Scripting The Future - 23/03/08

With almost everyone's exams done and dusted, WriteHereWriteNow organised a workshop to bring the members back into the fold.
Over a rather enjoyable lunch, Richa, Megha, Mon and I decided that script-writing would be a good idea for our next workshop. There were some minor changes after that, but it had little impact on the final product - a workshop on scriptwriting for advertisements. Mon and I were in charge of this one, solely because I was confident we could conduct it successfully.
Having had some experience studying advertisements and script-writing, Mon and I began our research and decided to include a comprehensive lecture on advertising, the essential elements of television advertising, the essential elements of a script and the classification of shots. We would end the session by dividing the members into groups and asking them to write an ad script for a product that we gave them.
After great thought and endless emails to-and-fro, we also decided to include a couple of television advertisements into our lecture so as to give our members a clear idea of what we wanted. For this particular aspect of our lecture, Mon turned to man's latest friend - Youtube! After exhaustive research, and much disappointment, Mon discovered four ads that we could show the members, time permitting.
The date was set for the 23rd of March, a Sunday and that too, the Holi/Easter weekend. We were unsure of the turnout, but were set for the session, nonetheless.
Despite having everything ready, we approached the day with trepidation. We reached Megha's aAkriti office just as the first of our members arrived, Reejh. A host of members arrived after that and were all graciously ushered upstairs by Megha. In total, we had 9 members.
The session started a little late, but it took off quite swiftly. Advertisements are everywhere and most of the members didn't waste time pointing out the ads that annoyed them the most.
The first lecture was far more interactive than we expected. All the members had questions, most of them extremely pertinent to the topic of discussion. Plenty of views were exchanged and all the essentials of television advertisements were dissected and trisected by our all-too-knowledgeable members.
After the first session was over, we played two advertisements for the members - a Gatsby men's perfume ad featuring a-ha from the 1980's, and the highly amusing Nokia N93 ad featuring Gary Oldman.
We then went on to the second part of our lecture and explained the different columns that the members would have to use in their scripts. We also explained the use of the columns and gave them some pointers on how to put forth their information as concisely and precisely as possible.
To explain the classification of the three different types of shots, we asked for a volunteer. Advay's hand was the first up and hence, we used him to classify Long shots, Medium shots and Close-ups.
The lecture over, we divided the members into three groups. The first group were given Cell Phones; the second, chocolate and the third, most begrudgingly accepted furniture.
It was a noisy half hour that ensued with the members asking various types of questions. Finally, when the parents came knocking, we bid them goodbye with a cool glass of squash and a request to put their scripts up on the site.