Mumbai wins the most awards at India’s First Digital Awards for web videos at India Film Project followed by winners from Delhi, Kolkatta , Karachi, Bangalore and others in various categories

Audience at the seventh edition of India Film Project poured in on the first day to witness film makers and content creators coming together to discuss art of content creation at the Asia’s largest Content Creation festival held in the city. Held across multiple arenas at the Nehru Centre, Indian Film Project was motioned by several personalities including Kunal Kapoor, Neha Dhupia, Dia Mirza, JD Majethia, Devdutt Pattanaik, Mukesh Chhabra along with content producers from various channels. TVF screened their latest comic webisodes “TVF inmates” releasing on 14th October – a hilarious take on goofy housemates and character named ”phugha” inviting his sister to stay over with them.

The first day concluded with Digital Awards for web videos announcing winners for 7 categories that include Arz e Pakistan (Food and Travel), House on the Clouds (Wedding and Celebrations), Blind Spot (Short Films), It’s not that simple (Web Series) , Amitabh Bachchan Unblushed from Culture Machine (Ads and Brand Films). In the animation category, a tie between “OK Jaanu” and “The Great Escape” and finally in Music videos was Khudi from Jungle Book Entertainment.

Kunal Kapoor in a conversation on “How to pitch your film?” expressed that as an actor he was “stuck in a box” in terms of the roles and that’s when he decided to take time off to change physically & re-package himself. Almost instantly he ended up with stronger characters like in Veeram and Rag Desh and so he believes that presentation is important along with capabilities to pull it off when pitching a story as a content writer. Along with him in conversation was Sagar Ballary, Film Director from the “Bheja Fry” fame felt the need for the content writing sensibilities to be put differently while presenting to producers, actors or directors whilst keeping a strong logline for generating interest while pitching.

Dia Mirza & Neha Dhupia at India Film Project

Dia Mirza & Neha Dhupia at India Film Project

In a conversation with Dia Mirza, Neha Dhupia and Shashank Khaitan on “Changing Dynamics of Bollywood.” Dia said that the audiences today are maturing and are not necessarily attracted to stereotypical movies for escapism and are looking to get sense of reality. Smaller movies like Newton have done well, such changes are due to sociology-political scenes that have been changing since past few years that are enabling such movies. “Consumer is King” according to Neha Dhupia, only few people are making such changes and there is a variety of audience catering to multiple content hence, numbers are only dipping overall. She said that the times have now got competitive as the audience back then could get suede away easily but today research is very important to not lapse off audience in this sea of content.

Everyone Struggles: A conversation on creative block with Devdutt Pattanaik, a modern day mythology writer urged the content creators to keep the spinal cord of their stories intact and write the start & the conclusion beforehand to avoid falling off-track. Speaking on Entertainment Brand Creation, Filtercopy has gained its popularity online through curating content in pointers which is known to them in real life situations.

Crowdfunding being the buzzword of the festival, Kunal Kapoor shared his co-founded app – Ketto and how crowd-sourced funds automatically create a buzz beforehand for your creative cause from people contributing doing free publicity, increasing fandom and initiating a PR machinery right from initial stages without having to return funds. In another workshop by Devaiah Bopanna from AIB put forth that digital content law in India is not understood as in the west who can get away with satirical comments and so it is important to be careful with our cultural sentiments.

In a session “The New Indian Audience” with Sattvik Mishra, CEO of Scoopwhoop saw that the younger audience only followed technology to reach content to be “cool” is the new-age kind of audience. There is going to be niche and always a certain audience says Tarsame Mittal of the TM Talent Management.

JD Majethia, actor & producer of Sarabhai v/s Sarabhai described the transcendence from Television to OTT platforms – Hoststar. They have not tempered with the brand and retained freshness owning it to their fans with new characters.

At a screening session, Nikhil Taneja touched down upon emotional quotient being the prime philosophy of the brands to sell their products. Several touching adverts from ICICI, LG and more were showcased as examples.