Just a minute

A behind-the-scenes still from Khurana’s film The Artist(e), which captures in under a minute the flurry of activity that ensues backstage as a theatre troupe gets ready for a performance

Amidst a flurry of activity, chaos and an unforeseen change of plans, a theatre troupe gets ready for a performance in theatre, film director and actor Akarsh Khurana's film The Artist(e). And it all takes place in under a minute, its hectic pace and quick shifts of focus an indication of the excitement that ensues backstage before actors appear before the audience. "I always wanted to make a short film about the 15 minutes before a show during which the three bells go off," says Khurana, who has run theatre company Akvarious Productions for 21 years, and was keen to set his tale in the world he knows so well. "It's so dramatic as you get closer to the show. It's like the hour of your reckoning is coming closer. There's a lot of fun that happens as well. I tried to compress it all into a frenetic one-minute tale."

Khurana along with filmmakers Nandita Das, Anand Gandhi and Gauri Shinde are part of Instagram's Cinema Reels: In the making campaign, about discovering a new skillset. On this partnership with Voot, Avinash Pant, Director-Marketing, Facebook India, says, "Our insights show that young people want to express themselves, but feel constrained by personal hesitation and the fear of judgement." The campaign then is a way to encourage them to explore their identity and celebrate their work-in-progress stories. "Through Cinema Reels, we have credible filmmakers such as Nandita Das and Akarsh Khurana bring alive stories focused on young people, with their own interpretation of expression that is in the making. Each of these stories is presented through a 60-second Reel, and is available to see on their respective Instagram accounts, Voot's Instagram account, with surrounding content like BTS available on the Voot app."

Akarsh Khurana, Anuj Gosalia and Avinash Pant

A three-week break in between shoots allowed Khurana to return to his theatre roots, using theatre actors to communicate his vision. "They get all the references immediately, and have been in situations like that. They understand the chaos and hilarity of it all," he says.

Having experimented with theatre performances on his Instagram during the lockdown, Khurana saw this as an opportunity to challenge himself further. "It's an ambitious film, trying to tell a lot in less than 60 seconds. The idea was to push myself and tell a story with a proper beginning, middle and end," says Khurana, while admitting that the film also needed to be simple enough to make an impact in 60 seconds. While the time constraint of making an entire film in just a minute was new, the vertical format of the Reels demanded innovation of another kind. "You are shooting the film vertically and that's just not a world view you are used to. I have spent about 18 years working on projects that we have shot in the horizontal format. Even in theatre, when you are watching or performing, you have the width to perform. So, all the blocking you do and everything you plan is with that latitude, but with the vertical format, the world is much smaller. You're seeing a lot less and you've got to rethink the way you tell the story."

The brand new format, given the host app's popularity and the length requirements set by Reels, has enabled increased visibility and traction for filmmakers keen to tell their stories in new ways. "The last Reel that I put out to promote my film Rashmi Rocket which is also the first Reel I ever put out has gotten around 18,000 views in a matter of two months, while this film in less than 48 hours has got 900,000 views. They're giving you one minute of their lives. It is the easiest form of consumption. You get encouraged by the fact that people are watching and responding," says Khurana. While admitting that factors like logistics and monetisation will eventually come into play for filmmakers, what is valuable he says is the fact that the format indulges anyone eager to create something beyond a dance video or a travelogue, harking back to a conversation from his 2018 film Karwaan which addressed the issue of increased accessibility and the resultant question around credibility that social media has inevitably thrown up. "I'm all for people being able to tell their stories in whatever medium is available to them," says the filmmaker.

Anuj Gosalia, founder and CEO, Terribly Tiny Tales, agrees. "The idea that films need to look like they have been shot professionally is not relevant anymore. People care more about focus and engagement, and if their one minute is really valued," says Gosalia, whose micro-fiction platform has experimented with various types of short content, including a series called Captures on IGTV, and animated one-minute narratives titled Moments which present instances like a conversation about a break-up with a best friend on a staircase while having chai or a smoke, or one in a bar or in a long distance relationship. Some of this has been animated, a response to COVID when shooting live action was difficult. Insights from such stories which resonated the most with people allowed their conversion then into live action. "These are ephemeral, so we have to account for the money we spend on a Reel, and ensure that they are worth the money spent," notes Gosalia, insisting that Reels are important to his platform as they are a way of speaking to TTT's community of 2.1 million people.

So are we seeing the dawn of a new era of high-quality content on Reels? Gosalia believes that the progression will be the same as it has been for other social media platforms. When YouTube started, he says, there were crude videos and people operated on the fundamental idea that there were no gatekeepers. But YouTubers are now making high end premium content with production quality and storytelling skills comparable to those of filmmakers, he observes, citing Bhuvan Bam's recent series Dhindora. "It was the same with TikTok which started with music and then evolved into an edutalk platform with people using it to disperse education. I'm not sure whether this will be filmmaking or give rise to its own beast but the principles remain the same."