Is there anyone out there who doesn’t want to be in the movie business? Most likely everyone has thought about it or fantasized about it at one time or another simply because movies and TV are such a huge part of our culture. And most likely, those people will tell you that they think it’s only a dream or that it can’t rea lly be done unless you know someone who’s in the business already. Working in the film industry, to most people is an unachievable dream so they resign themselves to working behind a desk or in some other dreary occupation because they feel that it is a dream that can never be a reality.
Amrita Kalsi is an exception to that kind of thinking. She saw that same dream and she made it a reality. She didn’t know anyone in the business, yet she went full steam ahead and took the bull by the horns, so to speak (sorry for the mixed metaphors) and immersed herself in the study of everything that had to do with film and video and never doubted that she was on the right path to working in the entertainment industry.
A graduate from the highly selective Communications Program at Concordia University in Montreal with a minor in Human Rights, Kalsi has continuously attended top institutions around the world. She partook in a competitive exchange program at Sciences Po Paris, where she studied French Cinema, Print Media, along with Human Rights Law. And to top everything off, Amrita earned her MFA in Producing for Film & Television at the Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California as a Hollywood International Foreign Press Scholar. The Stark program is highly selective MFA program designed to train the next generation of Hollywood producers and creative executives, led by legendary chairman and producer, Larry Turman. Kalsi broke her way into her first gig in the entertainment industry with persistence, perseverance, and a whole lot of cold calling.
She has put all these skills to work at top entertainment companies such as Nickelodeon, Disney and Amazon Studios, where she worked on the Creative Development and Current Series Team for the Animation and Family department, which is producing the animated shows: The Legend of Vox Machina, Sausage Party: The Series (created by Seth Rogen), The Hospital, Invincible.
In addition to creative development, Kalsi used her producing skills on the Screen Producing team at Z frame, supporting production of visual graphics, animation, and archival footage for video playback on large scale LED panels on the Netflix series AMEND – a docuseries about the 14th Amendment, starring Will Smith. Presently, Amrita is working in the writer’s room on Sight Unseen.
Amrita is doing what most of us would give a great deal to do and she is just taking it all in stride. If you focus your mind on something and are willing to do the hard work, then there is nothing that can’t be achieved.
