ITV

Tag: Ravina Kohli

  • Indian Screenwriters’ Conference: Star Plus to stop 7-days-a-week soaps, says Gaurav Banerjee

    Indian Screenwriters’ Conference: Star Plus to stop 7-days-a-week soaps, says Gaurav Banerjee

    MUMBAI: What kind of content works on Hindi general entertainment channels? Content that reflects our society or the content that is simply driven by the ratings? Are TV producers making content for dumb audiences or content is making audiences dumb? Why we don’t talk about the economy or politics on TV shows? Why are we so much focused on saas-bahu sagas? And most importantly in today’s TV who is telling the story, a producer, writer, broadcaster or a programming team or a research team?

    The Film Writers’ Association had a session entitled Serial Killer during the ongoing fourth edition of the Indian Screenwriters Conference 2016 in Mumbai in a bid to get some answers.

    And to answer all these questions, you could not have had a better set of panelists than Star India deputy chief creative officer Gaurav Banerjee, Epic TV head of content Ravina Kohli, Balika Vadhu writer Purnendu Shekhar, Sasural Simar Ka and Saathiya writer Ved Raj and Sasural Genda Phool’s writer Zama Habib to get some answers.

    The session was moderated by Saurabh Tewari who runs a production house named after himself, but in earlier avatars had donned the hat of a fiction programmer when he worked at Colors and the now defunct Imagine TV.

    The highlight of the session was the admission on a public forum by by Gaurav on a public forum that Star Plus may have erred by starting the mad race of pursuing seven days of soap and drama every week from the five day formula earlier.

    He admitted: “I confess that it was a mistake because we reduced the ideation time of writers and of actors as well. We thought that we could manage the workload and it won’t affect the product that we deliver but unfortunately we were thinking of the TV industry as a pizza delivery service which was a big mistake.”

    He also that announced that from next month Star Plus would stop airing seven days a week programming.

    Tewari set the ball rolling for the session by appreciating the kind of work and content that both Star Plus and Epic were churning out. He spoke especially in reference to Epic TV as it had carved out its own identity. “TV ratings should not always be the only way to measure the content and the feel of channel,” he opined.

    “Epic, since its beginning had a particular DNA which was supposed to be followed and we tried to stick to that goal and it’s been a struggle,” expressed a hapless Kohli. “We have received great feedback, people appreciated our work but what we don’t have, are ratings.”

    Often it so happens that the content is strong and good but it fails to garner the desired ratings, hence the broadcaster has to yank it off.

    “We have a very fragmented audience, may be the data that we are getting is not addressing to that group. In Epic TV, I have not made anything that has been driven by TRPs,” explained Kohli.

    There are some channels that have a very niche audience, and they end up doing very well in that specific demographic. We also have shows on Doordarshan, which are doing well as they have a different set of audience, expressed Tewari.

    Getting to the crux of the matter, was Purnendu whose show Balika Vadhu was not only critically-acclaimed but has also done fabulously well commercially for Colors. “When I wrote Balika Vadhu, many said that it’s D Dish content and, on a satellite channel, rural backdrops will not work. But thanks to Ashwini (Yardi, the Colors programming head then) who had the courage to select the show,” shared Shekhar.

    Purnendu thanked Tewari (Tewari was at Colors for a period when Balika Vadhu was on air) and the entire channel team for giving him the freedom to work on the story as in most of the cases, the conflict between the writer and the broadcaster arises because both have different visions.

    Shekhar also expressed his agony that there were only two broadcasters present on the panel. “Only Gaurav and Ravina are representing the broadcaster side and both of them are doing good things with a vision. And the channels on which we see dumb content have no representation today,” he cried out.

    It’s really important to remember that when we talk about the TV content we shouldn’t forget that saas bahu dramas are the most important part of TV today, opined Raj as they are consumed by the masses. There has been a never ending debate on these shows but the truth is because of this, these are in demand.

    Contradicting Purnendu, Raj said: “We have all reached a conclusion that everything that has been happening on primetime is wrong. There is something good in this dumb content. TV is a mass medium and my first responsibility will be for them. I am not a police, teacher or judge and I am not even at that level from where my audiences look dumb to me.”

    Tewari then raised the question that quantity has subsumed quality over the past 10 years. From once a week, the channels have taken soaps and dramas to seven days a week. While this has meant money for all concerned, it is a dangerous trend. Though business is important and producers and broadcasters are in the business of creating content and if the content is suffering due to business pressures then how long will the business itself last? asked Tewari.

