Vision: B-Plan

It is important to define the vision of the genre/channel/films and also to differentiate between the various content categories and their objectives. The overall company/genre vision might be to increase the SQ (spiritual quotient) of audience in order to increase the GNH (gross national happiness) by making people focus more on the INSIDE so that they pull back from the material rat-race and thus decrease unnecessary tensions, problems and creation of sanskaras for themselves. Also focusing on improving one’s own self and moving in the direction of Satchidanand will make people stop focusing on flaws in the outside world unnecessarily. This will also cause decrease of attachments/bondages/maaya which is the cause of all sorrow.

However, we have to clearly define the content categories in terms of objectives as they might vary. For example, films on Paulo Coehlo’s novels might make for good soothing entertainment but may not have the same didactic effect as a program on CWG (Conversations with God – a humorous Bruce Almighty kind of novel) or satsang/gita/shastras/scriptures. Also depicting the biographies of giants like Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramhansa might provide a much better ‘road map’ to spiritual aspirants rather than books/movies which have a high SQ (spiritual quotient) but are not necessarily written by a realized soul. Here, speeches/books by the likes of Vivekananda/Paramhansa Yogananda might make much more sense. Infact, now that so much content is being produced on mythology (including many repetitions of Ramayana etc.), why not make biographies of realized souls?

Then again the real objectives of the content might not be the same as stated marketing objectives for the content, as no financier will put in money for philanthropic reasons, but for a high ROI (return on investment). However, there are a few new channels like Pragya which do seem to have a backing for non-profit reasons for at least a few years.

Now, in both, while defining the objectives for the channel/genre content and in defining it’s marketing strategy one has to clearly identify the target audience. While movies on Alchemist and even a comic CWG might attract a much larger chunk of the mass audience, satsang and biographies of realized souls will be subscribed to only be a select few sadhaks. Now ‘subscribe’ is the instrumental word here, as in the near future PPV(pay-per-view)/VOD(video-on-demand) might justify making content for audience in the long tail (a book by Chris Anderson suggesting that the last 80% of less popular content might bring in more revenues in a personalized digital distribution model, thus enabling finely sliced niche segments).

In fact, the whole genre may be targeted only at a certain segment of the long tail rather than the mass audience. The mass audience is anyways not paying for all the content they watch currently and choose it while surfing in a pretty indiscrete fashion. They mostly buy 24*7 channels (Rs. 50-100) for a month.

So we might be only aiming at a small discerning audience, which luckily for us might also be SEC AB having the necessary money to pay for what they choose. And they might readily pay Rs.300 per month for your limited content (and with their limited time) rather than dishing out Rs. 300 to a MSO where they are just loaded in a plethora on inane and mundane media.

In any case, CAS/DTH will enable people to choose their channels a ‘la carte’ (pay for each channel you want) rather than paying for the whole menu!

B-Plan for a new genre

Before I go on to define the vision for the new genre which needs to be initiated on the small and large screen, I would like to list out a few novels/books which can be converted into films/TV serials and thus give you an idea about what I am talking about:

1) All books by Paulo Coehlo - The Alchemist, 11 Minutes, The Witch of Portobello and all others.
2) Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
3) Books by Richard Bach - Jonathon Livingston Seagull, Illlusion and others.
4) Conversations with God 1,2,3 - Neale Donald Walsch
5) Biographies of Vivekananda, Paramhansa Yogananda, Ramakrishna Parahansa and other spiritual giants.

Before I go ahead, let me elaborate some concepts further:

1. Animation Channel/Segment: The phenomenal success of Hanuman, Krishna, Ganesha and other animated sequences in recent times has shown the potential to attract the ‘Cartoon Network’ generation. These young kids are fascinated by whatever is on television as long as it is animated. This ‘captive audience’ can be provided stories and folklores from Upnishads, Puranas and other scriptures which transmit Indian values to thee formative brains. In fact, presence of ‘Amar Chitra Katha’ provides a lot of ready made material to be converted to an animation channel/segment based on Indian values as soon as the necessary resources are mobilized for it.

2. Shastraath – A Talk Show: The Indian television space today faces a surfeit of ‘talk shows’ which move around a bush on social, political, economical and cultural issues. While such programs are necessary to answer certain essential questions, any individual (especially youth) face certain existential questions (which are at the core of all other superficial/material issues) for which there is no platform. These are some very basic questions which the scriptures like Upnishads and Srimad Bhagwat Gita take up in great detail, such as:

a) What is the goal of our lives ?

b) How is happiness achieved ?

c) Why we do get pain in our lives ?

d) Is there a God ?

e) Why does he give pain ?

f) Is there something wrong with the 'system'/us ?

g) Who should/will change it/us ?

h) How ?

Shastraath, a talk show, shall bring on one platform, spiritual giants, acharyas and gurus, on the one hand and worldy and so called ‘successful’ people on the other with these issues at the forefront to debate in the true ancient Indian tradition of ‘Shastraarth’ to find answers to queries raised by participants and audience. The audience shall judge the relative pros and cons of paths suggested by various panelists and how it has affected their lives and that of the society.

3. Spoof of ‘trash on Indian TV’: Give the enormous amount of trash being meted out on Indian television, there is an urgent need to spoof and parody television programs and media content which harms Indian values. For example, the famous ‘Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi’ series and all its subsequent sequels can be spoofed as ‘Kyunki Sauce Bhi Kami Tamatar Thi’ as a comic series to highlight the shallowness of such programs. Similarly, other media content can be spoofed and parodied to show the hollowness of such programs to Indian audience. In the US, Comedy Central has show swith Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert which take a major dig at discrepancies in US news space. A similar trend can be started through Pragya.

