prepare for each episode by creating an outline, longevity, scalability, and specificity.
2. A good show isn’t the same as a good episode.
3. Building a USP/UVP is crucial.
4. Podcasts are an extension of you. They are conversations, not journalistic interviews.
5. Engage with your audience, and try to answer questions back.
6. Create content that matters to people you are trying to help.
7. Equipment matters. Learn about it. Make mistakes with it.
8. Silences are important. Pacing the conversation is essential.
9. Podcasts are audio first. Remember that.
10. Podcasts work because they consume only a single sense. Adding video means adding more senses.
11. The average listening time on Youtube is 5 minutes. The average listening time on podcast networks is 45–50 minutes.
12. Don’t research questions, research topics.

And that’s for Day 2 folks. I hope you people could take away a bit from the article, after all, that is the only purpose of this. In case you want to know how yesterday’s learnings went, here’s the link to the Day 1 blog.

Cheers!