    Talking about the TV ratings, Gaurav elaborated: “Our measurement system is not that sophisticated. We have seen major changes in the TV industry when BARC came in and now we have to wait for next level of innovation in TV ratings. If every story is unique then the tool to measure that story should be different. You can’t compare Star Plus with Epic as both the channels serve a different kind of audience.”

    A lot has been said about the low quality of TV content but who is responsible for that, broadcaster, writer, producer or the audience, expressed Gaurav.

    “Saathiya is a very well-written show. There are two types of writing scientific and artificial. But I am totally against what Ved said that you give what audience demands. The producer and writer should create the market why do we follow the market. If you will give something new and different to them that has always worked and will work. Most producers don’t care about the story, all they want channel to approve to the show,” he added.

    Several varying perspectives ruled the well-moderated session. TV is essentially a two-way communication medium. However, innovation in TV content is essential was the conclusion as one needs to inject some amount of reality in the content that is churned out for the masses.

  • Indian Screenwriters’ Conference: Star Plus to stop 7-days-a-week soaps, says Gaurav Banerjee

    Indian Screenwriters’ Conference: Star Plus to stop 7-days-a-week soaps, says Gaurav Banerjee

    MUMBAI: What kind of content works on Hindi general entertainment channels? Content that reflects our society or the content that is simply driven by the ratings? Are TV producers making content for dumb audiences or content is making audiences dumb? Why we don’t talk about the economy or politics on TV shows? Why are we so much focused on saas-bahu sagas? And most importantly in today’s TV who is telling the story, a producer, writer, broadcaster or a programming team or a research team?

    The Film Writers’ Association had a session entitled Serial Killer during the ongoing fourth edition of the Indian Screenwriters Conference 2016 in Mumbai in a bid to get some answers.

    And to answer all these questions, you could not have had a better set of panelists than Star India deputy chief creative officer Gaurav Banerjee, Epic TV head of content Ravina Kohli, Balika Vadhu writer Purnendu Shekhar, Sasural Simar Ka and Saathiya writer Ved Raj and Sasural Genda Phool’s writer Zama Habib to get some answers.

    The session was moderated by Saurabh Tewari who runs a production house named after himself, but in earlier avatars had donned the hat of a fiction programmer when he worked at Colors and the now defunct Imagine TV.

    The highlight of the session was the admission on a public forum by by Gaurav on a public forum that Star Plus may have erred by starting the mad race of pursuing seven days of soap and drama every week from the five day formula earlier.

    He admitted: “I confess that it was a mistake because we reduced the ideation time of writers and of actors as well. We thought that we could manage the workload and it won’t affect the product that we deliver but unfortunately we were thinking of the TV industry as a pizza delivery service which was a big mistake.”

    He also that announced that from next month Star Plus would stop airing seven days a week programming.

    Tewari set the ball rolling for the session by appreciating the kind of work and content that both Star Plus and Epic were churning out. He spoke especially in reference to Epic TV as it had carved out its own identity. “TV ratings should not always be the only way to measure the content and the feel of channel,” he opined.

    “Epic, since its beginning had a particular DNA which was supposed to be followed and we tried to stick to that goal and it’s been a struggle,” expressed a hapless Kohli. “We have received great feedback, people appreciated our work but what we don’t have, are ratings.”

    Often it so happens that the content is strong and good but it fails to garner the desired ratings, hence the broadcaster has to yank it off.

    “We have a very fragmented audience, may be the data that we are getting is not addressing to that group. In Epic TV, I have not made anything that has been driven by TRPs,” explained Kohli.

    There are some channels that have a very niche audience, and they end up doing very well in that specific demographic. We also have shows on Doordarshan, which are doing well as they have a different set of audience, expressed Tewari.

    Getting to the crux of the matter, was Purnendu whose show Balika Vadhu was not only critically-acclaimed but has also done fabulously well commercially for Colors. “When I wrote Balika Vadhu, many said that it’s D Dish content and, on a satellite channel, rural backdrops will not work. But thanks to Ashwini (Yardi, the Colors programming head then) who had the courage to select the show,” shared Shekhar.

    Purnendu thanked Tewari (Tewari was at Colors for a period when Balika Vadhu was on air) and the entire channel team for giving him the freedom to work on the story as in most of the cases, the conflict between the writer and the broadcaster arises because both have different visions.

    Shekhar also expressed his agony that there were only two broadcasters present on the panel. “Only Gaurav and Ravina are representing the broadcaster side and both of them are doing good things with a vision. And the channels on which we see dumb content have no representation today,” he cried out.

