The horror-mystery period drama, ‘Athang’ has broken all stereotypes attached to Marathi OTT. The series is being hailed for its breathtaking cinematic brilliance and high production value. It surely made history with the quality of storytelling, surpassing expectations from regional OTT.
Athang’s producer, Santosh Kher sheds light on the ‘Athang’ phenomenon and the journey behind creating an epic web series. Creative Viibe Productions is a venture by Santosh Kher and acclaimed actress Tejaswini Pandit who is known for her amazing performances in films. The banner has been a presenter for a string of excellent content including Pondicherry, Chandramukhi, and coproducer for recently released film Sunny. Kher also has an exciting Gujrati project in the pipeline and is now planning to venture to create content in various other languages.
Q1. Every scene of ‘Athang’ is stunning. Since its trailer launch and now upon its release, there is much talk about the grandeur and scale. Was there a specific aim behind bringing cinema-like quality to the web?
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We believed in the story even though it has not been done before. For a long time, we were looking for a concept where viewers will sit up and take notice and ‘Athang’ became that project. Given the story, great care was taken that each aspect right from the look and feel to the dialogues to the way the scenes are shot, everything had to match the power of the story. No department worked in silos. Coming to cinematic quality, there is no differentiation done when it comes to a piece of content at our end. Each receives the treatment it deserves, irrespective of the platform. In fact, we as an industry need to stop looking at the web as a smaller platform than cinema. The idea is to bet on unique stories and work with the best resources and talent, and with ‘Athang’ we can proudly say it has paid off.
Q2. How do you balance profitability and creativity when it comes to a large scale project like Athang which is a period drama?
A good quality production does not mean we invest blindly and expand the scale without thought. In fact with creativity, we find ingenious solutions to make the most out of the budgets. That being said, we also pay attention to efficient management of resources and effective scheduling. With professionalism at our core, we are able to give creativity the platform and manage profitability even if the scale of the movie was big. Our business includes taking risks in things you believe in. If the ambition is to tell stellar stories, calculated risks need to be taken. Investing in run-of-the-mill content kills both creativity and will not see great numbers in the long run since audiences are saturated.
Q3. What is your vision for the regional content industry?
If language becomes a barrier in content production, the joy of telling stories is lost. We are looking at telling pan-India and global stories irrespective of the language. Certain stories are better expressed in a certain language. Regional and cultural nuances of the story also play a role in language selection. However, they do not dictate how we see production. We have done great work in Marathi content and are looking forward to experimenting with various pieces of content on cinema and the web. We soon have a Gujrati project coming up. However we are staying away from stereotypical stories, and when we work in any industry we look at raising the bar for that industry.
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