Mumbai has become more like an epicenter now for the film industry, specially for Northern India.
The decentralization of film shooting has started taking place in various regional centers more so, because of the transition of stories and inherent need of the content.
This process has accelerated more speedily in remote areas of B class towns where Covid restrictions were little lenient or normalcy had started coming back.
The prolonged strict restrictions in Mumbai region for a longer period of time was mounting pressures on many held up investments in incomplete or partly cooked shooting projects.
COVID -
Around 2016 OTTs have entered the Indian space and during 2020-22 the entire world was under the unprecedented catastrophe of Covid Pandemic, which restricted the people at home, as if locked in their own cage.
In such a holocaust like scenario Medical treatment Kept people alive and Entertainment helped them to get glued to their home TV screens to ease the authorities to do their jobs to contain this contagious disease. This is the period of distress when the Entertainment Industry has gone through a sea change.
OTTs -
In India, It has reincarnated itself in a new form called Webseries - A finite series of limited to 4-12 episodes normally and also with follow up seasons depending upon the responses, though it was not new for the west where it started from.
It has become more integral part of any house hold now, Albeit, at the cost of Film viewing in Cinema halls, which was anyway ruthlessly affected by the Bollywood Haters when even tiniest of incidents were under the lens of merciless scrutiny of Bollywood Haters after the suicide of Sushant Singh Rajput, Me Too movement, Drug fiasco and Nepotism debate.
Cherry on the cake was - Social and Digital Media, which has immensely helped to unite and form an opinion of the like-minded people, to fan the flame of hate to maximize it.
Certainly, it doesn't mean that TV soaps have died down or their loyal audiences have migrated to OTTs.
No, It's still there with its own daily dose of Love, sobbing, thrill, gimmicks and kitchen politics etc. with the same regular market dynamics but certainly this got affected too.
By all means, OTTs were new choco pie loaded with lots of good things every audience needed by now.
TECHNOLOGY, TARIFF AND CHANGES
In India, the Internet data package was the cheapest in the world. It has opened up a bumper opportunity for audiences from various strata of society to see the best of contents from any part of the world through OTTs, that too, at their home or mobile comfort. A wide range of ready audience now started their ride in this oceanic tide of entertainment.
OTTs have deep shelves, full of varieties of local and international contents, ready to be consumed at any day, time in place with lots of in-built value added services or facilities, which regular TV serials can't boast of. And this is what immensely clicked with the entertainment hungry and ready audiences of all ages across the society.
It has changed their tastes of entertainment with an abundance of options to choose from, either mobile or at their comfort zones, with their loved ones or alone, without stepping out of their place or wasting time on travelling and, it's all at the cheap cost.
The ever reducing cost of bigger smart tv sets in the local competitive electronic market, coupled with the cheapest internet packages, has tempted the foreign film makers too, for their share of pie from this huge untapped market of this Indian sub-continent.
Barring few films or programs, most of the local contents were getting repetitive; old styled and were being presented in obsolete fashion by now.
So, during lockdown people having more than enough time to watch these contents have been taken over by the OTTs and OTTs too by surprise.
ENTRY OF BIG FOREIGN STUDIOS
It has become a big challenge for Indian filmmakers now, to hold the audience's back with their old fashioned contents. Message was clear - Go Global in creative content with technical excellence at par, or shut your shop down.
Foreign Media and Entertainment companies had started their offices here in collaboration with local production houses to capitalize in this void.
The big shots of west like Paramount, 20th Century, Fox, Viacom 18 and Disney too, entered the Indian space for their presence.
However, they had already opened their offices here before this holocaust started.
Now, obviously the professionalism, work ethics and systems of these MNCs have significantly affected the work culture here.
Systems here too, updated as per their understanding, suitability and for the ease to execute magnum opus projects with expansive logistics and huge expenditures.
Our work culture started to match with the global standards.
And apart from this - Budget, Quality, Content, Language, Technical excellence and Culture too started getting a change over from these Investor's or Studios' point of view, probably as per their sensibilities as well.
Never seen or heard before kind of Foul language, are bold scenes and expletives also becoming part n parcel of these new contents and scripting which otherwise, we are not used to.
It started getting liked by many in the name of realism, novelty, globalization etc. and at the same time is being hated too by a large mass, both from its respective native patrons, finally igniting the debate of having some restrictions or regulations for OTTs too, or put them too under the purview of Govt's CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification).
Most of the things of this new regime are being liked but sometimes nudity, expletives and bold scenes are becoming the eyesores for many.
Audience from big cities were anyways being saturated and now new joinees from these B and C class towns are adding huge numbers to the new found audience base.
Hence for inclusiveness, catering to these new found audiences - their stories and likings became the need of the hour so that these new audiences also could relate to.
Subsequently, significant changes in our stories, characters, scenes, styles, languages and contents have fuelled some and entertained some.
Point to be noted here is that - Young cool type generation are mostly enjoying these changes and they are becoming the new loyal consumers of these adventurous OTTs, whereas a major chunk of the older brigades are enraged by this.
This explosion of change and expansion of content streamers fetched attention of policy makers' and resulted in getting subtle threats as well like -
"Behave yourself and practice self-regulation" kind of guidelines also in recent days by concerned Ministers.
Breach of this trust privilege till now Or else, it might give Political class to contemplate the idea of having the boundaries for OTTs too by the Govt's watchdog CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification).
COMPULSION OF CHANGE
Following the footsteps of western film makers here too, now mostly shootings started taking place at the real locations to capture the organic realism of the geographical backdrop of the story unless it's not feasible for logistical, administrative, climatic or any other non-avoidable reasons.
Like, a Jharkhand based story should not only ideally be shot in Jharkhand itself but has to hire local talents as well to capture nuances as closely as possible, instead of cheating the same in Mumbai on fake sets with locally available talents just to save some money and sticking to maker's comfort.
Rather, now it's been instructed to film makers to incorporate the local ingredients to get the required milieu as close as possible to the script.
And, yes... apparently it's quite evident in those shows which certainly have an edge on others.
To be continued….
The writer was born, brought up and graduated in Ranchi. He was initially trained during 81-86 under Ajai Malkani in 'Yuva Rangmanch', a reputed theatre group in Ranchi and later did his Post Graduate from National School of Drama New Delhi in Acting (88-91). He cleared NET (UGC) for fellowship for PhD and lectureship in Performing Arts in 1991 and also received Honorary Doctorate in performing arts. Jais is an ex-member, film development council of Jharkhand government and an actor in Mumbai for the last 30 years. He can be contacted at www.rajeshjais.com. The views expressed in the article are personal.