    It’s really important to remember that when we talk about the TV content we shouldn’t forget that saas bahu dramas are the most important part of TV today, opined Raj as they are consumed by the masses. There has been a never ending debate on these shows but the truth is because of this, these are in demand.

    Contradicting Purnendu, Raj said: “We have all reached a conclusion that everything that has been happening on primetime is wrong. There is something good in this dumb content. TV is a mass medium and my first responsibility will be for them. I am not a police, teacher or judge and I am not even at that level from where my audiences look dumb to me.”

    Tewari then raised the question that quantity has subsumed quality over the past 10 years. From once a week, the channels have taken soaps and dramas to seven days a week. While this has meant money for all concerned, it is a dangerous trend. Though business is important and producers and broadcasters are in the business of creating content and if the content is suffering due to business pressures then how long will the business itself last? asked Tewari.

    Talking about the TV ratings, Gaurav elaborated: “Our measurement system is not that sophisticated. We have seen major changes in the TV industry when BARC came in and now we have to wait for next level of innovation in TV ratings. If every story is unique then the tool to measure that story should be different. You can’t compare Star Plus with Epic as both the channels serve a different kind of audience.”

    A lot has been said about the low quality of TV content but who is responsible for that, broadcaster, writer, producer or the audience, expressed Gaurav.

    “Saathiya is a very well-written show. There are two types of writing scientific and artificial. But I am totally against what Ved said that you give what audience demands. The producer and writer should create the market why do we follow the market. If you will give something new and different to them that has always worked and will work. Most producers don’t care about the story, all they want channel to approve to the show,” he added.

    Several varying perspectives ruled the well-moderated session. TV is essentially a two-way communication medium. However, innovation in TV content is essential was the conclusion as one needs to inject some amount of reality in the content that is churned out for the masses.

  • Rangrez Films and the fine art of making TV food shows

    Rangrez Films and the fine art of making TV food shows

    MUMBAI: Step into Ashraf Abbas’ and Nidhi Tuli’s Rangrez Films’ and foodlooking’s studio-floor-cum-offices in Morya Classic building in Mumbai’s Andheri suburb, and you can gauge that a lot of thought has been put into the design. The office strikes you because of its open space, the clean lines, old wooden furniture, single seater cubicles 10 feet above the floor, each housing an FCP edit suite.

    On another floor what greets you is an ingeniously designed kitchen set with a window leading outside to the leafy exterior, lights rigged from the ceiling, scores of cups, saucers, ladles, spoons, pots and kettles with exotic designs, cameras, lenses, dishes, and bowls – all immaculately placed.  

    You feel you have been transported to a studio in a European location, not in a crowded office building in a bustling Mumbai suburb.

    “I have designed every inch of this office and studio,” says Ashraf, with a shy-yet-full of-pride toothed grin. “I am a carpenter. I scoured Chor Bazar (the flea market) in Mumbai, picked up wood and made the office in the exact image I wanted. I am very keen about getting the detailing right.”

    Ashraf is not just a carpenter, both he and his wife are absolute foodies – a habit they developed early on their career when they spent their time backpacking across India filming documentaries. And they are also the two individuals behind the award-winning production house Rangrez Films.

    public://Rangrez office.jpg

    The husband and wife duo are simply consumed with the passion to create quality content, so much so that often times profits are sacrificed totally at the altar of creating world class content.

    “We focus on the right content and its right presentation. To give justice to the content we are creating is our responsibility,” says Nidhi.

    “We are almost always making very slender margins, sometimes none at all,” shrugs Ashraf, adding matter-of-factly. “I am pretty anal about getting it right, to the standards I have set.”

    (Even as they are loathe to reveal any turnover figures, estimates are that the company notches up double digit crore in revenue annually.)

    The duo set up Rangrez Films in 2008. But throughout their journey they have been quite fixated on a couple of key areas while filming: the look and the composition of each frame. “We do not create our products, keeping TV in mind, we make it for the subject,” points out Nidhi. Hence, they take a lot of pains to make their sets look beautiful while creating and lighting them and also behind the framing of each shot. Whether they are filming a food show or a docu-drama, each shot is discussed threadbare with the director of photography.

    “It has to look beautiful and has to have the wow factor,” says Ashraf. “It has to look like a feature film production.”

    And it is this razor sharp focus on making each scene look beautiful that makes Rangrez’s  food productions stand out.“Food has to look exquisite,” says Ashraf. “And everyone of our productions has to feel right.”

