monalisa patsani
post news network
Bhubaneswar, Sept 4: From vlogging and roasts to insult comedy and candid videos, new media platforms such as YouTube are abuzz with variety fare of entertainment. One such format of entertainment involves getting responses from people on the street to questions, often those that are rarely raised in public.
Odd Voice Bhubaneswar is a new entrant in this space, four-month old, and has posted seven videos since launch. The channel run by the quartet of Soubhagya Ranjan, Binay Kesheir, Abhishek Samal and Santosh Mohapatra have made videos covering topics such as eve-teasing, suicides, break-ups, and premarital sex.
The group selects topics that find appeal mostly with youngsters. They ask random questions to people they meet in markets, colleges and other places and the responses are candid reflections of what people think.
Soubhagya says the format has been quite popular in the West and in cities such as Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi. “We thought we should start this here and highlight what people in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack gave to say about various issues. We just wanted to create a platform so that people outside Orissa will know about what our opinions on different issues are. We had started this from Raahgiri which helped us a lot to get opinions from people,” he said.
The team had started with a video on health issues. “We made our first video on World Health Day and it received good response. We went on to select topics such as eve-teasing and suicide and got a good response from youngsters. People here are smart and have an opinion on different social issues. We got pretty good response from girls when we created a video on eve-teasing.”
According to Soubhagya, the group was choosing topics oriented towards the youth as they were bound to increase viewership. “We are careful not to choose such topics that can make people uncomfortable. We had faced some problems while filming the video on the topic ‘sex before marriage’ after which we did the shooting in Kolkata,” he said.
While Soubhagya and Santosh are anchors, Binay and Abhishek handle camera. Binay also takes care of editing.
Santosh, a newbie to the team, said: “I was invited by Soubhagya to be part of Odd Voice at a time when I was myself contemplating launch of such a venture. Since we were on the same page I decided to join this team instead.”
The team has observed, though, that it is difficult to get people in the city to open up on any topic. “People here have a different mindset and they are not comfortable responding to questions on certain topics. So we are choosing questions that don’t make them feel awkward or uncomfortable,” Soubhagya said.
The team is now planning an episode that focuses on students from abroad, among other things. “We have been making videos based on social issues in a lighter vein, but now we also have plans to do some serious stuff,” Santosh said.
Although the channel is based in Bhubaneswar, the team has been using Hindi and English in their videos. “We want to reach out to a global audience. If we confined ourselves to Oriya our channel won’t reach a global audience. But we do plan to introduce topics in Oriya in our future endeavours,” Soubhagya said.