Music aficionado

Dilip Singh

spoke with

Shayan Italia

and

Farhad Vijay Arora.

What made you so confident that India and the Indian media would respond so spectacularly to your call? Did the numbers not come as a surprise?

(Shayan)

How come a 3-minute video took seven months to complete? And why in 8K ultra HD which requires large bandwidth and so few people in India can watch?

(Farhad)

Despite the success, few political, film or sport superstars responded to the #71for71challenge…

(Shayan)

Anything special about the number 71?

(Shayan)

Has the success of this low budget initiative thrown any pointers for the entertainment industry?

(Farhad)

Why did you not sing the words?

(Shayan)

It's the season when the air is thick with patriotic zeal. It's that time of the year when Indian artistes, known and unknown, add to the scores of interpretations of the Jana Gana Mana created over the years.This year was no exception: different renditions were "launched" to time with India's Independence Day. While two of them featured the usual roll of celebrities, one featured several celebrated vocalists and instrumentalists appearing in sequence in 'Jana Gana Mana-Madhya Pradesh', and as of 19 August, it has attracted nearly 1,42,000 views.This came on the heels of a rendition by sarod maestro Amjad Al Khan and his sons Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash, with support from Airtel and several celebrity endorsements. It has clocked 52,000 views.But upending both of these has been the piano rendition of a newcomer. Since it was uploaded on 29 July, the video directed by Farhad Vijay Arora and featuring Shayan Italia, broke the global record for the most-viewed single video of a national anthem on YouTube , beating the French anthem's 36 million views and the Indian anthem's 9 million views.On a whim, they set up the #71for71challenge for India to unite as one and give one million views for every year of India's 71 years of independence. Within 15 days of being uploaded, their campaign became the all-new trending rage on social media.The video top-trended on Twitter as India chose it over politics, Bollywood and cricket. #IWouldStandForThis has attracted a staggering 90 million YouTube views, and counting, adding 1 million views daily well past Independence Day! In a single upload, Shayan Italia has been ranked among the top 60 Indian YouTubers by Social Blade, a respected ranking site, above many respected media channels.It started with me, a pianist, wanting to play what I was hearing in my head. To make us all sing it in tune, the social conditioning has led the national anthem to be monotonic. I wanted to make it polymorphic, which is how an orchestra would play. It appears to have resonated with Indian audiences!If we had to showcase India's most beloved song, why not do it the best way and be the first? So we decided on 8K Ultra HD-the first India-made to be on YouTube- and that too in VFX. The recording, done in Dolby Atmos , the latest in cinema sound, will sound fabulous in a theatre. YouTube is the only platform in India that facilitates 8K streaming. And from India we are the only ones who have processed an 8K video. It took us a long time because, at that time, no studio in India had the capability to process 8K video! The post production was done on a remote server in a foreign studio!The #71For71Challenge was for real India, not the India of politicians and celebrities. But a few of them did share on Twitter: Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Jaaved Jaaferi, Meera Sanyal, Ayesha Shroff. All of it was voluntary.Had my mother been alive today she would have been 71. The digital piano was her parting gift before she succumbed to cancer. Independent India too would have seen 71 years!The project has taught us that state-of-art film production can be managed on a shoestring budget. We used 8K ultra HD, topmost sound quality. There was no distribution partner and no record label to distribute it. Yet we scored 90 million views in no time! We are expecting more views as our video is future ready and can be viewed on several platforms. With extreme broadband now set to explode in India, we see more independent and top quality entertainment material being created, promoted and distributed using novel tactics and a fresh, fearless approach.This initiative is born out of pure sentiment. I wanted to keep it universal; if you sing it, it becomes quintessentially Indian, but we have heard that before. I wanted to bring something for digital India to align with today's culture. It is that symbiosis which has allowed this version to truly transcend boundaries - see where it has gone!