The company turns one, a week from now. The applause, however, is yet to make itself heard. 37-year-old Anshumaan Swami, the CEO of Applause Entertainment, however, is in no hurry. The assurance that the accolades and bouquets will follow surrounds him like a halo. For the present, this former advertising professional is living a busy schedule, exacting his meticulously picked team to come up with the right script, the perfect event and backing the best project….
While feature films, regional and Hindi, have kept the Kumarmangalam Birla backed venture in the spotlight for the year gone by, Swami promises that the year ahead will have Applause devoted to television in a big way.
The projects have already been finalised, and the first quarter of the new fiscal should see a couple of shows seeing the light of day on leading mainstream channels. In a freewheeling interview with indiantelevision.com's Aparna Joshi, Swami gives the impression that the media industry is just getting ready for Applause….
Applause Entertainment's one year of existence has been a quiet one, except for the release of a regional feature film. For the team, how has the first year been? In the meanwhile, we also bought the rights of a movie from the UK called Anita and Me. We released the film here with the objective of announcing to the industry that we are here to do business. Our objective was to entrench ourselves well into this market which is very quicksandish in nature. You see, the TV sector is fairly far more organised than the feature film industry… there are a lot of people here who promise far more than what is actually delivered! We also had a lot of research to back us up. We have a strategy cell which had conducted a study for the last two to three years, which told us this (films and television) was a business avenue that we should try and explore. Essentially, Applause came into being with a focus on television and not too many films, but with the thought that if there was a good project coming, we would take it up. We started with Bollywood Tonight on Zee Cinema, which has been running for one year and four months. Most of the staff of 38 in this office is involved with Bollywood Tonight - it's something that keeps all of us together. Next came the spiritual programme Urja on Zee TV, as well as the Good Health Show every Sunday. |
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So, you have actually been making more TV shows than feature films, though the movies are the ones that are more apparent. Our Marathi programme on Alpha Marathi (Vaadalvaat), one on Vijay called Bhairavi are channel drivers. Purely keeping with the constitution of the company, I have tried to do some regional, some overseas work, but remember, we started from scratch. The first Hindi feature film project we took up was Dev. I essentially like to work with people who have a good corporate understanding. I met Manmohan Shetty of Adlabs, who was working on this project called Dev. I liked the idea of working with him, and after the initial project study we decided to take the plunge. With Sanjay Leela Bhansali it took six to eight months to decide that we would do Black. |
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But the first film to come out of the Applause stable has been a regional one. I can't say we have been very successful on this one, but we have already started work on the second film in Telugu, as now we have both a feel of the audience as well as the market. The Telugu film Tapana was a small budget film. We are now also exploring the possibility of getting into the Bengali market, purely for the love of cinema in that language. |
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Was that also the reason you launched in the Telugu market first? |
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So, what's on Applause's plate currently? Of course, I may not be able to do my proposed Bengali film pro-actively, there we will be talking to established as well as new directors. |
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What is the Applause vision for the next few years? What we target is two or three films per year. One regional film per year, definitely, subject to all the variables involved. |
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Will these be big budget or small budget films? |
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Do you also set timetables for the shooting, post production and ensure that the film is released within a set period? Budgets have to be controlled. We had an accident on the Black sets, but in two weeks' time, we were back on shoot, all because of planning and the man hours spent here and there to put it all in place. People may say corporates are cold and calculating. But before we start making the film, we even plan the marketing of the film so that it turns out a cohesive effort. |
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What are the innovative marketing techniques you plan to employ for your feature films? Govindji (Nihalani) is doing an out and out commercial film (Dev) for the first time, and more than me, it's he who will be doing the marketing of this film. I could tell you about the promotions of Black in some months' time, when the film is ready for release. |
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Applause started with the intention of getting into television. What's new on that front now? We are trying to understand their needs and how we can meet those…like The History Channel, for example. But that's a relatively slow process and I don't see us moving very fast on that one. We are also interested in the Gujarati television space, but we are also clear that we don't want to get into commissioned programmes, as on the Sun Network. |
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Is there also anything new you are trying out on television this year? We have a long way to go on television. What we are looking for is slots and solutions for various channels. We have been monitoring various channels - timings and TRPs of various shows. We are now trying to see if we can offer our suggestions and remedies for shows that could be taking a dip in ratings. |
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Are the broadcasters responding favourably to this innovative offer? |
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You have also spoken of getting into educational programming? |