e-Entertainment & Games, Winner 2015
Name of Project: Chai Stories
Project Website: www.chaistories.com
Name of Organization: The Boxx Studios
Organization Website: www.theboxxstudios.com
India’s only channel offering short films of all genres
The Boxx Studios, a Bhopal-based 3-D visualisation and custom design studio, promoted Chai Stories in June 2014, which is a group of aspiring short film makers, script writers, music directors, directors of photography and actors and actresses. The group produces short films and releases them every Friday through the Chai Stories channel on YouTube. The objective is to create an online platform for short films. It is the only short film channel which delivers films of every genre to the audience including comedy, horror, social, action, romantic, etc. All short films are released with complete advertising sticks like posters, updates, teasers, social media timeline covers, etc. to create curiosity among in the audience (similar to current industry). The group writes its own scripts or takes ideas from gags or messages on social media such as WhatsApp, modifies them into decent, often funny, creative scripts and shoots them to make short films. The Boxx Studios has been supporting the group with production facilities and in promoting its talent through online media with ground events. The group is trying to build a new audience for short films across the globe and develop a platform for people to watch short films any time anywhere through their Facebook page or mail or on any social media website. So far, Chai Stories has produced and released 55 short movies on YouTube and the investment on all the equipment till date is approximately Rs. 5 lakh. On shoot/location expenses varies for each short film with the average being only about Rs. 35,000. The idea is to create a platform to nurture new talent in the industry and enable them to create their portfolio and achieve higher reach. The initiative expects that revenues will come from on film and in film promotions and sponsorships.
Name of Project: SANGEETHAYA.LK
Project Website: www.sangeethaya.lk
Name of Organization: D & S Consultants (Pvt) Ltd.
Organization Website: www.sangeethaya.lk
Lankan website brings all music-related services providers online
Launched in January, 2015 www.sangeethaya.lk is the first of its kind web portal in Sri Lanka and in the Asia Pacific region to bring all music-related service providers under one roof online. The promoters felt music is a talent driven industry which is now being dominated by businessmen due to the problems of musicians’ lack of money, awareness, business knowhow, marketing ability and the digital divide. Therefore, music related product sellers and service providers have no effective marketplace to expose their talents/services/capabilities/products to the target market. Sangeethaya.lk was conceived as a one-stop portal for all music related products/services. A soft launch of www.sangeethaya.lk was done in January 2015 and since then it is online. The portal was launched with details of 16 categories of service providers where nearly 300 singers, 95 music players, 95 lyrics writers, 82 music bands, 75 announcers, 61 music directors, etc. and details of 1,000 service providers. Service providers are registering on their own free of charge since then. The unique benefits of sangeethaya.lk are that all these categories of music service providers get equal opportunity and online exposure free of charge in a bilingual web-based portal. Apart from musicians, the portal also includes musical instrument sellers, makers and exporters (guitars, percussion, etc), music equipment sellers (recording and sound gear), second-hand sellers (large, SMEs or individuals), music production companies large and SMEs, video production companies, freelance cameramen, producers, video producers, event management companies and equipment renting companies, Sri Lankan musical instrument manufacturers, and so on. Sellers can get facilities from the website to gradually go through the transformation to become an e-Businessman. Sangeethaya. lk aims to create an online marketplace for the entire Sri Lankan music industry. At present, the Facebook page of sangeethaya.lk has over 45,000 fans and are increasing every day.