Celebrated actor Manisha Koirala (“Bombay,” “1942: A Love Story,” “Khamoshi”) and filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane (“Udaan,” “Trapped”) discussed the evolving landscape between theatrical and streaming platforms during a session on the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa, where Koirala also revealed plans to write down a comedy book about Nineteen Nineties and 2000s actresses adapting to Gen Z culture.
“For me as an actor, be it for the massive screen or web series, it’s the identical amount of labor that is required, sincerity needed. The preparation, mind frame, all the pieces is identical,” said Koirala, who recently starred in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s hit Netflix series “Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar.”
Motwane, who directed Prime Video’s “Jubilee” and Netflix’s “Sacred Games,” noted that streaming offers more creative flexibility. “The wonderful a part of streaming is that you just’re not stuck to saying with theatrical that okay, you’ve gotten to make a movie two to 2 and a half hours. You have got a story, you’ve gotten a peg – this could be a movie, this might be 10 episode hour-long episodes over five seasons, this might be 20 minute episodes.”
The filmmaker, whose debut feature “Udaan” screened at Cannes, revealed that “Sacred Games,” an adaptation of Vikram Chandra’s bestselling novel, served as a learning experience in series format. “Netflix said okay, here’s the book. We took the book and broke down the book. It took six months longer than it must have, but we figured it out. Understanding how this format works, what a cliffhanger is, why you wish a cliffhanger at the top when you want people to leap to the subsequent episode.”
Each agreed that streaming has opened more opportunities for diverse storytelling and roles for veteran actresses. “Due to the OTT [streaming] platforms, plus the audience also, even in cinema, the older actresses are doing meaty roles,” Koirala noted. “The space is there for them since the audience’s mind and heart has expanded.”
The filmmaker revealed that working in streaming has made him more efficient in feature filmmaking. “My learnings from ‘Sacred Games’ and ‘Jubilee’ actually helped me in features, because I can shoot much quicker now. We pulled off five pages a day. All of ‘Jubilee,’ which is 10 episodes, hour-long episodes, was shot in 90 days, including 10 lip sync songs.”
Motwane identified that India remains to be adapting to the showrunner format common in international series. “We still haven’t got used to the showrunner format on this country. We want to gestate this, we want for this to construct just a little bit more, and that’s the way you’ll get so much more recent directors coming.”
The rise of personal viewing on mobile devices has also impacted content consumption patterns in India, in keeping with Motwane. “India is a rustic that adopted web first through its phones, not through broadband. Most individuals’s first device of alternative is their phone, which makes it private viewing.”
The session was curated by festival director Shekhar Kapur.
