Gen Z love on OTT, desi style

Ask any 20something what theyrsquore watching and theyrsquoll rattle off a string of foreignsounding words perplexing if one doesnrsquot know the latest Korean drama in town Itrsquos not just KdramasmdashGen Zs love watching Cdramas short for Chinese dramas and Thai dramas as wellBut therersquos a new contender on the horizon closer home Digital video and OTT platforms have been in the game for a while Some of these platforms like FilterCopy and Dice Media started off with snappy Instagram and YouTube content but eventually made the shift into producing web series with their own cohorts of influencers and social media stars The trend of these web series by and large is geared towards the angst romance and comingofage struggles young adults faceIn 2021 Amazon introduced miniTV a platform for watching short web seriesmdashfor freemdashwithin the app itself ldquoA majority of the audience who shops on Amazon are young adults They wanted content for these YA adultsrdquo says Vidyuth Bhandary the studio head of Dice Media ldquoThatrsquos why we decided to make content that is extremely relatable to them Itrsquos content which they can resonate withrdquoVidyuth Bhandary Mandar Kurundkar Sankalp Tripathy Amogh Dusad and Palki MalhotraCrushed is one of the series trending on the platform Set in Lucknow itrsquos a story about the dramatic themes that are so central to youthmdashlove heartbreak jealousy Mandar Kurundkar the director of the third season says that shows like these do well because theyrsquore not restricted to the era one grew up in ldquoI grew up in the 90s and Irsquom making stories about Gen Z kids The emotion of falling in love that feeling when your crush looks at you for the first timehellip itrsquos very universal and resonates across generationsrdquo Kurundkar goes on to explain how these web series appeal to tweens as well as 30somethings for tweens itrsquos relatable because thatrsquos what going on in their life at the moment For those past their ldquofirstsrdquo itrsquos nostalgialdquoIndia witnessed a massive change in its value systems mindsets and culture post the 1990srdquo says Sankalp Tripathy the creative director of the second season of the series ldquoBut schoolmdashand collegemdashare themes that everyone relates tordquoYoung adult shows feature social media ldquoinfluencersrdquomdashcreators who already were famous and who teamed up with production houses to venture into acting Can digital platforms be considered to be a launching pad for these aspiring actors Yes and no Influencers are often chosen because of their online presence which ensures viewers will be pulled into watching the series Bhandary says but at the same time fresh faces are chosen because they ldquofit the characterrdquo and personify the relatability for the Gen Z viewersPalki Malhotra the creative producer associated with Campus Beats another Gen Zesque show on miniTV says that social media is ldquoa friend to the youthrdquo and has opened up avenues of selfexpression where personal stories have the capacity to turn into something larger ldquoThey explore themselves right in front of the camera and the stories reach everyonerdquoldquoAmazon miniTV as a service is focussed on building an engaging platform for 18ndash34yearolds across the country and we see huge traction from this audience set from across 100 cities in the Hindi market where we existrdquo says Amogh Dusad the head of content at AmazonminiTV He points out that there are a lot of fresh faces debuting from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities thus making the platform a place for new talent to showcase their skills ldquoTechnology has made it accessible for talent to showcase their capabilities to people at large and thatrsquos the reason why yoursquore seeing a lot of fresh faces coming on the showsrdquoThe aesthetics of these shows are very Gen Z very ldquoInstagrammablerdquo In Campus Beats the costumes are straightup fodder for Kdrama dreams The male protagonist Ishaan who is played by Shantanu Maheshwari sports sleeveless photographerrsquos jackets and crop tops while Tanvi Gadkari who plays Rihanna wears crop tops and bustier blouses Adulting a Dice Media series that came out in 2018 had the characters wear typical ldquoBombayrdquo outfitsmdashoversized tees casual chic blouses and ethnic fusion outfitsMalhotra tells us that the inspiration for the show came from her dream to start a dance school with Maheshwari ldquoItrsquos a combination of my imagination the aesthetics Irsquod compiled years ago and what I see working among a GenZ audience the kinds of clothes theyrsquore styling themselves with are pushing boundariesrdquo she saysldquoKdramas became popular among the youth during the pandemic because we didnrsquot have a lot of young adult contentrdquo she says ldquoBut if you go back as far as 2011 to 2015 it was a great time for young adults There were youth channels like MTV Bindass or Channel Vrdquo The peak according to her happened in 2018 when OTT platforms were gaining a foothold ldquoMy intention is to bring in the Idrama today because there is a lot of Gen Z content waiting to be exploredrdquoWhen compared to the big screen however the treatment of young adult content is different Think young adult and ldquocollegecentricrdquo movies come to mind Student Of The Year Dear Zindagi Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai But these films are a largescale manifestation of the stories told in more personal ways on OTT Malhotra says itrsquos more to do with the budgets of the films which have the luxury of going as big as they want to go both with stories and the way of telling them ldquoSo if you look at the aesthetics they tend to waver because therersquos no time to remain consistent Wersquore shooting for content for 17 to 18 minutes a day itrsquos four to five minutes for bigscreen filmsrdquo she explainsBigger budgets mean bigger stars more attention to detail and hence more glamorous stories that are made to appeal to the mass audience But Bhandary has a different take ldquoItrsquos because Shah Rukh Khan Salman Khan and Aamir Khan are no longer young adultsrdquo he chuckles ldquoIf they were the scale of the movies meant for young adults would be higherrdquo In a sense the actor defines the story which is why digital video is so ldquoyoungrdquoAnd then therersquos the experience of watching through different mediums We hold our phones and watch the series almost through a personal lens says Kurundkar but cinema is at a distance As you zoom out the stories get larger and the people on screen not so relatable anymore