With efforts to propel the education sector of the AVGC industry in the country, concerned organisations are gearing up in an attempt to rake up the pitch. The numbers of upcoming industry aspirants are increasing consistently as the ecosystem in the country is coming out to be more promising by the day.
In an attempt to showcase what the industry holds ahead for the aspirants, ‘Aesthetics Youth Conclave’ was organised by Zee Learn in Mumbai, on 10 January. With students from across the country and various institutes, the hall of The Retreat at Madh was sprawling with enthusiasm.
After the initial lamp lighting ceremony, the stage was given over to online editor and colourist Shrinivas Rao. He began his session on how his journey has been, which spans over 25 years. He focused on how the visual effects on television screen have become a thing of practice in the past five years.
Talking over the education perspective, he shared the five ‘C’s which one should follow for being able to create stunning content for the screens. Rao followed it up with some behind the screen shots from the VFX heavy television show, Porus. Concluding his session with a demo on colour grading, he encouraged to students to follow their passion.
Next up was Zee5’s Milind Gadkar. Heading the content team at the aforementioned OTT platform he explained how pipeline for a show works in the digital era. He explained further that the M&E industry is poised to become a $305 trillion industry by 2022 and how it will create more opportunities.
Keeping his topic mostly fixed on storytelling, he stated that if the one cannot explain the story simply, they have not understood the story. Even though it’s the director’s job to tell the story, he said, filmmaking is a collaborative effort. He concluded talking about the slate of originals that Zee5 has to offer and how they plan to increase it in the coming years.
Essel Group group corporate strategy and Siti Network executive director Sidharth Balakrishna enthralled the students next with his presentation about new age technologies being used in the M&E sector. Ranging from AI to XR and geo targeted ads to robo journalism, he covered it all.
The rising use of innovative technology will change the entire landscape of how this ecosystem functions was the major take away from his session.
In a brief presentation, the Zee5 CRO Taranjeet Singh shared his journey from Outlook to BBC, Twitter to Zee5. He says, his motivation to switch positions and field of work depends on what the audience wants and hence the shift.
The next two presentations were from leading brands in the ecosystem. Adobe senior solutions consultant Guru Vaidya focused on how students can leverage the power of Adobe’s offerings to create cutting edge content seamlessly. With a further in-depth showcase of additional tools that the brand’s software provides, the presentation left the students with a bunch of enthusiastic questions, which Vaidya answered promptly.
MSI Global marketing personal Abhay Prabhu and Unity education account manager Jainareesh made a joint presentation. Jainareesh stressed on how the global usage of Unity for creating content has spiked up in the recent years, especially. The fragment with the explanation of real time rendering left the audience wanting get their hands on it. Prabhu’s presentation was in tandem with the former’s. The brand new Prestige edition of laptops from MSI pack a tremendous punch in the content creation ecosystem. As MSI is mainly known for making gaming hardware, it was a refreshing session on how the brand is testing other waters as a part of their portfolio. Throughout the session, the duo asked questions in regards to the brands and industry, the people answering correctly were presented with branded merchandise.
The final presentation of the day brought in Quidich co-founder Rahat Khulshreshtha. The company is a premiere in integrating augmented reality with the power of filming from drones. He narrated his experience on how he got into the field and what were the hurdles they had to pass through. With an absolutely interactive session, students had most of their queries about using a drone answered. The called the curtains to his presentation by giving a live demo of flying a drone inside the premises which left the audience amazed.
With the sessions being over, the swan song of the evening was the screening of films made by the participating students. All in all, the event was neatly orchestrated keeping the requirement of students in mind and seemingly left the students wanting more.