SIIEDC · UNIVERSITY OF JAMMU · JAMMU · 24–25 SEPTEMBER 2026 · WORKSHOP & HACKATHON WRAP
AI CINEMA WORKSHOP · BHARAT ARORA
One Day to Learn.
One Night to Make a Film.
Workshop. Hackathon. Screening. Awards. All in 24 hours.
| Course Director Bharat Arora | Host Director Prof. Alka Sharma Dean, Faculty of Business Studies & Director, SIIEDC |
| Workshop Date 24 September 2026 |
Hackathon
24 Sept (Evening) — 25 Sept, 2:00 PM |
| Venue SIIEDC, University of Jammu |
Organiser
Skill, Incubation, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Development Centre |
The format was designed to leave no room for hesitation. A full day of AI cinema training — theory, pipeline, hands-on direction — followed immediately by a hackathon that began the same evening. By 2:00 PM the next day, every team had to deliver a finished film. The films were screened, judged, and the best ones were awarded certificates on the spot.
Twenty-four hours. From knowing nothing about AI cinema to standing in a room watching your own film play on screen. That is what the Skill, Incubation, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Centre at the University of Jammu set out to prove was possible — and it was.
24 September — The Workshop.
The day opened with the philosophical foundation I bring to every programme: cinema grammar before AI tools. The biggest mistake a filmmaker can make with generative AI is to forget they are, first and foremost, a filmmaker. Shot language, motivated light, depth of field, camera movement — these are not abstract principles. They are the difference between an AI output that looks generated and one that looks directed.
The four-layer prompting framework followed: Scene, Shot, Frame, Output. Every participant understood, through live demonstration, that a prompt is a directorial brief — not a search query. The same scene generated twice — once vague, once precisely directed — made the argument better than any lecture could.
“Every weakness in your prompts is a gap in your cinematic vocabulary. The better you understand how light and lens work, the better you can direct an AI generator.”
— Bharat Arora · SIIEDC, University of Jammu · 24 September 2026
By evening, participants had covered the complete eight-step AI filmmaking pipeline — script, shot list, visual bible, generation, assembly, colour, sound, delivery. They had the tools. The hackathon would test whether they had the intention to use them.
24 September (Evening) — 25 September, 2:00 PM · The Hackathon.
24 September · Evening
Hackathon Begins
Teams locked their concepts immediately after the workshop. Brief fixed. Visual bible started. Generation began the same night — the pressure of a real deadline concentrating everything the day’s training had built.
25 September · Morning
Production Sprint
Generation, assembly, colour, sound — teams worked through the night and into the morning against their own shot boards. Continuity checks, reshoots, iteration. The full pipeline, compressed into hours.
25 September · 2:00 PM
Submission, Screening & Judging
All films submitted by 2:00 PM. Screened to the room. Judged. The best films were selected and their makers stood up to receive their certificates — in front of an audience that had watched them build the films from scratch.
The Certificate Ceremony.
The certificates were not handed out for attendance. They were earned — for a finished film, conceived, generated, assembled, and delivered under a genuine deadline. The format ensured that every certificate represented something real made by that person.
01 · Host & Organiser
Prof. Alka Sharma
Dean, Faculty of Business Studies & Director, SIIEDC · University of Jammu
Prof. Alka Sharma’s vision shaped this event from the ground up — bringing an AI cinema programme into the institutional framework of the University of Jammu’s SIIEDC. Her commitment to equipping students with future-ready creative skills made this format — workshop, hackathon, screening, and awards in a single 24-hour arc — not just possible, but exceptional.
What the Hackathon Proved.
The participants who produced the strongest work were not the most technically fluent. They were the ones with the clearest visual intention before they touched a single tool. This is the argument I have made at every FTII workshop, every masterclass — and here, compressed into twenty-four hours, it was proven again.
Jammu now has filmmakers who have made an AI film under deadline. That is not a small thing. It is a permanent change in what they believe they are capable of.
My gratitude to Prof. Alka Sharma and the entire SIIEDC team at the University of Jammu for designing a format that demanded real output — not just participation — and for the warmth with which they hosted every moment of this event.
“The future of cinema is directed.
Not just generated.”
— BHARAT ARORA · @TSTOP_PITCHERS
© 2026 BHARAT ARORA · AI CINEMA WORKSHOP & HACKATHON · SIIEDC, UNIVERSITY OF JAMMU