Powered by OTT platform like Netflix et al and online video sites like YouTube etc., digital video has for some time been established as a disruptive medium, snatching viewers away from both cinema and broadcast television.
But what happens when you couple this technological disruption with creative disruption? Ace penman Fasih Bari Khan has the answer: Chinto Ki Mummy (CKM) – an original web series that premiered over his YouTube channel Kabaarr Khaana.
But why would an established movie and drama writer turn to YouTube? The answer, again, is Chinto Ki Mummy: The dark humour and blunt social commentary of the series was suited to neither cinema nor television.
None of this, however, begins to describe the phenomenon that is CKM. The best course of action for anybody wishing to wrap their head around this ground-breaking digital flick directed by Imran Qazi and produced by Faiza Hassan would be to go watch it over YouTube the other week.
Talking about why he chose to put his content on YouTube channel whereas he is an established television drama writer, Khan replied, “Actually I was writing this script for a film as I knew the topic of the story would not fit into our television drama.
“But unfortunately, I could not make it even into a film as the producers tried to convert it into an elite concept while I wanted it to be a very casual or common man story. The essence would be gone if I had done that on their lines.”
Khan added that in the meantime he observed very closely the content available on the web – and he thought of using this idea (which was just a track of the story of his film) for a web series.
“So, Faiza Hasan and I decided to start a YouTube channel by the name of Kabaarr Khaana and CKM is our first project”, says Khan, who did story, screenplay, and dialogue for the series.
Chinto Ki Mummy is a story of an upper middle class family of Lahore where the desperate housewife is trying to rebuild a healthy and romantic relationship with her husband.
And if you were intrigued by Moin Akhtar’s Rosie or Ali Saleem’s Begum Nawazish Ali, you will have plenty to be intrigued by in CKM: The female lead is played by a male actor Waqar Hussain.
Fasih Bari Khan says he had Waqar Hussain in his mind when he was writing this character. He added that in dark comedy, one should experiment and show something different and unusual to the audience. Another consideration was that “our mainstream female actresses would not be able to do justice to the role as Waqar did”, says the writer. “They would have some reservation in doing some scenes. Interestingly, women are appreciating it more than male viewers”.
Asked if he thinks the digital space would be the new future of our entertainment industry, the writer was of the view that it can be but we would have to bring some novel ideas and work on strong content. “We have to give something new to the viewers which they generally can’t watch on television and even in films.”
To the question if we make a good web drama or film with minimal budget and without big stars, Khan said, “It is a fact that established stars wherever they appear bring views. It is also a fact that not everybody who is producing digital content has that big budget for stars and technical expertise.
“So here we have to work on strong content with new talent and minimal technical requirements. We have to design our stories in a way that doesn’t need much technical work on shoot or post shoot. The content should be strong enough that it doesn’t need much technical beatification to hide the flaws.”
Talking about his project Fasih Bari Khan disclosed that they made it on a very nominal budget, “We could not afford highly paid artists and heavy technical equipment so we put all our efforts on content and picked new and enthusiastic talent. We shot on real locations with natural light and the lights fixed at house.”
Khan finds it weird that thinking about different ideas for digital means going very philosophical to many writers, which ends up becoming inaccessible to the larger audience most of the time. Others work more on the beatification and technical stunts to make it different rather than building strong and relatable characters. “So it should be the new and relatable ideas, strong content and talented actors to make a good product in a minimal budget for the web”, says Khan. “Yes in that way it can be a future where much new and emerging talent can also try their luck as a producer, writer, director, producer and actor”.
