How to be a success as a freelance production professional

SAAKSHA BHANDARY

Saaksha Bhandary (Commits Class of 2012), a production professional based in Mumbai, was most recently Associate Creative Director of the just-concluded reality TV show, I Can Do That, for Zee TV. She is possibly the youngest ever to be an ACD for such a big show.

I asked Saaksha to give us a lowdown on what it means to be a freelance production professional and elaborate on the responsibilities of an Associate Creative Director. Here is her piece:

Being an Associate Creative Director or Associate Creative Head means you, along with the Creative Director, are responsible for conceptualising and executing a show from start to finish — right from thinking of the basic idea of the show to finally working on it, putting it together, and delivering the “master” to the broadcaster.

When it comes to television shows and events, it means you are basically in charge of everything related to the show, be it thinking of the central theme or idea, the set design, the venue, the performers, the anchors, the on-stage and audience interactions, the light design, the costumes, the seating, the props, the scripts, the music, the acts, the choreography, the show flow or show progression, the edit pattern... in short nothing gets the green signal until the creative team approves it.

You are in complete charge of what the content of the show will be.  It's a lot of work and responsibility because one small mistake could have adverse effects on the show.

All this might seem quite daunting at first but the more shows you do the more efficient you become. I found that one of the most important qualities to have in order to be successful in this line of work is to be able to think on your feet. The Hindi television industry is not a big believer in “forward planning”. Everything happens, or, conversely, does not happen, at the very last minute and you need to be able to think of a solution immediately.

SAAKSHA BHANDARY WAS THE ASSOCIATE CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF I CAN DO THAT, WHICH WAS TELECAST ON ZEE TV.

If you are thinking about taking up this profession, here’s some serious advice:

• If you're planning to come to Mumbai to join this segment of the production industry, forget about having lots of time to socialise and relax! Say goodbye to most weekends.
• Don't play safe. If you want to get ahead in this field, playing safe isn't going to get you there. Take risks.
• Take this up only if job security is not your first priority. There have been stretches of time earlier on in my career when I have sat at home for months without work.
• Network, network, network! I wasn't too good at networking earlier. I would just come, do my work, and get out. But now I realise the importance of networking in this industry. It takes you a long way. 

Okay, I know I've made it look like a very difficult and scary field to work in... But I have come to love it, despite all the pressure and sleepless nights. When I finally see my show going on air it gives me a tremendous high to think that I have been part of creating something that lakhs of people in India and abroad will watch.

All I can say is, this is a very fulfilling job and I am fortunate to be among those people who can actually say “I love my job” and mean it. :)

IN APRIL-MAY 2011, SAAKSHA WAS ONE OF FOUR COMMITS STUDENTS WHO INTERNED WITH RED CHILLIES IN MUMBAI AND HELPED TO PRODUCE COKE STUDIO.

• ALSO READ: How to have a successful AVC-related internship

A kindred spirit! As my friends and students know, I, too, can't read only one book at a time

Here is a relevant excerpt from Jerry Pinto's column in the latest issue of The Week:

Now that it is the end of the year, I thought I should do an audit of how many books I am reading simultaneously. So I went through the house — not a difficult task to do in a small Mumbai flat — and listed every book of which I had read more than 20 per cent. When I was done, I found I was reading 30 books at the same time. This does not count Marcel Proust — I am in the middle of The Captive The Fugitive — which I have been reading four pages at a time for the last two years.

He is reading 30 books at the same time! I am not so bad, rather, good. According to my Goodreads feed (above), I am reading 10 books currently. (Actually, the number is 11 — two days ago I began reading Sarasvatichandra, by Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi. But the book is so new, it does not figure yet on Goodreads.)

Here you can read Jerry Pinto's column in its entirety: "Strange Encounters".

"Words. A child needs a forest of words to wander through, a sea of words to splash in. A child needs to be read to, and a child needs to read."

