Designing sets for weddings are not an easy task. A designer not only has to take care of the intricate elements like properties, colors, theme, décor, appeal and balance but they also have to make sure that the end result is a never seen before piece of art, which is a common brief by the client. Omung Kumar, the noted film and art designer delivered an interesting session at the ICWF 15’, where the maestro of set design in films, television shows and weddings shared his experiences of set designing. Omung began his session by showcasing how he designed the sets for films like Black, Sawariya, Mary Kom and exotic entertainment properties like Kingdom of Dreams. Though the session was largely visual but in case you missed it, we at EE have your back as we list down 5 takeaways from Omung Kumar on set designing. “Everything in and around you is design and in architectural form, you just need to have a creative vision to see and realize it.” Now this is a very important tip for all the set designers who are often seeking inspiration for their sets. All you need to do now is keep an eye on anything and everything around you and you never know what can inspire your next design. “I take the client brief and chuck it out. The real idea of design begins and is conceptualized from a fresh blank white paper.” It is indeed very important for a designer to start a fresh for every design. It not necessarily means scrapping the clients brief but creating your own fresh ideas and integrating the clients demand into it. “Everyone and everything around us have design in them but the sense of what to pick and what to include in your designs make you a real designer.” Yes, a necessary quality in a designer is to know where to put different elements in a design to create a beautiful ensemble. “When you are designing a set you have to make sure that everything has to be balanced and in the perfect angle but what elements you use to strike that balance depends on the designer. “ All designs should be balanced and should appeal to the viewer’s eyes. Without balance a design can often come across as cluttered. “As a designer I design two sets everyday which are my best works. But I wake up the next day and I challenge myself to outdo what I did as I promised my clients that I will give them my best design. As a designer it is very important to challenge yourself and never get bored with your designs as when you get bored others will too. I don’t design for the clients, I don’t design for the industry, I design for myself. “ A designer should always try to outdo themselves with every design and as long as they try to do that their designs will always reflect the most perfect and their best works.
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‘Papa CJ: Naked’ has been invited to represent India at the Shared History Festival in South Africa in September 2015. Shared History, which has become a regular feature on the South African cultural scene, is an annual festival that showcases the best of contemporary arts and culture from the Indian subcontinent in South Africa. The festival aims to explore the shared artistic bond and cultural history of the two countries and their recent pasts. Begun in 2007, the festival is brought to the country in collaboration with the High Commission of India in South Africa. Earlier this year ‘Naked’ received the rare honour of becoming the first ever solo show from India that was invited to showcase at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Amongst the 550 plus shows at Australia’s largest cultural event, it was the only solo English show that was invited from all of Asia. Such international recognition is unprecedented for Indian stand-up comedy. In November 2014 Papa CJ was also invited to Malaysia to receive the award for Asia’s Best Stand-up Comedian. His show ‘Naked’ is also the only solo comedy show from India that will be showcasing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2015. The Fringe is the world’s largest arts festival with over 3000 shows across various genres. Papa CJ’s past international performances include over 2000 shows in more than 18 countries. He has taped a Showtime USA Stand-up Comedy Special with Russell Peters in Amsterdam and in the American TV show Last Comic Standing, he was placed in the top ten from over 3000 contestants across the world. His work has been broadcast on NBC, BBC, Comedy Central, Showtime, MTV, Paramount, The Comedy Channel, ITV and a host of other international networks. Papa CJ was also the first ever comedian from India to be invited to perform at the Just for Laughs Festival in Canada in 2009. Little wonder that Forbes Magazine has called Papa CJ ‘the global face of Indian stand-up’ and Toastmaster International called him one of the most influential comedians around the world.
