One of the few shows that has received extreme responses in the recent times, be it good or bad, is the second season of Amazon Prime Video’s Breathe, featuring Abhishek Bachchan, Amit Sadh, Nithya Menen in significant roles. The show was directed and written by Mayank Sharma, who had also been a part of the first season. In response to a question in an interview about how did he manage coordination of four different writers for the second season, Mayank had an interesting answer to share.
“I think the secret to running a writer’s room seamlessly, is to ensure that everyone in the team is open to collaborating and respects each other’s opinions. Since you are creating a season with a run time of more that 500 minutes, it also becomes very important that you get all the writers on the same page as far as the pitch of the story and character arcs are concerned, more so when the content is deeply layered and complex. This is only possible through extensive discussions. We invested a lot of time to develop the multiple character arcs and the beats of the episodes, this for me is the backbone of the series,” he said.
Mayank felt that once this was done, getting into screenplay writing became more effective and gave them a lot of clarity, on the tone and the approach to the series everyone involved in the writer’s room. The writer-director is also working on a couple of other shows, of which details are still awaited.
