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Learning from the master

Hemanth Kumar | February 15, 2012 | 0 Comments

Robert McKee came to India for the first time to conduct the famous ‘Story Seminar’ and left the participants spellbound. Postnoon learns about the experience

Robert McKee’s reputation precedes him by a huge margin. Aspiring screenwriters from across the globe have sought inspiration from his highly influential book Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting. His former students have won 36 Academy Awards and 134 Emmy Awards and some of the notable celebrities who took part in his ‘Story Seminars’ include big names like Geoffery Rush, Kirk Douglas, Peter Jackson, Paul Haggis and David Bowie to name a few. For the first time in his career, he came to India to conduct the seminar at Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad and more than 230 people, from various parts of the country, took part in this four-day seminar. Apart from aspiring directors and screenwriters, some celebrities from the Telugu film industry like Krish, Swathi, Srinivas Avasarala, Indraganti Mohan Krishna, Veeru Potla and a few others took part in the seminar.

A few days ago, Robert McKee had told the media, ‘Writing for Indian films is quite different from writing for Hollywood. And I am not here to teach people to make Hollywood films. While Indian cinema has the richness of human element, I will not attempt to change that spirit.” One of the participants of the seminar, Hussain Sha Kiran adds, “Robert McKee’s seminar was never about how to write a story. Instead, he concentrated more on the principles, which we could use to hook the audience on to the stories we want to narrate.” McKee’s seminar was filled with examples about films like Casablanca, Kramer Vs Kramer and A Wednesday and then he would analyse how the directors used various methodologies to make an impact. “He compares movies with music. Just like music has notes and beats, movies too have similar parts with respect to the shots. What he was trying to tell us was that every shot has to be sensible and connect with the next shot,” Hussain Sha Kiran adds. ‘Go with the logic’ was one of the key aspects, which McKee touched upon in his seminar. “Everything he spoke boiled down to how the story should flow,” he says.

Srinivas Avasarala, who has acted in films like Ashta Chemma and Mugguru, had first read Robert McKee’s book Story back in 2005 while doing his screenwriting diploma in UCLA. “It was the most important book I have ever read and I still refer to it quite often,” Srinivas says. He reveals that most part of the seminar was more or less the same; basically it was about what he had written in the book, but couple of sessions did help him in understanding the subtext behind the scenes. “After attending the seminar, I think I’ll rewrite a couple of screenplays that I have. It was an amazing experience,” Srinivas says.

Screenplays often deal with conflicts and what ordinary people do when they find themselves in extraordinary situations. “McKee often spoke about politics, philosophy and how complex human emotions are,” Hussain Sha Kiran reveals. The whole experience of learning from McKee has left several participants like Hussain Sha Kiran spellbound and it’ll be interesting to see if some of them try to implement the lessons they have learnt. After all, Indian cinema is more complicated in terms of structure compared to Hollywood movies, which usually follow a single genre.

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