The younger breed of filmmakers are betting big on the emergence of web series

Our worlds have started revolving around entertainment now. No breakfast, lunch, or dinner is complete without clicking on the button of a viral video. Karthik Subbaraj, Nalan Kumarasamy, and Balaji Mohan ushered in a new movement, where short filmmakers, who earned popularity via their bite-sized movies, went on to make successful feature films in Tamil cinema.

Karthik’s Pizza, Jigarthanda, and Iraivi brought packages of surprises, while Nalan wrapped dark humour in Soodhu Kavvum. Balaji, however, walked the road with tested genres such as romance and masala with his films (Kadhalil Sodhappuvadhu Yeppadi, Maari). After jumping bridges from short films to feature films, Balaji has jumped on to another bridge; this time with a series titled As I’m Suffering from Kadhal. A series made for web consumption alone is cattle of a different breed, as it requires the knowledge of making short films and the ability to think like a feature filmmaker.

Hotstar picked up Balaji’s series at the final-edit stage. He partnered with the streaming site, as he felt that it attracted different kinds of viewers. “I wanted it to be free content, so that it reaches out to a larger audience. Hotstar is something that people are very familiar with,” says Balaji. While Netflix and Amazon try to outdo each other by bringing in international films and series to our homes, Hotstar, on the other hand, shows its power with more ‘desi’ content.

Different genre

From the Telugu heartland, Raj Kandukuri, one of the producers of the National Award-winning rom-com Pelli Choopulu, is entering the web space by the end of this year, even though he supposes that it’s overcrowded already. He says “I’m thinking of making a series in the crime thriller genre; something like Narcos. The protagonist will be a middle-aged man. I’m going to write, direct, and produce the series. Each episode will be of 20 minutes duration.”

Raj’s admission that the web area is crowded is no joke; there are at least 20 web series in Telugu available on YouTube alone. Yet, a handful of them are watchable at best. In that case, how does one know whether the creator of original online content is making enough money in this environment? Rajiv Rajaram, the brain and the man behind Put Chutney’s videos, has a simple point, “For web content to make business sense, it has to either be backed by brands, or be on platforms such as Amazon/Netflix.”

Digital medium

Cutting across borders, the hunger for online intake has increased everywhere. The satirical video, Lucia Pawan has HFPS Disease, featuring Pawan Kumar, the indie-supremo of Kannada cinema, is a success. This signals that the viewership for the digital medium is on the rise in Karnataka as well. Pawan’s 2013 film, Lucia, unlocked a treasure chest for audiences and film makers. Here’s how he explains the major highlight of digital content: “In film making, you have very traditional ways of showcasing a film — the big screen is the most primary distribution form. But in web content, it’s democratic; it’s available 24/7 across the globe.”

Despite this factor, not everybody is equipped with the talent to make exclusive content for the web. The director of relationship-comedies and philosophical-dramas, Woody Allen, couldn’t live up to the expectations of his fans when he came out with the Amazon series, Crisis in Six Scenes, last year. Not all great filmmakers can make a great series, it looks like.