Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Small screen, big money
|
Micro-sitcoms, web-exclusive TV shows, episodes for your mobile phones and music videos to push album sales. The Internet is opening up a new window for viewers
|
TWO-MINUTE TREAT From the Internet micro-sitcom Ram & Ria and the band Prana, that exploited the Net
India’s first Internet micro-sitcom “Ram & Ria”, about the everyday quibbles of a married couple, got over one lakh hits within weeks of being uploaded on Rediff iShare. America’s cult TV series “Lost” decided
to kick off its much-awaited fourth season with a series of 13 exclusive ‘mobisodes’ that filled in the “Missing Pieces” of the story told so far.
A Malayalam rock band (Avial), a Tamil rapper (Yogi B) and even recently, a Tamil pop band called Prana have made a name for themselves by posting their music videos on Youtube and pushed album sales by offering their niche listeners free sample downloads. Obviously, the key to their success is that they’ve all tailor-made the content within the limitations of the medium. Each episode, ‘mobisode’ or ‘webisode’ is not longer than a music video. About two to three minutes each. Hence, it doesn’t take more than a few seconds to stream and view. What’s more, thanks to applications like Miro, episodes are downloadable and can be transferred for viewing on your mobile phone.
Conceived and produced by PixelKraft, “Ram & Ria” is based on the life of a typical South Indian man, his charming Mumbaikar wife and their endearing chemistry. Siddharth Kumar, creative director of “Ram & Ria”, says that the inspiration came from the dearth of contemporary Indian content online. “We strongly believe that there is great market for real content being produced for alternative media such as Internet and mobile,” he adds.
About 25 episodes of “Ram & Ria” can be viewed on www.ramandria.tv or on Rediff iShare. While it may be early days for popularity of the Internet sitcom to translate into revenue, the web-episode seems to be a potent tool for cross-media promotion for existing television shows. To take a cue from American television, web episodes are used to build excitement around existing shows, like “Lost’s” “Missing Pieces” and “The Office” spin-off “The Accountants” have demonstrated. Ask any “Lost” fan, and he would tell you how important it is not to miss watching any of the “Missing Pieces” before the start of Season Four.
Net material
Filmmaker Pradeep Kalipurayath was so fascinated with the idea of Malayalam rock that he insisted on shooting a video for the band Avial. “There was so much energy in their music that I instantly knew it was a genre of music that had great potential,” says Pradeep. “It was just the matter of bringing out that energy through visuals. And with Youtube, Nada Nada just spread like wild fire.”
The latest on the Internet bandwagon is Sindhu who with friends Naushad, Navin and Vijayagopal formed Prana, shot a music video themselves, put it up on Youtube, created a website (pranatheband.com) and sold copies of their album, offering a free sample of their songs.
“Our music is spontaneous and momentary. Like grains of sand that shift and change with the passing wind to form beautiful swirls. That is how we create our music incorporating many genres. To capture the essence of the band, we shot a video,” says Sindhu. “Within two days of putting up the video, we sold 20 albums.
SUDHISH KAMATH
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
