Resh Somauroo is the Scriptwriting for Film and TV 3rd year Programme leader. He has worked at Bournemouth University for over 7 years and continues to drive people to pursue their passion of scriptwriting. We got together to discuss his life at BU and the course itself.
What is your academic/professional background?
I started out at the BBC, an assistant in the Education Unit before moving to Programme Commissioning at Channel Four – amazing job, a lot of fun, heart of the channel, co-managing development/production slate along with directly overseeing our drama slate, plus in spare time script-edited for industry friends and also the UK Film Council on feature film development, I then moved onto LEGO as International Head of Development (Character & Story) managing international team of writers/creatives developing original stories/characters in partnership with the toy guys and the marketing/multiplatform guys (who marketed the properties and turned them into the computer game, website, trading cards, theme-park-ride, t-shirt, quilt-cover…you get the idea – of which we wrote all the scripts/copy/material for). Dream job – got to travel the world, and yes, free LEGO! Then left, had my own consultancy (same industry) until I came to Bournemouth University – which is a blast!
Why did you choose to work on the Scriptwriting course at Bournemouth University?
Sounds biased but it’s literally the best in the country – ask Skillset, as we’re the only undergraduate degree course that they gave their accreditation to due to the quality of the programme. Plus, having spent most of my career either in London or flying around the world (yes, hard life – pity me!) it’s nice to live 10mins up the road. Also, it’s that it’s based in an amazing Media School with other strong courses that provide many opportunities for the scriptwriters, as either writers or script-editors.
Resh Somauroo at Deep Dive 2016, Photographed by Olga Gunderich
What makes the Scriptwriting course unique compared to other media based courses at BU?
The obvious answer is they specialise in scripts and storytelling, be it short films (live-action or animation), creating original television shows or writing full-length feature films. Plus, as I mentioned, they have the opportunity to work with the other media students. As a course we also provide the Script Clinic service, providing editorial assistance for all media students on their projects with a narrative content.
What personal skills would you say prospective Scriptwriting students should have?
A love of storytelling, in all its forms and genres, pro-activeness , open mind, good negotiating skills– communicating why a project is a good idea makes a career – ah yes, and the most important ones of all – being able to stick to a word/page-limit and a deadline.
And finally, why is this course so beneficial to students?
It’s been designed with input and continual guidance from the Industry itself – as much as possible within a University, we try to mirror as many industry practices as we can, finally we truly believe that if students they take advantage of every opportunity that we present to them in conjunction with those that they proactively generate, then it’ll be incredibly difficult not to nail that job of their dreams.