TWO EXCERPTS FROM A POWERFUL PIECE, "The Gift of Reading", by Frank Bruni, IN THE NEW YORK TIMES:

Words. A child needs a forest of words to wander through, a sea of words to splash in. A child needs to be read to, and a child needs to read.

Reading fuels the fires of intelligence and imagination, and if they don’t blaze well before elementary school, a child’s education — a child’s life — may be an endless game of catch-up.

“Kids who read more get better at reading, and because they are better at reading, it’s easier and more pleasurable so they read still more,” he [Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and the author of Raising Kids Who Read] said. “And kids who read well don’t just do better in English class — it helps them in math, science and every other class, too.”

I’d go even further. Reading tugs them outside of themselves, connecting them to a wider world and filling it with wonder. It’s more than fundamental. It’s transformative.

Read the article in its entirety here: "The Gift of Reading".

• ALSO READ: "Read, kids, read"

No, my dear young lady, contrary to what your parents have told you, journalists are not "fanning the flames"

On November 25, I received this message on Facebook:

• [REDACTED]
  

  
  

  All these reports pointing to increase in Hindu extremism. What is your take? My parents insist the media is fanning the flames but I can't believe it.
  
  MY RESPONSE:
  
• 

  11/30, 1:45pm

  Ramesh Prabhu
  

  
  

  Many people, when they refer to the "media", they are, I think, referring primarily to TV news channels.
  
  Take the Aamir Khan episode, for example. If you were watching our 24-hour news channels the day after his comments were reported, you would think this episode was the most important news of the day. But that is the nature of the beast, as Rajdeep Sardesai described it during his talk at our seminar a few years ago.
  
  There were no flames being fanned. It's just that the debates, which become especially raucous on Arnab Goswami's prime-time show, gave the impression that the whole country was talking about this incident.
  
  By way of contrast, take a look at how two leading newspapers reported that same Aamir news item (see photo below). These are the front pages of The Times of India and The Hindu, which I was reading when on holiday in Yercaud last week.
  
  
  

  

  
  
• 11/30, 1:49pm

  Ramesh Prabhu
  

  
  

  But, yes, there are problems and there are difficulties.
  
  Some of the issues that plague journalism today have existed for a long time, for example, the pressures brought upon editors and their staff by the owners.
  
  Some are new, like the MediaNet phenomenon introduced by The Times of India.
  
  Some challenges are specific to today — social media has helped to amplify many issues, I believe, because it's so easy now to "shout from the rooftop" and be heard by all your "friends" and "followers".
  
• 

  11/30, 1:50pm

  Ramesh Prabhu
  

  
  

  Good training is part of the problem — do go through this article I wrote some time ago for a Pune-based magazine: "Media education: From course structure to quality of students, the challenges are immense"

  
  

  
  

  

  THE READING ROOM: Media education: From course structure to quality of students, the challenges...

  
  
• Monday
• 11/30, 8:05pm

  [REDACTED]
  

  
  

  Thank you Ramesh sir for taking the time for an elaborate reply... Your reply puts a lot of things in perspective.
  
  A lot seems to have changed as far as Indian TV channels are concerned in the 10 years that I have been away. But again it's the same everywhere — the TV news in the States is very sensational too!
  I find myself on the other side of the Hindutva issue than the rest of my side of the family. And I get judged a lot but I guess that's par for the course!
  
  *****
  "Indian mainstream news media has a strong culture of protest"
  JUST TO GIVE MY READERS ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE, here are three points I have excerpted from a piece on the Aamir Khan episode published by The Hoot, a New Delhi-based site which was set up to scrutinise the media in India:
  
  First and foremost, Indian mainstream news media has a strong culture of protest, and we are lucky to have such a news media despite claims of creeping corporate control. The culture of protest is much stronger than what we see in western democracies....
  
  Second, the news culture in India suggests that any value-framing of good vs bad in a news story will privilege victims, and should. This is what we would expect from any news media that speaks truth to power....
  
