Internship at Doordarshan – Manoj from Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan New Delhi
It requires a lot of courage to step out of perfectly balanced life for the sake of following your dream. He decided to follow his passion and saw the real face of the media industry. He believes that it’s better to fail at something you love than to succeed at something that you hate.
Well I am the student of filmmaking, at the age of 26, I decided to leave my well hi-fi settled management job as I was the manager in a very good company but the dream of doing filmmaking always used to pinch me & I used to get stuck in the life somewhere at some part of the day where I used to feel, Am I doing right? Am I doing justice to my life? So suddenly I left everything & took admission in filmmaking course.
I worked hard during the study. I learned everything from lighting to the camera, from editing to direction. Cinematography, scripting, everything which a filmmaker should know. I read the whole history of cinema & all the future possibilities of cinema. The world cinema vs Indian Cinema. Different directors & their work. Spoke to a lot of artists during different film screenings. As a result when I finished the course I got the “Best Director Award” of the year.
My expectation rose to the sky, I thought now I should get some experience as assistant . So I decided to go Doordarshan. As I entered I got the worst ex of my life. Everything there was so lazy. No one likes to do work. no creativity, nothing about passion, no means of responsibilities they have. I took self-motivation & started visiting different sections of the Doordarshan from camera section to editing section, from graphics to recording room, from telecasting to filing room. Wherever I moved I found one thing common that all the position are used by old people who don’t want to work in different things, no innovation. Even they don’t want new comers. Secondly they all are earning very handsome amount of salary for no working. I seriously got to know why the standard of our national channel is very low in quality programs. I tried to spoke to a lot of producers to do some new programs then their reply was- why to do?
I almost cried to see that, the kind of aspiring student we are, who just want to get a small chance to do something extraordinary. We have sacrificed our jobs for our passion. A student like me is roaming in the campuses of Doordarshan & some other media houses where interns are used just to earn some money & to send some files from one floor to another. That’s it, nothing else we do there.
How you can expect the show like- CNN or AXN or BBC or National Geographies produce & we Indian just copy them. Every show & movie we see & very fond of to see on our Indian channel are copied from outside then why we are proud of being the largest movie producer industry owner in the world when we don’t even want to feed newcomers.
Sahi karte hai woh log jo ache institutes se padte hai & foreign chale jaaate hai- these are the words by a producer of Doordarshan. I seriously don’t know why I am writing all this here, but my experience here was hell. they just blame to interns . its not about the DD only. Its about every single media houses who are just running their self-motives.
Shame on the media industry, one more thing to add – they treat girls as a product to notch, to use. Seriously I was shocked to see this really happens in this industry as we used to see on sting operations in the news. Overall sorry friends for posting this, but i am so much fed up now that’s why when I see that Internshala is taking this awesome step for sharing our experiences, my fingers automatically started running on the keyboard. Thank you Internshala for this great movement. You are doing really noble work, we need more people like you.
At last, if anyone wants to join me in future then most welcome. I am working hard to produce some great cinema, I just want first entry into the world. If any can help then it will be highly appreciated.
Thank You,
Manoj Mehra,
manojmehra22@gmail.com
If Manoj’s experience motivates you, you can check the latest internships in Delhi and latest Media internships.
Editor’s note- Have you got an internship story to share? A chance to win cool Internshala T and other cash prizes by participating in Your Internship Story contest.
