A 5-Day Workshop by Mr.Prosenjit Ganguly or PJ

It was a workshop taken by none other than Mr.Prosenjit Ganguly.It was a five day affair at the centre where in 30 students had participated. This seminar was worth to be a part of. Not only the students took back technical knowledge with them but they were also enriched with professionalism,positive attitude which happens to be the main criteria behind being successful in any existing industry.

Before starting the workshop he had divided the batch into 11 groups which consisted of students from the DAE and AAASP course.They had 5 DAE groups and 6 AAASP groups.

Day 1- PJ started with an Introductory speech where in he mentioned about how to make good films. This was followed by films which were showed to students like Oktapody and Overtime. Thereafter he spoke about pitching, Criterias on pitching, the preparations made or taken for pitching.

We had students who pitched in to give their inputs on the concepts of pitching.
Finally he concluded by merging all inputs and modifying their pitching.

After discussing about pitching, PJ spoke about thumbnailing. He showed them how to thumbnail stories. He adviced the students to thumbnail their thoughts. Hence the first step of thumbnailing was done.

He also touched the basics of character definition.

Day 2- The second day started with Sketching sessions. According to him there should be 15 mins of sketching practice in every class.

Then he was the model himself for Gesture Sketching. He spoke about the importance of Gesture Sketching, the methods of Gesture Sketching.

He spoke about the Making of Oktapody, Pirates.

He made correction and modified the thumbnailing and character definition.

Day 3- The third day also started with sketching, followed by thumbnailing and character making.

PJ then discussed different form of Arts. He asked students to make treatment sheets.
He introduced stylization to the students which was followed by screening of 2D and 3D films.

All this was followed by initialization of storyboarding where in PJ himself rectified for students individually on the board.

Day 4- Sketching was the first thing they started on the fourth day which was followed by showing different stylization by him. He then discussed how to fix your own stylization. They were made to use raw materials to make their treatment sheet. After thumbnailing and character designing the students started with their storyboarding.

Day 5- On the fifth day we had the seminar on Film Making in Academy of Fine Arts after which those 30 students went back to the centre to finish their incomplete work.On the last day PJ gave his last bit of suggestions to the students to complete their films.
In all there were 11 films in progress by the students. The faculty members were asked to overview their works and once completed these films would be sent to Mr.Prosenjit Ganguly.

Hence this was what covered in the 5 day workshop that he had with the students.
We are confident that the students graduating from this workshop would definitely be enriched with knowledge different from the rest. We wish them the very best in future and hope their films come out in flying colours.

Seminar by the one and only Prosenjit Ganguly.

The Seminar on the 7th of August was one of its kind as we all know the main attraction of it was none other than Mr. Proshenjit Ganguli or rather PJ as he is better known. He is a man who basically needs no introduction-an independent film-maker, a former Director of Special Projects-The Toonz Animation Trivandrum and a National Institute of Design alumnus along with being a former member of faculty.

It was an honour and privilege to be able to host this seminar which was on Animation and Film Making taking a queue from the last seminar in St. Xavier’s Auditorium which turned out to be a grand success and we were equally confident that this seminar would also follow the same footsteps and so it did.

We had basically divided the Seminar into three parts. We declared the morning open by a warm welcome to the students followed by the first part of the event-the screening of the Chalochhobi I films. We had 8 films in all to be screened against which only one was awarded the best Viewers Choice Awards. The students were distributed voting forms and made to vote after all 8 films were screened. The maximum number of votes went to a film called Chalochhobi made by our DAE students Sanchari Chatterji and Somen Chatterjee. After the voting the students dropped their votes in the ballot box which in turn was emptied and the counting started.

During this period we moved on to our next and the main attraction of the seminar. Mr Proshenjit Ganguli took over. It was really a pleasure hearing him for the next 2 hrs at a stretch. There was pin drop silence in the hall. He had no materials, no laptop, and no slides to show to the students. He only had his knowledge, his experience to share with us. His Gift of The Gab alarmed the student’s majorly. He had his own style to get the right things across to the students. He spoke on different aspects on Film Making, What it takes to be a successful Film-Maker, the journey, the efforts, the hard-work, the love for the job.
The students were highly motivated, inspired by the whole seminar. They went back on a good note.

After his session, we moved on to the awards giving ceremony, where Mr A.D.Singh and Mr.Proshenjit Ganguli gave away the awards and certificates for the Chalochhobi I and the Rizwanur Rahman Creative Awards.

The event ended on a very positive note.

We take pride in being one of the leading Animation Institutes and we sincerely hope that our students will continue to excel in their chosen field of work and carry forward our flag always.