    Hence, when Epic Television CEO Mahesh Samat and his creative head Ravina Kohli were looking for a studio to produce a food show for their high on production values channel in 2013, who did they approach? Well, it was indeed Rangrez Films.

    Ashraf and Nidhi suggested that the show could be on the history of Indian food. The Epic and Rangrez teams brainstormed and came up with the idea that the show could include food as made in kitchens of Indian maharajas and erstwhile kings over the centuries.

    Thus was born one of the shows the duo takes deep pride in: Raja Rasoi aur Anya Kahaniya . Both Ashraf and Nidhi deeply researched different kinds of food that emerged from palace kitchens and they showcased them on the show with a narrative story telling of the entire journey.

    “It was the best way to treat the subject,” confesses Ashraf. “Indian royalty is the custodian of ancient culinary traditions. “

    Samat had informally and unintentionally given a pat on the back to Rangrez when he had told indiantelevision.com a couple of years ago that the channel was working with TV producers who were “master craftsmen.”

    In the same year, Samat and Ravina commissioned Asraf and Nidhi to produce a series on Indian spies titled Adrishya, with each episode documenting a single spy. 13 iconic Indian spies right from the times of the Mahabharata to post-independence India had their lives unravel on screen in an absorbing and well shot narrative.

    public://Art Room Production Still.jpg

    Epic once again commissioned Rangrez Films for another production entitled The Great Escape – about the greatest escapes ever made into India or by Indians.

    “For the first time on television we told the story of the escape of His Holiness the Dalai Lama from Tibet into India in 1959 and the brave story of Rezang La’s escape from Indo China was 1962. In many ways this is our biggest production, because these are all individual films and shot on a very large canvas,” exalt Ashraf and Nidhi.

    Ravina explains why she keeps going back to the duo. Says she: “The production quality is very high. Extremely dedicated and sincere team, they make no compromise on the content they create. Even though they exactly know what they want, they are very good collaborators. they understand what the channel wants and deliver a high quality production. Abbas and Nidhi are gifted with a visual sense.”

    Rangrez’s production slate, while not expansive like other GEC producers, is  nonetheless impressive. It has produced shows for Living Foodz, ZeeQ and Fox Life.  Among its ZeeQ  programmes figure Teenovation, Engineer This, and Art Room. For Teenovation, Ashraf and Nidhi and team scoured the length and breath of the rural heartlands to uncover unique inventions from young innovators.  And they showcased them on the show.

    Khaata Rahe Mera Dil is a travel and street food show that the company produced for FoodFood in 2011. Then, Vickypedia with chef Vickey Ratnani is a Living Foodz commission, while Serve it like Sarah was produced for FoxLife. Featuring Sarah Todd (a former Masterchef Australia contestan) it tracks her as she discovers her new home Goa through its food and people.

    Zee Entertainment Enterprises’ Subhadarshi Tripathi has also repeated them for several seasons of when he headed ZeeQ and is now working with them at Living Foodz and the Living Network where he is the chief content officer.  Says he: “The work quality of Rangrez is commendable. There are other people also who deliver quality, what stands out with them are other factors from commitment to delivery time, everything falls in place. The team is extremely hard working, that’s what gives them superiority.”

    Ashraf confesses that the obsession to make the creative product look good – not just good, actually gorgeous – comes courtesy the nine years he spent making ad films and TV commercials for demanding brands like Maruti Suzuki, Honda, Toyota, Gul Oil, and Reliance among many others in the mid-nineties. He worked as an executive producer, production designer, then as creative director for Mumbai-based Lock, Stock and Barrel Films.

    Even as Ashraf was honing the craft of TVC making, wife Nidhi was capturing subjects that interested her in documentaries and even being recognized for them. She helmed the much acclaimed documentary film, Ladies Special in 2003 which won the John Abraham National Award two years later, and the George Ragot love the train award at the Cine Rail Paris in 2009. Nidhi has other acclaimed films to her credit: Art In Exile, TIPA, Of Friendship films and swords,  The Saint of Chitrakoot, and The Saroj Khan Story (yes the choreographer). The last was awarded the best documentary featurette at the Fiji Film Festival in 2013.

    Ashraf points out that Nidhi is the key script and content person at Rangrez and works with all the writers and also directs key projects for the company. Rangrez has a core team of eight to 10 professionals, including producers, researchers and post producers. “Because of our documentary training our crew sizes have always been small,” says Ashraf.

