Ram Madhvani Fills a Concert Hall with Music Magic for Airtel

Great Guns’ Indian partners Equinox Films were approached by agency Taproot’s Chief Creative Officer Agnello Dias with a very exciting project; the launch of the new music app from Airtel - Airtel Wynk.

It was a simple but brilliant idea for one of the world’s largest music online apps, a woman searches her phone for a piece of music to match her mood. Agnello’s original idea to show 100’s of musicians all lined up to cater to each of her individual moods, and to film these multiple genres of music in a small confined space.

Director Ram made Aggie’s dream project a reality with his immaculate detailing and planning. He breathed life into the script. After seeing the film, Agnello said this is exactly the way he had imagined the film to be.

With the script taking it’s course, Equinox Producer Manoj Shroff, and Line Producer Anupama Malhotra, began to put a team together who could pull off this mammoth project.

Ram, Agnello and Annum Waris, the director’s assistant on this film had many sessions of brainstorming to put together the number of genres that would fill the auditorium, details of each genre and the number of performers required per genre.

Once the script was locked, the next step was to cast. There was a certain fragile innocence and expressiveness they wanted in the lead actress.  Many auditions later they found Sanya. The next and somewhat bigger challenge for the casting director Abhimanyu Ray and his team Godfrey Edge and Tejas Swant was covering the various genres of music.

The challenge was to find, in the city of Mumbai, as many contrasting bands as possible, with each individual artist not only looking the part, but also creating the persona of the artist within their certain genre. Most of the musicians in the commercial are in fact real life artists and performers, and successful in their field.

The next challenge for Ram and Aggie was the music.  The task was to create one track but with multiple genres within it.

It took two days with Music Director Sameer Uddin to put together this medley, which finally had to sound like one piece. With Aggie writing the lyrics, translators on standby and singers coming in one by one to add their own magic to the song, while trying to do justice to their genre.

Simultaneously, Theia Thekchandaney, the costume designer was busy sourcing for genre authentic costumes to bring each artist to life. She not only styled the main musicians but every single individual artist present on set.

In total 700 musicians and artists in over 14 genres were filmed over 2 days.

Once the cast and music were in place, it was time to rehearse with and these were conducted over many days with Rosita not only choreographing the steps but also their attitude. At the end of each rehearsal day, Ram would watch these videos to judge the performance level, prepping himself on how to direct each artist.

With over 700 people to fill Capitol Theatre, the challenge was to make sure that everything worked like clockwork, and all the departments were in complete harmony with each other. Sandeep Modi the 1st Ad and and his team ensured this happened.

With the actors on set and his schedule in check, Ram and cinematographer Hemant Chaturvedi set to work complete with special lighting and anamorphic lenses so Ram could get the flares he wanted.  

 “In the words of the great ABBA, Thank You For The Music” commented Ram on another fantastic shoot.

Full Credits

Client:  Airtel India

Title:  Airtel Wynk

Agency: Taproot India

Executive Creative Directors:  Agnello Dias & Santosh Padhi

Creative Team:  Agnello Dias

Client Servicing : Naved Punjabi &  Gargi Vegiraju

Production Company:  Equinox  Films Mumbai

Director: Ram Madhvani

Associate Director:  Abhimanyu Ray

Producer:  Manoj Schroff

Line Producer:  Anupama Malhotra

DOP : Hemant Chaturvedi

Assistant Cameraman:  Ravi, Dhavalika

Chief AD:  Sandeep Modi

2nd AD:  Ashish Goyal

3rd AD:  Ajinkya Narkar

Casting AD:  Tanu Malhotra

Directors Chief Assistant:  Annum Waris

AD Dept:  Ishan Kapoor, Pratham Jolly, Ankita Kumar, Rhea Prabhu, Tejas

Storyboard:  Chetan Sharma

Production Designer:  Anna Ipe

Art Director:  Shekhar More

Assistant Art Director:  Roshan Vichare

Prop Dept:  Vicky Nunes, Vinayak, Gajanand Tirodkar

Casting Director:  Abhimanyu Ray

Assistant Casting Director: Godfrey Edge, Tejas Sawant

Costumes:  Theia Thekchandaney

Costumes Assistant:  Forum Mehta

Dressman:  Ajit Satham

Hair & Make Up Stylist:  Virginia Holmes

Choreographer:  Rosita Rajput

Production Manager:  Nikhil Bopanna

Location:  Mahesh Tawde

Focus Puller:  Brian

Gaffer:  Sumit Shetty

Head Spot Boy:  Anuj Singh

Craft Service:  Uday Shetty

Production Assistant:  Rahul Potdar

Production Accountant:  Vilas Shelke

Post Production Supervisor:  Sanajaoba Nongthombam

Post Production Manager:  Suryakant Bhayde

Post Production:  After Studios Mumbai

Editor : Khushboo Agarwal

Online Editor:  Amit Chitnis

Colourist:  Miten

Music: Sameeruddin

Singers:  Neha Bhasin, Mahnaz Dhamania, Vijaya Shankar, Akshay Verma, Rajiv Sundaresan, Girish Thapar, Sadhika Menon, Satyajit Prabhu

Sound Engineer:  Arun Crasto

Studio:  Crastos Studio