  Three, despite this predisposition, most journalists try to be fair to all sides in political debate over policy....
  
  Read the article in its entirety here: "Aamir's 'alarm' and media bias".

Suspensive hyphenation — what it is, how to use it

1. As used in a headline in Mint on November 10, 2015:



2. As used in a story in The Week dated November 29, 2015:

• ALSO READ: Everything you always wanted to know about the usage of punctuation marks (but were afraid to ask)

This media student's answer to a question about "burglary, robbery, and theft" gives a whole new meaning to the word "misappropriate"

What is the difference between ‘burglary’, ‘robbery’, and ‘theft’?

(a) Burglary means forcible entry with intent to commit a crime.

(b) Robbery means stealing with force or threat of force.

(c) Theft means stealing without force or threat of force.

And then there is this:

Obviously, these are testing times for students... and teachers.

Even journalists seem to have trouble figuring out when to use "I" and when to use "me"

The other night, while reading the latest edition of the always interesting Mint Lounge, I came across this jarring sentence in the otherwise well-written column by Shoba Narayan:

My father walks down every day to visit my brother and I. 

Clearly, if the author's father was visiting only her, then she would not have written, "My father walks down every day to visit I."

It stands to reason therefore that the sentence should have read, "My father walks down every day to visit my brother and me."

I'm surprised no sub at Mint Lounge caught it.

Or, perhaps, I should not be surprised because I have heard this incorrect construction quite a few times when watching a TV show or a film, and even when listening to music. For example, there's a Cliff Richard song, whose title I can't remember now, that has a line ending with "you and I" when it should end with "you and me". It is possible, therefore, that this is a universal problem.

So, here, for the benefit of the confused souls out there, is a blog post from Merriam-Webster that explains, with examples, when to use "I" and when to use "me". Click here.

PS: I have another issue with this particular column. The strapline below the headline reads, "Why do we like poetry? And how do they get into our lives?" Surely that should read, "Why do we like poetry? And how does it get into our lives?"

Listen in as Rukmini Callimachi, the remarkable journalist who is tracking ISIS, talks about possibly the most difficult of media assignments

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI

How on earth does she do it? Rukmini Callimachi, who began her freelance career in New Delhi with Time magazine and who now covers ISIS for The New York Times, has written some striking stories in the past year or so. Here are just a few:

ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape

From Amateur to Ruthless Jihadist in France

The Horror Before the Beheadings

Before she joined The New York Times, Callimachi was working as the Senegal-based West Africa bureau chief for The Associated Press. Her AP stories were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in the international reporting category last year. Check out those stories here.

Earlier this year, Callimachi was interviewed by Aaron Lammer on the Longform Podcast. I have been listening with fascination to the first part of this two-part interview, which has become especially relevant in the aftermath of last week's Paris attacks. From figuring out how to deal with sources to pondering the journalist-terrorist relationship, from asking the tough questions to taking on the trolls on Twitter — Callimachi discusses the many issues that journalists have to grapple with when reporting on one of the biggest stories of this era.

Listen to the interview here:

• Part 1
• Part 2

A word of advice: To better appreciate and understand what Aaron Lammer and Rukmini Callimachi are talking about, it helps to be well-informed and well-read. Here are a couple of the topics that you may like to bone up on before putting on those headphones:

The conflict in Mali

The strife in Libya

And, of course, you should also read Callimachi's stories, at least the three I have highlighted above.

PS: Rukmini Callimachi, according to Wikipedia, left Romania with her mother and grandmother when the country was being run by a communist regime. Her name "Rukmini" is derived from her family's closeness to Rukmini Devi Arundale, founder of Kalakshetra in Chennai.

• ALSO READ: You can learn so much from listening to these fascinating podcasts

"The last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's way"

Some years ago, I read an eyeopener of a book titled Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl. I found it to be so inspirational I bought two copies for the Commits library. Today, while rearranging the books on the shelf in my cabin, I happened to pick it up again.

