NASSCOM Animation & Gaming India 2007: Session Wise Coverage
This year at NASSCOM 2007, a new chapter was written in the glorious pages of Indian Animation, that of encouraging and heralding original content creation in Indian Animation.
Participating in, and making History were all the jury members for the super pitch including Turner India�s Monica Tata, Hungama TV�s Zarina Mehta, Disney India�s Nachiket Pantvaidya, Percept Picture company�s Mahesh Ramanathan and Excel Home Videos� Muslim Kapasi.
Five of the six finalists watching Anirights� Kulkarni and Vincent Edwards make their Pitch
Even as the Jury’s attentively following
Also part of the History in the making were the super pitch winner Banzi, its creators from ICAT, the runners up (it was a tie for 2nd spot) Amit Anand from ettaminA for Mundoo Hunt and Atul Rao from Toonz Animation India for Maharaja Cowboy, and the other finalists including Anirights Infomedia�s Vincent Edwards and Ashish Kulkarni for Little Krishna, Pramod Sahoo for Tom Dick and Harry and Gaurav Jain for Aryaman.
Posterity they say has place for many.
All the 30 individuals and teams that sent their entries, the delegates that thronged to witness the super pitch as well as the organizers from NASSCOM as well as the other individuals who worked with them can also proudly be assured a place in Indian animation history.
And this is no exaggeration or dramatization of the significance of the event.
Let�s remember that India is a huge country and within our vast and young population, we have some of the finest creative minds with imaginative and story telling skills of the highest order. These need to be brought out to the fore and honed. The �open to all� nature of the super pitch where any individual / studio / institute with an idea could take part at absolutely no cost and have the chance of exposing their talent at the highest level directly to potential buyers, is definitely going to help unlock that potential.
Now to share about this year’s pitch.
In terms of projects the finalists for the maiden edition of the pitch included
- Banzi (ICAT)
- Mundoo Hunt (ettaminA)
- Maharaja Cowboy (Atul Rao)
- Little Krishna (Anirights Infomedia)
- Aryaman (Illusion Interactive)
- Tom Dick & Harry (Pramod Sahoo)
The host for the pitch Kahani World CEO Biren Ghose (who was one of the key people involved along with NASSCOM in creating the Super Pitch), An ardent believer in the potential of Indian originated IP, Ghose began the show by sharing the ground rules with the judges as well as the audience. The shows would be judged on the basis of creativity, business potential as well as the quality of the presentation. The content would have to bear relevance to an Indian / Asian audience.
5 minutes to make the pitch, 5 minutes for Q&A.
As the minutes passed by and the sweat gleamed on the participants� faces, one could sense the excitement that every contest brings with itself.
And for any one who has been following Indian animation for the past few years, watching people actually develop original content to such an extent, that it could be pitched, was wonderful.
To quote the jury, “Its been a great beginning. It is wonderful to see so many well developed projects rich with ideas, story telling and locally relevant characters. We are sure that this initiative is going to grow in the years to come and we are glad to be a part of this exercise”
The aesthetics and beauty of Little Krishna, which was presented with an AV playing along with Anirights Vincent Edwards explaining the show was wonderful. The Cinematography and staging looked extremely appealing and so were the character art and backgrounds. A mention here about the good background scores too.
Next up was Pramod Sahoo who pitched his show Tom Dick & Harry. The story is about three men who land on earth after staying in space for 1000 years and find everything changed. The series is about their struggle of survival and adaptation to the new earth.
Now a remarkable thing about Pramod�s pitch was that this gentleman had actually created a ready to produce 90 page bible complete with synopsis, character sketch, character art, look and feel development, story outline, episodic break downs as well as complete script and dialogue for each episode. A thorough job indeed!
On being asked by the jury, as to how long did it take to create the Bible for this original, spoof based comedy on International Stereotypes? Sahoo shared that it took him around 6 months of burning the mid night oil to create the Bible.
How�s that for inspiration?
Next Pitch Mundoo Hunt, by ettaminA�s Amit Anand. Now the remarkable thing about this pitch was that it had some really striking and richly developed character design as well as look and style. This of course was the visual part, but even the story about five students from the same university in New York, but from different cultures and an adventure that follows….
Amit was asked by the jury to explain the name â€?Mundoo Huntâ€?. “Mundoo” shared Amit, “Means high spirit in a popular lingo and dialect in the US”
Bravo!
ICAT�s Banzi was pitched next by Anjan C and Natarajan V. Now the best thing about Banzi was the animation DNA that it had as well as the extremely �Bang On� character development which one could immediately sense, would lend a great deal of scope for funny, witty dialogue even at the same time provide for drama and emotion. The local relevance of the characters, and the original story line too made the jury excited about the show. The Vivid colors used, helped to bring out the concept in a more definitive manner.
Toonz Animation India�s Atul Rao next pitched his concept �Maharaja Cowboy�. Witty, very global yet Indian context and stylized character design were some of the highlights of this pitch. Also the pitch as well as the development bore the hallmark of experience and expertise in terms of being very well thought through and the character having an instant appeal and connect. One could immediately imagine an L&M program around the protagonist. The sound track added to the style and character of the show in a big way too.
Pitching last, was Illusion Interactive Gaurav Jain. Aryaman was a typical super hero story. A well chosen theme considering that the â€?Super Heroesâ€? genre comes with a built-in audience. Also impressive was Jainâ€?s approach to the genre of Super Heroes where certain things were clich?© as they had to be and certain elements of innovation and originality balanced the whole show. Once again one could see big scope for L&M.
Within an hour, the assembly at the Super Pitch had witnessed some of the best originated pitches for animation content from India. It also gave a glimpse into the future which looks real promising.
The judges had given their verdict, the volunteers and organizers were sweating as they tabulated the results. Double checking, triple checking each sheet!
Meanwhile the esteemed jury members each of who are buyers of animated content and programming and are experts in the programming and content business shared some comments and feedback for the super pitch with the audience at large.
The feedback shared by the jury was that they expect pitches to have more clarity in terms of to which target audience the show is made for. Also creators could look at youth segment as most animation creators only think kids. The jury also shared that it would actually have wanted the pitching time to be doubled from 5 minutes to 10 minutes and that there ought to be more of the final animation shown too.
Click here to view the Super pitch Slideshow
Finally! The judging sheets had been tabulated, cross checked and triple checked.
And the winner was announced.
The Runners up position was a tie between Maharaja Cowboy and Mundoo Hunt.
The Grand winner was Banzi!
As the proceedings for the pitch concluded, NASSCOMâ€?s Colonel S V Ramachandran along with Biren Ghose shared that out of the 30 entries received by the super pitch, at least 10 entries were closely contesting each another for the final six shortlist. “While every contest has winners, in the case of the super pitch, everyone who had sent in an entry was a winner, for he/she participated in building the momentum for pushing original Indian animation content” shared Col. SV Ramachandran.
Way to go!