    He has been a producer almost all his life. But he had a dalliance with being part of a broadcasting venture when chef-entrepreneur Sanjeev Kapoor’s office called him in early 2010.  “I met them and found out that they were going to launch a 24×7 food channel and they were looking for the core team,” he recollects with a smile. “Since I had no prior experience in broadcast, it took them nine meetings/interviews (with different people) to decide on me. I guess it was my pure passion for food and interest in the subject that got me selected.”

    He went on to join the channel, which was branded FoodFood as a creative director.  “What we managed to do at FoodFood and we take a lot of pride in, is that we gave a brand new look to instructional cooking shows,” he once again interjects. I designed kitchen sets which were realistic and inline with the personality of our chefs/cooks. Kitchens are  always an extension of the homemakers personality. And so I personally handpicked each and every item on every set we made. And that made all the difference, that year we won the award for the best cooking show and also the packaging of the channel was awarded. “

    Today, Ashraf and Nidhi are bringing all the cumulative experience to bear as they are going about building their own homegrown in-house funded venture foodlooking, which seeks to set up a food-oriented digital programming platform with some unique shows.

    The tagline of foodlooking is: learn, buy, cook.  “It will allow the viewer to immerse himself with the cooking experience like never before, providing him with instructional videos, recipes, and DIY guides,” explains Ashraf.  The tagline of foodlooking is: learn, buy, cook.

    Filming and testing has been going on for it for the past year – some 400 clips have been shot so far. Around 50 hours of content has been filmed in 4K and three shows are on the floors right now.  Some 250 to 300 hours of food content is expected to be canned.

    The idea according to Ashraf is to fund it through internal accruals for the next year before reaching out to outside investors or partners.  The launch date for foodlooking has been set for end this year.  

    Even as foodlooking is being cooked, Rangrez and he are continuing with their pitches for other shows to keep the home fires burning. Ashraf’s visits to markets such as MipCom and MipTV in Cannes over the past two years where he has had held meetings with other producers in other countries and global food television majors such as the Food Network has got them interested in working with him. A commission or a co-production is on the anvil, sooner, than later.

    public://FOODLooking Set.jpg

    Meanwhile back home, the kitchen in the foodlooking workplace more often than not turns into a playground. Ashraf, Nidhi and the team of 10 key professionals, including DOP Ankit Trived, production & operations head Akash Thakkar tinker around, experimenting and creating cuisines with expert chefs.  Which will then make it on to one of the programmes on television or onto their digital platform.  And as Ashraf says when “the office has free time, they end up baking a cake.”

  • Rangrez Films and the fine art of making TV food shows

    Rangrez Films and the fine art of making TV food shows

    MUMBAI: Step into Ashraf Abbas’ and Nidhi Tuli’s Rangrez Films’ and foodlooking’s studio-floor-cum-offices in Morya Classic building in Mumbai’s Andheri suburb, and you can gauge that a lot of thought has been put into the design. The office strikes you because of its open space, the clean lines, old wooden furniture, single seater cubicles 10 feet above the floor, each housing an FCP edit suite.

    On another floor what greets you is an ingeniously designed kitchen set with a window leading outside to the leafy exterior, lights rigged from the ceiling, scores of cups, saucers, ladles, spoons, pots and kettles with exotic designs, cameras, lenses, dishes, and bowls – all immaculately placed.  

    You feel you have been transported to a studio in a European location, not in a crowded office building in a bustling Mumbai suburb.

    “I have designed every inch of this office and studio,” says Ashraf, with a shy-yet-full of-pride toothed grin. “I am a carpenter. I scoured Chor Bazar (the flea market) in Mumbai, picked up wood and made the office in the exact image I wanted. I am very keen about getting the detailing right.”

    Ashraf is not just a carpenter, both he and his wife are absolute foodies – a habit they developed early on their career when they spent their time backpacking across India filming documentaries. And they are also the two individuals behind the award-winning production house Rangrez Films.

    public://Rangrez office.jpg

    The husband and wife duo are simply consumed with the passion to create quality content, so much so that often times profits are sacrificed totally at the altar of creating world class content.

    “We focus on the right content and its right presentation. To give justice to the content we are creating is our responsibility,” says Nidhi.

    “We are almost always making very slender margins, sometimes none at all,” shrugs Ashraf, adding matter-of-factly. “I am pretty anal about getting it right, to the standards I have set.”

    (Even as they are loathe to reveal any turnover figures, estimates are that the company notches up double digit crore in revenue annually.)

    The duo set up Rangrez Films in 2008. But throughout their journey they have been quite fixated on a couple of key areas while filming: the look and the composition of each frame. “We do not create our products, keeping TV in mind, we make it for the subject,” points out Nidhi. Hence, they take a lot of pains to make their sets look beautiful while creating and lighting them and also behind the framing of each shot. Whether they are filming a food show or a docu-drama, each shot is discussed threadbare with the director of photography.