4. Integrating Spiritual Ideas from the Western World: While there is a plethora of content and stories about spiritual journeys in Indian literature and scriptures, the modern day Indian youth is more impressed by similar ideas expressed by western authors. Some such authors, such as Paulo Coehlo, Neil Donald Walsch and Richard Bach (Jonathon Livingston Seagull, Illlusion etc.) have written many bestsellesr which have a following of millions in India too. In fact, Paulo Coehlo’s most famous novel, ‘The Alchemist’, a wonderful and captivating story about the life/spiritual journey of a shepherd is being made into a motion picture by Warner Brothers. Walsch’s ‘Conversations with God’, a humorous and insightful book has the potential to be made into a TV series on the lines of the famous blockbuster, ‘Bruce Almighty’ (a major hit among youth given that it touched spiritual issues and was also comical). A short movie has already been made about the same book.

5. Matrix like movie/TV series on Upnishads: The famous English movie ‘Matrix’, a metaphysical quest about a character called ‘Neo’ takes a lot of references from Upnishads and the alst sequel also ends with a shloka from Upnishad, ‘Tamasoma Jyotirgamya…’. The Upnishads have a lot of concepts which given a good creative team, visualizers and animators can be scripted into beautiful stories for both the large and small screen. My research about similar movies made in US revealed that the presence of ‘spiritual issues’ along with ‘special effects’ to symbolize spiritual quests/adventures in motion pictures has resulted in some of the biggest hits of all time, such as ‘Lord of The Rings’ (Christian fable) and Matrix (Upnishads and Nietzsche’s philosophy).

6. Programs on spiritual giants of India: While a lot of TV programs have been made on political leaders or even mythological figures, programs on recent spiritual giants like Vivekananda, Paramhansa Yogananda, Raman Maharishi and other such names ned to be made in order to inspire youth to follow their footsteps. There is a large number of youth who cannot find heroes with characters strong enough to idolize.

7. Inside India (talk show): India today is fast aping the top-down capitalistic society in the US where all the power is vested in central organizations (private or public) in a few cities. This leads to monopolistic control over both businesses and administration. In US, a less than 10 conglomerates own around 60% of the wealth. In India too, emergence of Ambanis (Relaince) and other business houses which are horizontally and vertically integrated are capturing the businesses of small business houses in many industrial sectors. In addition, the British Raj legacy has completely wiped out the concept of a bottom-up ‘Gram Swaraj’ approach for administration (espoused by Gandhiji also) from the minds of the ruling intelligentsia.

A debate about these systemic anomalies and its implications on the resulting consumerist society is must and should involve not just those in the limelight but also those who are working outside the ‘recognized’ systems as NGOs or individuals to raise these issues.

8. Mall, Multiplex aur Multi-storey: A comic series/film highlighting the monotonous mundane life in cites where people live isolated in high rise building, flooding out on roads to crowd malls and multiplexes on weekends returning to their robotic lives for the rest of the week without any change. The futility of a top-down capitalistic society where the rat-race extracts all and people are driven by the need to outdo what their neighbors have rather than their own true needs.

I shall elaborate more on the vision and the objectives of this genre/channel/programs in the weeks to come. In the meanwhile I look forward to your comments about my ideas so far...

Life in a Metro

Birth.

About two decades of so called education which is today more a rat-race for learning tools to earn money rather than gain any true knowledge. Entering the rat race for about 40-50 years to earn money, at times selling your soul and then the obvious and unavoidable…..death !

In this non-stop, assembly line like transition from one end of the continuum to the other, relationships like parents, siblings, spouses and children and emotions like love, friendship and hatred, and, events like success and failure happen to us.

Whether or not we understand these dearest of relationships, the people we come across and claims to love, emotions, passions and events we encounter or the raison d'être of life itself is no more a concern in the rat-race for more, whether it be for money or material goods.

That joie de vivre is today nothing more than trinkets in malls and that we spend our lives running after something we will lose in less than a century along with the most precious of our gifts, LIFE itself,…is strangely enough not a concern for the PRAGMATIC and WORLDLY.

Where from we come, where to we go and why…the most logical questions a CEO of the biggest Fortune 500 may ask are not asked about the biggest projects of all…LIFE.

The reason for the brief event called LIFE…the reason for its joys and sorrows..the reason why we can never find what we are always REALLY after…that most elusive of all treasures…HAPPINESS…these are some questions we think of all our lives and never have time or opportunity to ask or ponder about...

This blog is an honest and creative endeavour to understand life and spread smiles on the faces of all those we rub our shoulders against by bringing along like minded people. This blog wishes to raise these questions on a platform which will bring on one stage …both believers and agnostics…men of God and men of the world…and a rare few who have bridged the divide to understand how LIFE ought to be truly LIVED.

The long term goal is to develop film scripts, TV serials and media entities which will espouse such ideas in an era of inane and mundane media.

This is a humble beginning in the internet era which has shown the power of ONE.

In the forthcoming blogs I will be discussing ideas for film scripts and TV serials, which I intend to grow into a movement with the sheer power of internet's bandwagon effect. In the future I also intend to include ads on this blog in order to start monetizing for the future endeavours.

So hop in and contribute if you too think out of the box and want a change for the better.