I remember being struck by one particular passage and I went hunting for it again:

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's way.

And here, in an excerpt from the preface, is Frankl's take on success and happiness:

And so it is both strange and remarkable to me that — among some dozens of books I have authored — precisely this one, which I had intended to be published anonymously so that it could never build up any reputation on the part of the author, did become a success. Again and again I therefore admonish my students:

"Don't aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run — in the long run, I say! — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it."

Here you can read the New York Times obituary of Viktor Frankl to learn more about the remarkable man and his little book that, at the time of his death in 1997, had been reprinted 73 times, translated into 24 languages, sold more than 10 million copies and was still being used as a text in high schools and universities: Psychiatrist of the Search for Meaning, Dies at 92.

• ALSO READ: There's more to life than being happy

How to use chat to initiate a refund from Amazon for an undelivered item

	Message From Customer Service

​Hello,

Here's a copy of the chat transcript you requested:

Initial Question: Re: My Amazon order #402-2752557-1749161

I was informed six days ago that this item had been returned to the fulfillment centre by Aramex. I have two issues here:

1. When will I get my refund?

2. Aramex is unreliable. If I remember right, this is the second or third time that the Aramex courier has said my address "cannot be located". Every other courier company has delivered to this address for many years now without any problems.

THE ITEM THAT ARAMEX FAILED TO DELIVER.

03:45 PM IST Sangeetha(Amazon): Hello, my name is Sangeetha. I'll certainly try to help regarding your concern.

03:45 PM IST Ramesh Prabhu: Thank you, Sangeetha.

03:46 PM IST Sangeetha: Thank you for providing the order details.
Let me check the details for you.

03:46 PM IST Ramesh Prabhu: Sure. Thanks.

03:47 PM IST Sangeetha: Thank you for being on hold.

03:48 PM IST Sangeetha: I'm sorry that your order is not delivered to you.
I've forwarded your complaint about the third party couriers to our shipping department--I know they'll want to hear about your experience. I'll also be sure to pass your message on to the appropriate people in our company

03:49 PM IST Ramesh Prabhu: Thank you.

03:49 PM IST Sangeetha: As your order is returning to seller I'll refund the amount to you right away.
Please be on hold let me process the refund for you.

03:49 PM IST Ramesh Prabhu: Okay.

03:51 PM IST Sangeetha: Thank you for being on hold.
You can see your refund requests here - [redacted]

03:53 PM IST Ramesh Prabhu: Right. I checked my bank account yesterday -- the refund had not been processed.

03:53 PM IST Sangeetha: I've processed the refund for you now.

03:54 PM IST Sangeetha: This is the confirmation that I've processed the refund for you now and it will be credited to your account in 2-4 business days.

03:54 PM IST Ramesh Prabhu: Oh okay. Thank you.

03:54 PM IST Sangeetha: As I've initiated the refund and your bank takes 2-4 business days to credit to your account.

03:55 PM IST Ramesh Prabhu: But shouldn't the refund process have been processed automatically without my having to contact Amazon?

03:56 PM IST Sangeetha: Generally the refund will be processed automatically once the order reaches the our fulfillment centre and as you are the valid customer I've initiated the refund as your order is not delivered.

03:57 PM IST Sangeetha: Please do not worry I've forwarded your query to the concern department and make sure this may not happen in future again.

03:57 PM IST Ramesh Prabhu: Okay. Thank you. You have been very helpful. I have to leave now, so goodbye.

03:58 PM IST Sangeetha: It's my pleasure to assist a valuable customer like you.

You're welcome. Is there anything else I may help you with today?

03:58 PM IST Ramesh Prabhu: No, nothing else. Have a nice day!

03:58 PM IST Sangeetha: ​T​hank you for contacting Amazon. We hope to see you again soon.
Have a great day ahead!

Please click on the “End chat” button at the upper right corner of this window.
Bye!

Thank you.
Amazon.in

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