Looking out of the window

Why? Simply because its fun and lets me live vicariously of my favourite fictional characters.  I got hooked on about a year  ago while going through my maniacal obsession phase with Roswell. The show was short lived, three seasons to be precise. All the potential angst, romance and babies which could have happened… Alas we’ll never know. But fans found a way of making sure all that did happen with fan fiction.

Thats what really fascinates me about fan fiction. The need to control, manipulate and and have a say in the lives of fictional characters that a fan loves and adores who are technically owned by big studios and publishing houses. It is a process of intervention that is both empowering and therapeutic at the same time, a way of charting different courses for situations and relationships  that have already played themselves out on screen or paper.

But mostly what i really love about fan fiction is that it is is a treasure house of good, witty  and soulful writing ( most of it anyways) based on characters that already have a richness and intimacy to them. Its a win win situation for most parts. Obviously, there is bad fan fiction as well , and I have come across more than my fair share of it. But some could really give the Writers’ Guild a run for its money. When I come across some stories, I can’t help thinking how well these would unravel on screen. Authors sometimes collaborate together to come up with virtual seasons with clearly outlined plots, time lines and cliff hangers.  Its amazing ,the amount of thought and energy they put into it.

Right now I am going through a maniacal obsession phase with Psych and James Roday . So understandably I am reading up a lot of Psych fan fics and I really wish show producer Steve Franks and the guys at USA would take a look at the gold mine of scripts that are out on Psych Fic, a fan fiction website.  I would kill to see some of the stuff being acted out on television. Perhaps if there were another writers’ strike I might just get my wish. Signing off on that hopeful note…

For The Hoot- www.thehoot.org

Purists may frown or splutter about the lost poetry of test cricket, while the IPL guys are laughing all the way to the bank. With Bollywood brand ambassadors, promotional tie-ins, Rs 100 tickets and prancing cheerleaders nobody is a loser and everybody has fun. The ton has come to town and it goes by the name of T20. For a country that loves its cricket and all that jazz, it doesn’t get better than this when fans can enjoy their game without mulling over every move as a make or break factor for patriotic vendetta.

However the thing about jingoistic nationalism is that though it is built upon a shallow foundation of inflammatory jargon and cliché slogans, it has a remarkable way of entrenching itself in our psyches and appealing to our emotions. Especially when it comes to cricket, where we have been fed for long on a diet of Team India’s glory campaigns for us to shirk it away as a national symbol and understand it in a new light. Brand builders and advertisers have the difficult job of unmaking their original creation, of casting old rivals as new friends and bringing back the regional nuances where they were once superseded as trivial in the pursuit of the gleaming cups of international series, of carving out new fan followings from the large amorphous crowds.

Na deshyudh na dharmyudh! Yeh hai cricket ka karmyudh- says the DLF-IPL promotional video. With a sweeping statement it discards the foreign status of the players from South Africa, New Zealand, Pakistan and Australia who are part of every IPL franchise. This is the first move it makes at dismantling national loyalties .All the teams except for IPL Delhi-Delhi Daredevils team have brought out promotional videos. Each of them appealing to a new fan following, the fan who loves his city or his state, or the fan who looks up to his favorite player. The Hoot takes a look at this videos and sees what they’ve got going for themselves.

The promotional video of the Rajasthan Royals-‘Halla Bol’ follows a constant theme of regional integration. The video begins with a sweeping vista of the Amer fort in Jaipur accompanied by the traditional war cries. It moves on to showcases the symbol of team’s logo into regional contexts and settings like kites, mehndi designs, buses and rangoli. Cutouts of the team members make appearances, jutting out of rickshaws and autos and on the back of scooters. Several cultural symbols find prominent displays like turbans, tilak, dhol etc. It is refreshing because it refrains from the use of gloss and glamour.

On the contrary, the Hyderabad Deccan Chargers’ video does not make any play on regional sentiments. It can be best described as a slow motion video of wild bulls in a stampede followed by a staccato appearance by some major team members at the end, it has little recall value as the length is too long for an ad and falls short of a proper song. What it does appear to be is a convincing ad for a wildlife safari package.

Mohali’s Kings XI Punjab Video could be safely described as being Preity Zinta and Yuvraj Singh centric. The theme song is sung by Daler Mehndi – “Panga na lo” (meaning don’t invite trouble). The video follows the journey of the ball, that Yuvraj has supposedly struck a six with, through Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal and Punjab.  It juxtaposes shots of traditional Punjabi icons such as the bhangra, Sikh truckers, mustard fields with scarecrows and wrestlers with highly manipulated shots of Preity, along with many back up dancers wearing lion masks, brandishing swords inside the auditorium. The video sequence does not follow logically and does not have a coherent structure.

