Streaming a dream debut

Manpriya Singh

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They’ve traded the proverbial rush of a first day first show, the charm of the 70 mm screen and the crowd experience of a theatre in lieu of a bigger audience, wider reach and unlimited shelf life. Resorting to streaming platforms in place of theatres has been a viable option, maybe the best under the circumstances, for these first time directors, but it hasn’t been easy.

Director Rajesh Krishnan had experienced the instant gratification that over-the-top platform brings with his web-series TVF Tripling. Yet, when it came to his debut film Lootcase, starring Kunal Khemu and Rasika Dugal, he was not too sure. “To tell you the truth, I was a bit apprehensive in the beginning because one is so used to seeing a film in a theatre. For me, a movie is a crowd experience,” he shares of his film that recently released on Disney+Hotstar.

“It’s a new experience, a bit of an enigma for a whole lot of people to actually see a feature film release on an OTT platform. And Lootcase was my first baby step,” he says. But then imagine getting an email from a grandmother in Cuba about how she loved the movie, despite the subtitles, and Krishnan finds himself smiling.

This is pretty much what happened with director Honey Trehan when his debut feature film, Raat Akeli Hai, hit Netflix last month. “I got to hear from this person staying in a city in Saudi Arabia. The unexpected response from remote corners of the world can be truly overwhelming,” he says. Even though certain portions of the film were specifically shot keeping theatre screens in mind, he feels it is a small ask. “OTT platform is an arrangement where content is the king and audience the queen. It has, thankfully, removed the reservation system for filmmakers.” A system wherein big-ticket films have a quota of the screens reserved for them by virtue of big stars or songs gone viral…

Filmmakers now have the assurance of their work reaching out to millions who can’t make it to a theatre, even though you’ll never know what it could have done at the box office level. “People have been asking me for invitations to private screenings, if organised; they want to catch it on the big screen,” adds Trehan.

Angrezi Medium and Gulabo Sitabo were among the first films to drop on OTT. Shoojit Sircar had voiced many a filmmaker’s dilemma when he said, “It wasn’t an easy decision but this is the future, the way forward.”

Casting director Mukesh Chhabra, who debuted as director with Dil Bechara, a film that the entire nation was invested in, is happy with the way things panned out eventually. “A film will always be made the same way, whether it is headed for a theatrical release or OTT platform. My aim was to tell a great story and the OTT experience has been great because we are living through a pandemic and safety is everyone’s utmost priority,” he says.

The marriage of two mediums will be the altered reality, which, as Krishnan puts it, has to be kept in mind when it comes to the future of filmmaking. “Ultimately, you need to work towards a product that flies at a theatrical level as well as the OTT level, because all said and done, that is where it will end up being for perpetuity. It’s an interesting skill that one needs to learn.”

But when it comes to his second film, would he like to skip the theatres again? “Most likely I would like to see it in a theatre. It’s been a childhood dream, from the time when we didn’t have any money and would catch films from the lower stalls. But that’s purely a director’s point of view because putting films in a theatre is a fairly expensive affair,” he says.