Bangalore based animation studio Mediateck which originally began with animation training in 97 and has since 2001 moved on to production, is all set for a February end release a 90 minute flash animated film on Acharya Ramanuja, the main propounder of the vishishta advaita philosophy.
Speaking to Animation ‘xpress, Mediateck MD Balakrishna M R remarked,”It has been the most challenging project for us in terms of gathering information and collecting references. Each community has its own sentiments and sensitibilities and its a challenge portraying the culture as true to real as possible”
“All the music is originally composed and we use the best of voice talent from the South Indian Film & TV Industry. For the Hindi dub we prefer Delhi and work with AIR artists”
This will be the seventh religious title release in the span of four years from the studio, the earlier ones include Raghavendra Swamy, VadiRaja Divya Darshanam, Purandara Dasa, Sri Basaveshwara, Srinivas Kalyanam and Ramayana. Two of these titles are published by Mediateck itself while the rest are for 3rd party publishers.
In what is a unique business model, Mediateck is working closely with a lot of Temple Trusts (Sansthas) like Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams. The upcoming film on Acharya Ramanuja is published by Srirangam Srimad Andavan Ashram Srirangam and Ramanuja Mission USA.
“Traditional publishers can never match the kind of budgets that Temple Trusts and Devotees allocate for creating content” said Balakrishna.
The studio has a very interesting approach to production of animated content wherein it actually produces plays with theater artistes and then uses that footage as reference material. The characters are not exaggerated or caricatured but look like divine characters bearing more semblance to portraits.
“To get the performance and ethos right we make it a practice to produce live plays based on the important sequences from the story, directed by Scholars on the subject and enacted out by proffesionals theatre actors. This enactment is recorded live and and used as reference guide by our artist to improve the performance of the animated characters”
Talking about volumes Balakrishna commented,”We are distributing only two of the titlesand haven’t really been active in marketing, as our business model is based more on the assignments from the temples. Besides this is a very niche market”
Close to 25 artists worked for around seven months (Pre pro, production and post) to create Acharaya Ramanuja.The film subject matter has been reseqarched by Dr N S Ananthrangachar, voice by eminent Kannada TV artist Ravindranath, vocals by M S Sheela and S Shankar,and music by S Krishnamooorthy.
“Vision is to convey cultural themes to the younger generation Recreation, entertainment as well as moral education. Turnover wise we would like to touch Rs50 crore in five years and about 150 artists.We are looking for partners with a like minded approach to the business” he concluded.