To face competition, you need to stay ahead of it: Suhail Abbasi

Suhail Abbasi, the creative head of Waah Waah Kya Baat Hai on SAB TV is doing a fabulous job handling the creative punches in the show. Bringing out the ‘spice’ from the ‘hasya kavitas’ and to make people enjoy them is a skill on its own, and that is what Suhail excels in. In a detailed interview for Tellychakkar.com’s ‘Behind the Lens’ section, Suhail talks about his journey so far. Tell us something about yourself? I did my graduation from JJ School of Arts and did my post graduation from IIT Bombay. I had a very keen interest in films and television, and joined Ketan Mehta as assistant director for Hero Hiralal, worked with Mukul Anand for Agneepath starring Amitabh Bachchan and Sai Paranjpye for Papeeha. After working for seven years in films, I shifted to Sony Entertainment Television and worked there for around 13 years as Head of Original Programming. Presently, I am freelancing with Neela Telefilms as Creative head in Waah Waah Kya Baat Hai on SAB TV. How has your journey been so far? My career has been a roller coaster ride, full of fascinating and amazing stuff happening around. Meeting new people, interacting with them and learning new things from them makes you elder every day. It is amazing that you get to travel the world and explore yourself in different avenues. What is your preference, fiction or non-fiction? I prefer non-fictional shows because you get to be a lot more creative on sets. Non-fictional shows are shorter as it gets over in 3 to 6 months time. For non-fictional shows you have to be on your toes and should have a quicker instinct to make changes on the spot. Fiction shows follow the same old format where you need to maintain the popularity on screen. In this case, you don’t get to explore much. How do you get ideas in your mind? For any creative idea one’s inspiration comes from real life characters. If you are creative enough, ideas come automatically to you. It is purely up to the individual and depends on how he understands and imbibes things. What are the barriers of Creativity in television? There are no barriers as such, you need to continuously monitor the way of implementation and execution of any show. Once you are on the sets you get to face numerous challenges, the important aspect is the way in which you face the challenges, and the decisions you take to avoid more confusion. Barriers occur only if the work is not done in a proper manner. Which involves more creativity, script or execution? Creativity primarily comes from the script because you work according to the script, and not according to the execution. What is your take on ‘Creativity is dead’ in daily soaps? It is not completely dead, but you can say that to maintain the success and popularity, daily soaps don’t prefer to go through any change because changes can bring about a set back. Daily shows go on and on for a long period and goes beyond originality. They try and stretch the basic nature of the show which makes it tedious. How do you decide on the creatives changes in Waah Waah Kya Baat Hai? We decide the creative angle based on the theme of a particular day. For example, the hasya kavitas need to be decided on the basis of the theme for the day. Poets come up with number of poetries but we need to see what exactly suits the occasion. How do you handle competition? Competition is always there; you just need to think ahead and keep yourself aware of every little change happening around. Be alert and try to evolve every single day. To face competition, you need to stay ahead of it. What advice would you like to give new aspiring creatives? Read and make yourself aware of everything happening around. Get yourself into literature because it helps you with more knowledge. Nowadays youngsters opt for short term courses and enter the field but they are not really aware of anything, even the basics. Try to understand different trends in television and films. What are your future plans? I have no preferred plans, but wish to direct my own film in the coming years. Presently I would love to stick to television only.