The glamour quotient is high with the presence of Bollywood stars in all the other videos. While the use of some has been creative and appealing, some look simply forced. This is the case with the Royal Challengers video which stars Katrina Kaif as a rock star. The video makes a promising start with shots of the Karnataka Assembly and the team jerseys in the locker room, but soon loses steam. Kaif performs insipidly along with the infamous Washington Red Skins on a stage in the stadium and is interspersed with visuals of team members at a locker room meeting. Icon player for the team, Rahul Dravid is highlighted and even team owner Dr.Vijay Mallya makes an appearance. An interesting parallel fan video called ‘thakath’ that has been circulating on the net finds more favor with fans.

‘Go Gold- Be a Knight Rider’ announces  SRK’s Knight Riders Video “Korbo Lorbo Jeetbo!” with its glitzy studio–ramp setting is as Khan centered as anything featuring him is. The song flows much like a Bollywood item number with team colors Black and Gold everywhere on the set. Though the lyrics attempt to appeal to a regional sentiment, what essentially comes out is -These are SRK’s Boys. It’s a case of support the star than support the team. Other cultural-regional references are made in the video where Bengali dhotis, dancers etc make appearances. The problem with the video is that it packs in too many unconnected narratives and as a result the viewer doesn’t get a clear message.

Cinema’s other wonder boy, the Adonis himself, Hrithik Roshan, stars in the Mumbai Indians Video- “Ala re Ala“. The video begins with a boy asking Hrithik who an Indian is to which he dramatically replies “Indians are those whose feet are in the ground but whose heads are in the sky” Many Mumbaya references follow with visuals of traffic policemen, dabbawalas, taxi and auto drivers etc. Roshan in his usual style stumbles into a signature dance routine with the proud Mumbai Indians following him. The team’s icon player Sachin Tendulkar is represented through a hoarding.

Unlike other videos, in the Chennai Super Kings Video the cricketers sing the team song in Tamil and are shown playing cricket on the beaches and on the streets with a film poster as the background. It starts with a shot of the iconic Chennai Railway station. The song is fast paced, catchy and has a good recall value. It is also the shortest promotional video (30 seconds long). The official website claims that their players are “Fearless entertainers who play to win”. It has a shot of a typical aunty from Chennai with temples in the background. The interesting thing about the video is the use of the iconic player Dhoni. Stripped of his original regional identity Dhoni becomes a Tamilian. A Pepsi Ad even has him impersonating Rajni Kant.

There is probably not a high probability that any of the videos would go down in history or stay in anyone’s memory beyond the IPL season, however most of them are catchy and are able to successfully find recall value among people. They do succeed in putting IPL on our minds and increase its salability.

Whether the IPL teams have been successful in developing consistent fan followings and team loyalties remains to be seen but they have certainly changed the nature of cricket viewing in India, where cricket is no longer a melodramatic indicator of our country’s greatness, but rather an enjoyable summer recreation.

For The Hoot- www.thehoot.org

May madness has gripped the media again as the Cannes film festival opened on the 15^th.  As the beautiful descend upon the French Riveria, Shutter bugs strive to catch the elaborate hairdos and the designer gowns on the red carpet. With May comes the Indian media’s psychotic obsession with the presence of Indian stars at Cannes, in particular a certain Ms. Aishwarya Rai and her annual trysts with appropriate red carpet clothing (which to be fair she seems to have mastered by now). While God knows, we never tire of lengthy debates about Indian actors and their wardrobes with every designer worth his salt putting in his opinion; I suppose it is quite possible that we would be interested in some of the films they screen at Cannes too. The Hoot gives you a round up on some interesting blogs on the web that are talking about Cannes in a way that we never knew it could be done.

BBC News entertainment reporter Mark Savage’s online log about the festival provides a judicious blend of information on the film screenings and the red carpet buzz. He regularly updates the log sometimes two to three times a day. With news, gossip and video reviews, Mark’s writing is breezy and light without resorting to Paparazzi obnoxiousness. The reader gets a wholesome sense of the pulse of the festival. A parting line from his first post reads

‘If there’s a film you particularly want to read about, a star you’d like me to hassle, or any duty-free you want picked up at Nice airport, now is the time to get typing.’

Understandably, feedback is tremendous with readers asking about opinions on films, urging Mark to attend specific screenings and write about them. You can visit Mark’s log at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7396540.stm.

