“HOW TO TELL STORIES” BY NADEEM BAIG. ONE-YEAR ONLINE FILM COURSE STARTED AT PNCA

PNCA has started an online one-year film course and Nadeem Baig joined the ongoing seminar class, taught by Dr. Fouzia, as a guest speaker. Baig is a multi-talented filmmaker who has worked as a director, producer, writer and has been a part of the film industry since 2009. While successful films like ‘Jawani Phir nei Aani’ and ‘Punjab Nahi Jaungi’ were given to the industry by Baig at a time of its revival, his drama serials were creating waves for Pakistanis around the world. Since the beginning Baig had an inclination towards comedies and wanted to create a sitcom after which the famous ‘family front’ was created. The passion of making comedies led him to create shows like ‘Azar ki Aye gi barat’ which was another hit for the audiences. After several successful drama serials, Baig turned towards making films and his latest ‘London nahi jaunga’ with Humayun Saeed is in the making. During the session Baig talked about where he started from “I was a student of science in college but it all changed when I ended up going to a live reading session. I looked at the fascinating shelf full of various books and the first book I picked up was about screenplay writing.” It all began from there and he started out as an editor after which his first creative project was to tell a story in one minute which was extremely challenging for him. Throughout the years he learnt that staying on the objective of your film and catching the heart of it is especially important it to impact your audience. The session was broadcasted live which allowed people from around the world to listen to Baig’s insights. There are about 19 students who belong to different parts of Pakistan and have come under one umbrella to learn filmmaking. The students got a chance to interact with someone who has worked in the industry for so long and they raised important questions to get more clarity of the production process. Baig identified that reading is the beginning of telling stories and really teaches you how to capture the audience’s attention. This coming together of talented students and mentors will be groundbreaking for the film industry of Pakistan.