Mumbai: On a bright sunny day of 25 April, Indiantelevision.com’s event, The Content Hub, which took place at The Lalit, Mumbai saw the presence of many experts in the content space.
The fourth panel, which was moderated by Variety film trade journalist Naman Ramachandran on the topic – Creating Content: New Genres, New Stories & New Players. The panelists comprised of Jio Studios head originals Tejkarran Singh Bajaj, Applause Entertainment Ltd senior creative director Priya Jhavar, Banijay Asia business and content executive VP Mrinalini Jain, Victor Tango Entertainment founder director Vaibhav Modi, filmmaker and author Piyush Jha, Pocket Aces Dice Media studio head Vidyuth Bhandary.
The discussion kicked off with Ramachandran questioning the panel about short and long format contents, know-hows and trends of episodic shows and similar such stuff.
Bajaj said, “We’re tapping into regional literature, because that's where really good writing is happening and we are taking the film writers slash long form writers to write in long format. Binge watching or episodic, it's a completely different game. You just can't put five stops in between the story and make it into five episodes. So yes, we need to learn from literature but we also have to give wings to the regional writers to ensure that they write long format.”
Adding on to it, Bhandary said,” We did an extremely heartwarming show called Ghar Waapsi on Hotstar. It was based out of Indore. So the whole thing is that you need to get your writers from there, you need to get your crew from there. We’re doing a South Indian show called Chikoo. Again, the entire crew, writing actors, everyone's from there. So you have to make it authentic and luckily with Bombay, a lot of people from outside states are available here, or will have to bring them out here. Agreed with you, we have to get them authentic.”
Answering the question about dealing with the innovative practice of asking for a completely new unpublished story, Jha said, “You're right, in the past few years, there has been a kind of an approach of just acquiring the book and getting it adapted. But we tried to break that and we believe that authors, long form, they've got an expertise out there. And we try to just kind of mold their work to the screen where those breaks, etc, then, but I think they are also trying to get a new kind of form of show, which can push the envelope.”
Speaking about new forms and innovation, Modi said, “You can't change everything, but definitely have a clearly defined set of beliefs. We like to believe that if you have a voice as a storyteller, might as well make that voice count and address a few things that need addressing. The west has already started adapting something called cli-fi as a genre. So that's one thing, finding your voice and addressing some things that need to be addressed. So, mental health, and a lot of other issues that need to be spoken about. The other thing is how we like to look at ourselves, we've always been trained or told that fiction or entertainment is a mirror to who we are.”
Answering the question on approaching completely new ideas from people who are completely new themselves, Jhavar said, “At applause, we are actually honestly listening to stories and pitches from everybody. We're non discriminatory in that sense. We have so many Indias in India, we have the reach, the value and the reach of material is always going to stand out. I'm not entirely in agreement that we don't have good writers. I think we do.”
Speaking about innovation, Jain said, “ We're always looking to innovate. We're always looking for any sort of innovation we have, because we feel, we have the ability to do non scripted stuff, the ability to do documents, the ability to do scripted, any thing that we've remotely like, as a story or a concept, I will say, we try to see if there is if we can make it in either of the three ways available to us, but always looking for anything that is interesting and innovative.”