    “It has to look beautiful and has to have the wow factor,” says Ashraf. “It has to look like a feature film production.”

    And it is this razor sharp focus on making each scene look beautiful that makes Rangrez’s  food productions stand out.“Food has to look exquisite,” says Ashraf. “And everyone of our productions has to feel right.”

    Hence, when Epic Television CEO Mahesh Samat and his creative head Ravina Kohli were looking for a studio to produce a food show for their high on production values channel in 2013, who did they approach? Well, it was indeed Rangrez Films.

    Ashraf and Nidhi suggested that the show could be on the history of Indian food. The Epic and Rangrez teams brainstormed and came up with the idea that the show could include food as made in kitchens of Indian maharajas and erstwhile kings over the centuries.

    Thus was born one of the shows the duo takes deep pride in: Raja Rasoi aur Anya Kahaniya . Both Ashraf and Nidhi deeply researched different kinds of food that emerged from palace kitchens and they showcased them on the show with a narrative story telling of the entire journey.

    “It was the best way to treat the subject,” confesses Ashraf. “Indian royalty is the custodian of ancient culinary traditions. “

    Samat had informally and unintentionally given a pat on the back to Rangrez when he had told indiantelevision.com a couple of years ago that the channel was working with TV producers who were “master craftsmen.”

    In the same year, Samat and Ravina commissioned Asraf and Nidhi to produce a series on Indian spies titled Adrishya, with each episode documenting a single spy. 13 iconic Indian spies right from the times of the Mahabharata to post-independence India had their lives unravel on screen in an absorbing and well shot narrative.

    public://Art Room Production Still.jpg

    Epic once again commissioned Rangrez Films for another production entitled The Great Escape – about the greatest escapes ever made into India or by Indians.

    “For the first time on television we told the story of the escape of His Holiness the Dalai Lama from Tibet into India in 1959 and the brave story of Rezang La’s escape from Indo China was 1962. In many ways this is our biggest production, because these are all individual films and shot on a very large canvas,” exalt Ashraf and Nidhi.

    Ravina explains why she keeps going back to the duo. Says she: “The production quality is very high. Extremely dedicated and sincere team, they make no compromise on the content they create. Even though they exactly know what they want, they are very good collaborators. they understand what the channel wants and deliver a high quality production. Abbas and Nidhi are gifted with a visual sense.”

    Rangrez’s production slate, while not expansive like other GEC producers, is  nonetheless impressive. It has produced shows for Living Foodz, ZeeQ and Fox Life.  Among its ZeeQ  programmes figure Teenovation, Engineer This, and Art Room. For Teenovation, Ashraf and Nidhi and team scoured the length and breath of the rural heartlands to uncover unique inventions from young innovators.  And they showcased them on the show.

    Khaata Rahe Mera Dil is a travel and street food show that the company produced for FoodFood in 2011. Then, Vickypedia with chef Vickey Ratnani is a Living Foodz commission, while Serve it like Sarah was produced for FoxLife. Featuring Sarah Todd (a former Masterchef Australia contestan) it tracks her as she discovers her new home Goa through its food and people.

    Zee Entertainment Enterprises’ Subhadarshi Tripathi has also repeated them for several seasons of when he headed ZeeQ and is now working with them at Living Foodz and the Living Network where he is the chief content officer.  Says he: “The work quality of Rangrez is commendable. There are other people also who deliver quality, what stands out with them are other factors from commitment to delivery time, everything falls in place. The team is extremely hard working, that’s what gives them superiority.”

    Ashraf confesses that the obsession to make the creative product look good – not just good, actually gorgeous – comes courtesy the nine years he spent making ad films and TV commercials for demanding brands like Maruti Suzuki, Honda, Toyota, Gul Oil, and Reliance among many others in the mid-nineties. He worked as an executive producer, production designer, then as creative director for Mumbai-based Lock, Stock and Barrel Films.

    Even as Ashraf was honing the craft of TVC making, wife Nidhi was capturing subjects that interested her in documentaries and even being recognized for them. She helmed the much acclaimed documentary film, Ladies Special in 2003 which won the John Abraham National Award two years later, and the George Ragot love the train award at the Cine Rail Paris in 2009. Nidhi has other acclaimed films to her credit: Art In Exile, TIPA, Of Friendship films and swords,  The Saint of Chitrakoot, and The Saroj Khan Story (yes the choreographer). The last was awarded the best documentary featurette at the Fiji Film Festival in 2013.

