Channelling ideas

Digital media is taking over the world and there’s no stopping it. From the latest happenings in the city to a do-it-yourself topic, visual media is what everyone looks out for.

Whether it’s a good trend or not, Bengalureans are getting their hands dirty to learn the tricks of this trade. From food bloggers to musicians to travel bloggers, YouTube is the platform they are using to reach out to their fans.

Neha Mathur, a food blogger, started a YouTube channel called ‘Whisk Affair’ six months ago. Though she has a blog that’s been successful in the past, she believes visuals help connect with her audience better. She explains, “My idea of starting a YouTube channel was to attract my viewers and bring them back to my blog at the same time. I make short videos of the recipes that I share on the blog. I direct them back to my website so that they can use the recipe as and when they want.”

Initially, it was she and her husband who shot and edited these videos. Now, she has a professional team to make her videos. “The attention span of people is very less. I’ve learnt that it’s best to make quick recipe videos than to drag it through the whole cooking process ,” she adds.

In order to make the process quick, Neha charts a plan of the recipes she will be shooting, gets the ingredients in place and cuts and chops them in advance. If it’s a particular recipe that needs something to be set, she works on that the day before so that she can get going quickly on the day of the shoot.

For musicians, though the audio is the main motto, in the digital world, they also have to work hard on videos to keep their listeners interested. Ramesh Iyer, the drummer for ‘Hamsadhwani’, a fusion band’, says, “Our main aim is to make sure that the audio is connected to the video. Once we finish recording the song, we get the videographers to listen to it so that we can chart out how it will look, which musician will be focussed on at which point and how everything will play out. Once that’s done, we get choreographic with the video and also choose our costumes to suit the song we are shooting for.”

With the visual world making a mark, he says that it has its pros and cons. “We can’t predict if the viewers will like our videos or not. But YouTube gives us an insight into the kind of people who watch the video, the part of the country and area it's most viewed in and the duration they watched it. Based on that data, we are able to analyse how we can work on our next song.”

Says Sreesanth S, a professional, “My friends and I are passionate about photography and have maintained a blog where we used to put up pictures of our trips. Recently, we felt that the number of people visiting our blog was reducing. So we decided to be a bit creative with the showcasing part. After our recent trip to Coorg, we compiled our photographs into a video with a beautiful instrumental melody as the background score. We had also shot a few small videos of the winding roads and interspersed these with the photographs. A little bit of editing, some social media publicity and the popularity graph went right back to the top.”

It’s quite obvious that different categories of people who use ‘YouTube’ to showcase their work have their own advantages and struggles. But they all have one thing in mind and that is to please their audiences. It could be a hit or a miss, but they are willing to try their hand at it and stay on top of the trend.