While watching the recently played Indian Premier League and as an over was bowled or a batsman lost his wicket, an uncanny voice was heard with small colorful gems moving around enacting an act on the cricket field. As a cricket worshiping nation we all have watched this commercial over and over again in the past month and a half and wondered; how do they do this? Who makes these commercials? Is that magic or animation?
The answers to these questions are here. The people responsible for these quirky, amusing and highly creative commercials are Studio Eeksauras. In a world where products are crawling and vying for the consumers attention Studio Eeksauras always through their quick on their feet attitude, hard work and the perseverance in bringing out something new on the table every time manages to clutter the feat, makes Studio Eeksauras unique for any creative mind to realize their project be it any medium of film.
Making, besides animation. With a state of the art technology and infrastructure steered by 35 skillful creative minds, Studio Eeksaurus today is 3 years and 9 months old. With clients like JWT, Lowe Lintas and Contract under their kitty, the sky is the limit for them.
Giving us a detail insight on the entire conceptualization and making of the Gems commercials is the man himself; Suresh Eriyat, the Director of Studio Eeksauras.
Always been a leader of the pack, E.Suresh has led a team for over a decade that has created animation films in 2D, 3D and pioneered Clay/Stop
Motion in advertising films in India. His knack of exploring new untouched boundaries and the style of telling things differently make him cut above the else. Being a trained Carnatic musician (Indian classical music) Suresh works closely with musicians for the sound and music in all his films.
A close look at his resume gives us the following insights; Founder and Creative Director of Famous House of Animation for 11 years, He has also been part of the jury panel for Asia Image Apollo Awards, Singapore for 3 consecutive years. Over a 100 national and international awards for his
Achievements for innovative and diverse work in his span of film making career and has been the Director of Studio Eeksauras for close to 4 years.
He is also on the advisory panel to the Minister of Information and Broadcast to make Indian content a serious agenda for the future of the animation industry of the country.
In a professional interaction; E.Suresh was quite welcoming, friendly and answered all our queries with a smile.
The Gems Campaign was conceptualized by Ogilvy and Mather group. Talking about the concept he shares,” We were approached by a very young, dynamic, enthusiastic team from O&M who had made little scratch videos of the concept and they wanted to convince the client to let them produce the same for IPL. So primarily, the concept was O&M’s creative group_ Vipul Indulkar, Nikhil George (who also is the insane voice over of the films) and Devika Srivastava. While these clips were amateurish, they conveyed the thought interestingly and we loved the fresh, clutter-breaking approach and decided to get on board. Many times, it’s the idea/concept that is the reason why we decide to produce an ad film and stuff like this is rare to come by. It made us smile instantly and we knew we were hooked.”
Studio Eeksauras started working on the campaign in the First Week of March. The entire campaign included 5 commercials which were produced in a span of one week; two days of pre-production, three days for shoot and two days for post-production. The team was led by Suresh Eriyat and with him Nilima Suresh Eriyat, Mukund Bhaleghare, Arun Rane, Bhaskar Shinde, Sandeep Meher, and Krishna Kedar from Studio Eeksaurus, the DOP was managed by Sreenivas Reddy and the music score given by Amar Manglurkar. From O&M’s team- Abhijeet Avasthy, Manoj Shetty, Vijay Sawant, Vipul Indulkar, Nikhil George, Devika Srivastava, Bhavna Thakur, Mallika Raina and Sunayana were involved in the process.
So what is the USP that makes this commercial a success? Answering our question he said,” This ad is different from the typical Live Action ads aired during the IPL. Here actual gems are used as characters where they are represented as IPL teams. In the ad, the different colors of gems represented the different teams in the IPL. For e.g. the yellow color Gem for Chennai Super Kings. Yet, this is simple in terms of style and conveys the concept of “raho umarless”.
The Campaign was especially targeted for the IPL season; it was released for Television and on the web-digital media. Stop Motion technology is utilized for producing the commercials, a miniature Cricket stadium was setup using objects like an eraser and board pins for the stumps and drawing crude pencil lines on the table surface for the pitch. The rest is actual Gems as characters.
Adding more to this he says,” The scheduling was hectic, but everyone was enthusiastic and excited in the execution. The upcoming making of the ad shows the fun the team had while on shoot. Overall we thoroughly enjoyed the whole process of making the film. The creative discussions and voice over sessions brought a lot of laughter to the sleepless days and nights of production- stuff fond memories are made of.”
But the important question was, a success or not? Or as we say in the cricket lingo, six or out. Clearing our doubts on that he answers,” In the true spirit of the IPL and cricket lingo- ‘Chakka Ho gaya!” The response so far has been amazing. People are loving the different concept of the ad and we know it is being a viral(ed) heavily because it’s the sort of fun thing one would want to share with someone. The jingle was hilarious and quite catchy as well. The video has also received a vast number of comments, likes and shares on facebook and other social networking sites as it is instantly memorable for its cheeky humor and cleverness of a simple yet effective idea.”
So as we ended our interaction with him, we ended it with our final question; What’s next? “We always have ad film underway and some of our own in-house IP for short films- Fisherwoman and Tokri. We also want to create a television series- for the Indian television first and then the world! Cheers” he concludes.