    Ashraf points out that Nidhi is the key script and content person at Rangrez and works with all the writers and also directs key projects for the company. Rangrez has a core team of eight to 10 professionals, including producers, researchers and post producers. “Because of our documentary training our crew sizes have always been small,” says Ashraf.

    He has been a producer almost all his life. But he had a dalliance with being part of a broadcasting venture when chef-entrepreneur Sanjeev Kapoor’s office called him in early 2010.  “I met them and found out that they were going to launch a 24×7 food channel and they were looking for the core team,” he recollects with a smile. “Since I had no prior experience in broadcast, it took them nine meetings/interviews (with different people) to decide on me. I guess it was my pure passion for food and interest in the subject that got me selected.”

    He went on to join the channel, which was branded FoodFood as a creative director.  “What we managed to do at FoodFood and we take a lot of pride in, is that we gave a brand new look to instructional cooking shows,” he once again interjects. I designed kitchen sets which were realistic and inline with the personality of our chefs/cooks. Kitchens are  always an extension of the homemakers personality. And so I personally handpicked each and every item on every set we made. And that made all the difference, that year we won the award for the best cooking show and also the packaging of the channel was awarded. “

    Today, Ashraf and Nidhi are bringing all the cumulative experience to bear as they are going about building their own homegrown in-house funded venture foodlooking, which seeks to set up a food-oriented digital programming platform with some unique shows.

    The tagline of foodlooking is: learn, buy, cook.  “It will allow the viewer to immerse himself with the cooking experience like never before, providing him with instructional videos, recipes, and DIY guides,” explains Ashraf.  The tagline of foodlooking is: learn, buy, cook.

    Filming and testing has been going on for it for the past year – some 400 clips have been shot so far. Around 50 hours of content has been filmed in 4K and three shows are on the floors right now.  Some 250 to 300 hours of food content is expected to be canned.

    The idea according to Ashraf is to fund it through internal accruals for the next year before reaching out to outside investors or partners.  The launch date for foodlooking has been set for end this year.  

    Even as foodlooking is being cooked, Rangrez and he are continuing with their pitches for other shows to keep the home fires burning. Ashraf’s visits to markets such as MipCom and MipTV in Cannes over the past two years where he has had held meetings with other producers in other countries and global food television majors such as the Food Network has got them interested in working with him. A commission or a co-production is on the anvil, sooner, than later.

    public://FOODLooking Set.jpg

    Meanwhile back home, the kitchen in the foodlooking workplace more often than not turns into a playground. Ashraf, Nidhi and the team of 10 key professionals, including DOP Ankit Trived, production & operations head Akash Thakkar tinker around, experimenting and creating cuisines with expert chefs.  Which will then make it on to one of the programmes on television or onto their digital platform.  And as Ashraf says when “the office has free time, they end up baking a cake.”

  • The Content Hub: Few breakaways from herd mentality

    The Content Hub: Few breakaways from herd mentality

     MUMBAI: The fiction show space in India is going through a changing scenario. While there is experimentation, several shows address similar themes. Discussing about the same at indiantelevision.com’s, ‘The Content Hub,’ were Hats Off Productions founder JD Majethia, Balaji Telefilms creative director Nivedita Basu, Epic Television Networks creative head Ravina Kohli, MTV programming head Vikas Gupta, writer and producer Ila Bedi Dutta and author and scriptwriter Gajra Kottary. The session was moderated by IPR Times Group head of content and operation Monisha Singh Katial.

    The discussion began with Katial questioning whether the fiction space was experiencing a lull period. Basu who joined Balaji after a sabbatical, said that the reason why she rejoined was because the fiction space was still evolving. However, Kottary felt that there is a lull in terms of the fact that everything looks the same.

     Kohli too agreed that there is a herd mentality, but Epic isn’t  competing in the GEC space, since it is a different channel. “Usually people evaluate shows by seeing if others will like it. We believe that if we can watch a show, we will go ahead with it rather than make it for an audience that we don’t even know,” she informed.

    Gupta said that due to age group differences, looking at a show from an age group perspective wasn’t easy. “I may be older but I am creating shows for the age group of 15 to 20. And research is showing us that 30 is the new 18,” he explained.

    Writers on board said that most of them have had unusual stories to tell, but broadcasters pick up shows depending on their research. “When a creative person comes up with a good show, which receives appreciation, but not the ratings, then the broadcaster pulls the plug on it. He loses conviction in experimenting and goes back to the tried and tested shows,” opined Majethia. He mentioned that Sarabhai vs Sarabhai which was telecast once a week never got the desired ratings and when Star One put it as a repeat daily, the ratings shot up.