The film blog at Guardian is another excellent source of news and articles on Cannes. With Guardian staff, directors, critics, journalists and others contributing more than 45 entries on Cannes, there is plenty of good insightful writing on a number of subjects including the press crunch at the festival and the lack of British entries besides film reviews and spotlights on independent films. Readers might find the entries of Duane Hopkins, a first time director, who blogs about his experiences at Cannes of particular interest. In his first post ‘My Cannes: A wellspring of inspiration‘- he writes:

‘It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that were it not for Cannes, directors like myself would not get the chance to make the kind of films we are compelled to. Over the years the festival has championed new aesthetics and modes of cinema relentlessly. It serves to remind the cinema-going public that film-making is not the exclusive preserve of Hollywood.’

Also a treat are write-ups by Peter Bradshaw, Film critic for the Guardian. He talks about the line-up with the practiced finesse of an expert. Certainly one can look forward to more interesting articles from him. You can visit the film blog at http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/category/cannes/

Cinematical.com, a blogs about films run by a team of film enthusiasts have two of their writers in France reporting for the site. The site has news, photos and most importantly reviews of films. The news is not just about who is partying where but on the various business deals that are being made at the festival. The site typically feels like an enthusiast’s efforts but is full of interesting first hand information. The reviews are well written with an effort to be quite professional in style and format. You can visit the blog at http://www.cinematical.com/cinematical-at-cannes-2008/ .

Salon.com’s movie section- Beyond the multiplex by Andrew O’Hair is one of the best places for film reviews. Reporting from Cannes he writes with irreverence for the commercial nature of Cannes taking potshots at the Film fraternity. Commenting on the weather in his opening post, he writes

‘ Let’s assume that the palm trees, beachfront hotels bedecked with sponsor logos, cigar-smoking bald men with implausibly leggy companions and all the other accouterments of that deluxe-run-to-seed resort town are ready to play their assigned roles.

Actually, that bald “producer” making bad deals in three languages and his “supermodel” friend may have to leave their beach togs in the suitcase and retreat from the poolside bar. Right now the extended forecast calls for overcast skies and patches of rain for at least the first week in Cannes…’

You can visit the section at http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/ 

Reports from Matt Noller, whose at Cannes on a study abroad programme has the cynical young student perspective firmly in place. Describing himself as a ‘20-year-old atheist liberal living and studying film and journalism in Athens, Georgia’, Noller is reporting from Cannes for a collective blog which goes by the name-The House Next Door.On a UGA study at Cannes with a group of film students, Noller takes a very refreshing look at Cannes. His talking about being on a budget and eating at McDonald’s is decidedly different from the elite flavor that the festival is usually full of. You can visit Noller’s blog at http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/ .

Deepti Bharthur and Tenzin Paldon for The Hoot -www.thehoot.org

When three ex-Pay pal employees got together in 2005 and created a video-sharing website from their garage, they wouldn’t have dreamed  that they would be bought by Google for a whopping 1.65 billion dollars, have several country specific versions and be banned by a number of countries all within a period of two and a half years. It’s the kind of progress that makes you believe that the IT revolution actually exists.

On the 6th May 2008, an entry on the YouTube blog by Sakina Arsiwala read like this – “Describe something that unites magicians, entertainment entrepreneurs, science scholars, singers, media veterans, government officials and a whole lot more… We call it — drum roll — YouTube India“. YouTube India – http://in.youtube.com   has all the original videos from the Youtube global site www.youtube.com. The only difference being the “Indian Lens” that filters the content and shows the videos other people in India are watching on the video charts.

In its Indian avatar, a surprising number of videos on the website are pornographic and explicit in their title and content. Spirituality videos coexist with videos with explicit pornographic content in Youtube India. As a curious first time visitor, it’s a bolt out of the blue when a site that you love so much precisely for its clean nature turns all playboy on you. When contacted, a YouTube spokesperson said “In our Community Guidelines (www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines ) we clearly state that inappropriate material is not allowed on our site. If such content is uploaded in violation of the Guidelines, it is typically flagged by members of our community and promptly removed by our staff. We disable the accounts of repeat offenders. In addition to that, our reviewers mark some content as “restricted” when it deals with themes that are only appropriate for adults. Users under 18 cannot view restricted videos.”  In the Indian version of the website, however the kinks in quality control are definitely showing. One can only hope that they are overcome soon.

So what does YouTube India offer besides the pornography? Given the fact that one can’t really dictate the flow of user generated content, Google India has collaborated with several mainstream media agencies to have dedicated sections and high resolution videos running on the site. These include NDTV, Rajashree productions, Zoom etc. Google has also reached an understanding with the IITS where they can upload classroom lectures and e-learning videos on the site for free.  Apart from this, videos that are popular on the site include Bollywood video clips, patriotic videos, and IPL footage.

Youtube India gives a person a lot to think about, the first of many questions being, do we need an Indian version? Well that’s the interesting thing about the media; it successfully creates needs where there are none felt. The fact is that the site though hugely successful and popular is not exactly a money spinner for Google with the company putting down YouTube’s earnings as negligible in a regulatory filing. The Internet giant is therefore looking at better segmented markets for enhancing ad revenue, striking profitable partnerships with other content providers and paid services to start making the big bucks. This is where launching it in India; with its huge demographic of net-savvy people makes smart sense. Having said that, let’s not assume that Google is the archetype corporate demon that we all love to hate so much. It is widely known the costs of running YouTube are huge with its bandwidth expenditure alone amounting to $ 1 million a day.  With the increasing number of enthusiastic uploaders taking up more and more space, YouTube definitely has to be able to move beyond being a casual platform of sharing videos without becoming a promotional portal. If it should manage to achieve this balance, YouTube will go down in history as a quintessentially good idea, not one that got horribly garbled along the way.

Whether the average Indian surfer takes to YouTube India over the global version or remains completely indifferent either way, is solely dependent on how the site manages to provide and facilitate content and services apart from user contributions. We’ll just wait and watch and write the occasional opinion piece.

There are very few PR exercices  that do not make the public of the intended information feel so utterly uninformed. Big businesesses have always revelled in cultivating an air of aura around their workings and have perfected the art of tight-lipped ness. But in the era of open source and free access,classified is ‘uncool’ and it is no longer prudent to behave like the  FBI or the  KGB. So the execs are doing what everybody else seems  to – blogging.

When corp comm meets independent media, the results are quite interesting. According to market research, it was estimated that by the end of 2006 around 70 % of the large companies would have weblogs.More than 5% of the Fortune 500 companies blog externally. Today books are avilable on corporate blogging and coaching for writing business blogs are provided by websites which give advice on break-up of content and format.

The corporate blog as is the accorded terminology, is an online weblog to further organzational goals. It can be internal, for employees or external for the general public. External blogs are written by company staff, execs and even CEOs where their work experiences, new ideas and general anecdotes are published as posts on the company website.

Of course it is simplistic to assume that corporate blogging is a modicum of  truth or free opinion. What it is is personal, informal and up to date ,giving the reader a feeling of getting an insider view. Information which was hitherto considered privelaged is now shared in posts for anyone with an internet connection to read. New ideas, product designs and company activities are the main topics of blogging.  It takes little guessing to know that all of it is a brilliantly conceived PR mechanism , but for once, you don’t seem to mind and frankly, the casual  nature of blogging enabled communication works more of a charm than the glossiest press releases.

So which are the corporate blogs you should be reading. The top 15 corporate blogs ranked by Technocrati, an online blog search engine  as of May 2008 puts  the original cool kid of the corporate world, Google on the top at No 1. The Offcial Google Blog- Insights from Googlers into our products, technology and the Google culture has posts from Executives, Engineers, Web designers posting on the blog. There are also dedicated series like on online security. Apart from the official Google Blog, there are a number of other links to blogs by Google interests and also personal blogs by Google employees. The Google blog can be read at the following link.  http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Google is followed  followed by Adobe,Flickr and Face Book. Other companies like Dell, General Motors, Delta  and Boeing are on the list too. The complete list  of most searched corporate blogs can be found at http://mariosundar.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/top-15-corporate-blogs-ranked-may-2008/

Another place to look for corporate blogs is on the website of the bloggers choice awards. A blog voting site that is currently taking in nominations and votes for the best blogs in various categories, the number of pages of  nominations  for the best corporate blog is running upto a whopping 41. Readers will be able to find corporate blogs from record labels, phone companies, real estate companies and anything else that mght strike their fancy. The blogs are listed on http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/categories/3 .

If you are interested in knowing what some of the most powerful people in the world think, you might be interested in reading CEO blogs. Personal and official blogs of CEOs such as Adobe Head Honcho,  Kevin Lynch at  http://www.klynch.com/ or Jonathan Schwartz, President and  CEO of Sun Microsystems at http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/ are among some of the popular CEO blogs.

The scene in India is relatively low with a few companies like Infosys (www.infosysblogs.com/) and Tata (http://blog.tatainteractive.com/) having official blogs. It would be interesting to see how and whether corporate bloggng manages to catch on with the likes of Anil Ambani or Kishore Biyani. It is a definite way of reaching across to all the people who don’t read the pink papers.