     Through the discussion, Kohli added that it isn’t possible to sustain creativity day after day, which was agreed by Majethia, who said that the current shows are squeezing writers so much that they lose the creativity and passion that they began the show with.

    While Basu said that it was encouraging to see the type of content that Epic and MTV are creating, Balaji’s experience has been quite different. “Channels want success. We at Balaji have also tried doing mature shows such as Kehna Hai Kuch Mujhko but our experiments have failed miserably and so we were asked to go back to doing dailies,” she said.
     
    The issue with having a single episode a week shows is that the audience doesn’t usually come back like it does for a daily because it has been trained that way, said Majethia. According to him, the way to do this was to have Monday to Thursday shows and Friday to Sunday shows because it is easier to remember weekends than once a week.
     
    Gupta said that the audience looks forward to weekend shows being larger than life. He said that while experiments have happened such as MTV’s own show about a gay love story, not every viewer is ready. While earlier shows catered to urban settings, with increasing TV penetration shows have also gone backward.  He also highlighted a point saying, “There isn’t a lull in fiction, there is a lull in fiction success. Everyone tries something new in fiction almost every year.”

     Over the years, there has also been an increasing competition among GECs, unlike the limited channels earlier. Kottary also spoke about one of her shows which was broadcast on Zee TV in the early 2000s which was about a 34 year old lady doctor falling in love with a younger man. This according to her was much ahead of its time and yet worked for three years.

     Basu, who has also worked on the Indian adaptation of 24, said that though a lot of efforts went behind it, but it didn’t garner the expected ratings. She then proposed a question asking which of the two channels, Zindagi and Sony Pal that launched with different content,  could be called a success? Majethia to this said that Zindagi has spent little on buying the shows while Pal has invested heavily in producing original shows. “Zindagi is a success because it is a finance driven model,” he said.

    Basu with her bag full of ideas, said that channels have been typecast. So a comedy show will be sent to Sab, while a youth oriented show will be sent to MTV, to which Gupta said that this level of segmentation is healthy.

    Whether writers, producers and channels are really pushing the envelope was a question raised in the session, to which most people replied with a positive note, while Kottary said that she doesn’t feel they are really pushing it, but it was possible.

     

  • A sigh of relief for Epic

    A sigh of relief for Epic

    MUMBAI: The channel which plans to create a history finally breathed a sigh of relief when after almost a year’s wait has got a licence approval from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB).

     

    Mid-last year, Mahesh Samat, a former Disney MD, had announced his plan of his own venture Epic TV channel. Mahindra & Mahindra chairman Anand Mahindra had come on board as a major investor. And then, soon came the news that billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani too had joined the venture as the second investor venture capitalist to fund Samat’s Epic Television Networks.

     

    The channel offering segmented content to viewers specifically related to history, folklore and mythology was supposed to debut by August 2013.

     

    Samat had brought in former YRF TV head Ravina Kohli as programming head, apart from business head Aparna Pandey who was earlier associated with Big CBS channels as business head. “Our shows will be different from what India has been watching,” Samat had quoted then.

     

    Amongst the shows being developed is one based on a novel by Indu Sundaresan called The Twentieth Wife which tracks a young widow named Mehrunissa, daughter of Persian refugees and wife of an Afghan commander, who goes on to become the empress of the Mughal Empire under the name of Nur Jahan by getting married to emperor Jehangir.

     

    However, things didn’t progress as planned. The tedious and long procedure to get approvals from the MIB delayed its launch.

     

    “Yes, it comes as a big relief that finally we have got the licence from the MIB. However, we still have to get a nod from Wireless Planning & Coordination wing of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. So keeping the fingers crossed,” says Samat.

     

    The channel hopes to get the nod soon and hopes to launch by end of the year.

     

    There will be a few more announcements as well because the channel will make changes to the agencies representing it. Earlier, IContract, a part of Contract Advertising and the WPP Group, was appointed to manage the creative and brand building duties for the channel; while Madison Media was assigned the media buying and planning mandate. Similarly, MSLGroup, a specialty communications and engagement network, has been handling the channel’s Public Relations, while Jack in the Box Worldwide, the content-for-brands arm of Bang Bang Films, had been selected to manage all digital communication for EPIC.

     

    “MSLGroup no longer represents us and there might be a few more changes,” says Samat without revealing much.