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Gone are the days when clients were easily satisfied with simple and comfortable arrangements at their weddings. Today the clients heavily emphasize on elevating the level of their weddings to make everything appear larger than life, so that the attendees of the event take with them an experience to be treasured for a lifetime. But how can a wedding planner design the perfect experience quotient for a private social event was the subject of an interesting panel discussion at the International Convention of the Wedding Fraternity (ICWF) ’15. The session was chaired by Vandana Mohan, Founder, The Wedding Design Company,MitjaPrelovsek from Invisible.si, Arpit Vyas of Dishman Pharmaceutical and Culinary Designer MarutSikka. The discussion was moderated by Roshan Abbas, Managing Director at Encompass. At the beginning of the session MitjaPrelovsek delivered a special presentation where technology was used by him to elevate the experience quotient at public places. Mitja explained that his inspiration to create such experiences is driven by the memories and responses of humans. Roshan Abbas introduced the theme of the panel discussions by stating that all event planners are similar to dream catchers who make an intangible dream in a client’s head tangible by bringing it to reality. He asked the panelists, “However, to make a dream come true you need a team to help you. So how do you find a team to help you in creating such experiences?” To this Vanda Mohan responded by saying, “The industry today is very ‘me-centric’ and no one wants to share their work with others. But my way of working is always to collaborate with the best and the deliver the same to my client. I may have a certain sense of style and positioning of things but I would never hesitate to call someone like a SumantJayakrishnan to help me add value to my work. I strongly feel that the way forward in the industry is to collaborate and put aside this feeling of competitiveness and help each other to deliver that ultimate experience to our clients.” When asked upon what is a great experience for the panelists at weddings, MautSikka responded by saying, “Experience is all about using your senses, so be it the décor of the place that you are visiting or what you see or even the way food is laid out and served is part of an experience. It is also important to take care of the smallest element and details at weddings because the smallest of things gone wrong can end up giving bad experiences to your attendees.” Speaking on how to create digital experiences in a touch and feel economy like India, MitjaPrelovsek said, “Contrary to the popular belief, digital is not always using smartphones and iPad. What I do is to integrate digital technology with tangible properties so the idea is to make people forget the fact that there is a technology at play here. All I want is for them to just enjoy the moment.” When asked if technology is the sixth sense to create experience today? Mitja responded by explaining that experience should be designed in order to involve all the 5 senses, the more senses a technology brings alive the better experience will be created. There are times in a multi-agency pitch when the clients hears your ideas and thoughts but never responds back. When asked by Roshan Abbas on how to make the client respond to the agency in such situations, Arpit Vyas responded by saying, “You have to inspire the clients in your first brief itself. If you fail to do that you can never get him to respond and also as an agency one has to be able to bring and strike a relationship with the client from the get go. If an agency is able to achieve that then they will always get responses from clients.” Expanding further Vandana Mohan added, “Building the trust and the uniqueness of the concept are two things that are guaranteed to get you the job. If an agency pitches to a client a cut and paste concept that will be shown to them by 6 other agencies they can never get the job.”
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The 3rd edition of the International Convention of the Wedding Fraternity (ICWF) held at Hyatt Manesar from 31st July-1st August, pulled in an impressive crowd from the country’s weddings and social events segment. The platform brought together wedding planners, flower decorators, venues, caterers and miscellaneous service providers all under one roof. Here is a collection of some interesting moments we snatched from the event. Ankita-Chugh-from-Anikta-Chugh-Weddings-and-Lavish-Chopra Sanju-Simon-and-Himansh-Sharma-from-World-at-Glance Vikrant-Jain-Led-Solutions-and-Kartik-Chaudhary-Beats-Light-and-Sound Thomas-De-Bruyne Team-Turkey Tarsame-Mittal-TM-Talent-Management-and-Deepak-Choudhary-Event-Capital Surabh-Luthra-from-Niti-Luthra-Make-up-and-Ankit-Singhal-Hyatt-Manesar Samit-Garg-E-Factor-Entertainment-and-Manish-Malhotra Roshan-Abbas-Encompass Rochana-Pandya-and-Namit-Taluka-from-Taluka-Decorators Rishabh-Panchhi-from-Panchhi-Events-Tranbir-Sahni-White-Horse-Events-Management-and-Sachin-Talwar-Wow-events mung-Kumar-performing-live-set-design Mitja-Prelovsek-Invisible.si-Charu-Kashyap-E-Factor-and-Ravi-Reddy-Cylybrations-events Manika-Garg-VP-E-Factor-Entertainment-Tejas-Bhayani-Dipti-Shahani-and-Reema-Gupta-Red-Entertainment Hatice-Erksay-Raffles-Istanbul-and-Eda-Basaran-Crystal-Concepts Gitikka-Ganju-Dhar-Emcee Eda-Basaran,-Rajesh-Verma-CRI-Events,-Anurag-Batra,-Chairman-BW-Businessworld-and-Siddhartha
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Besides digging deeper into their pockets, clients today are also digging deeper to achieve customized experiences at their weddings. With such differentiated demands, it often becomes challenging for wedding planners to deliver to an over demanding client while working with the same set of performers and service providers. To address the issue SamitGarg, E-Factor Entertainment and Karan Soorma, Cineyug chaired a panel discussion on the first day of the International Convention of the Wedding Fraternity ‘15. The panel discussion was moderated by Roshan Abbas, Encompass. Roshan Abbas began the session by highlighting how the clients who hire wedding planners today want to feel special and are looking for a level of exclusivity at their weddings and hence the demand for customized entertainment at weddings are increasing steadily. Karan Soormacommented, “It is very important to always keep the performers in the loop and always communicate what is being expected of them. Since we are an entertainment centric company and we keep on doing awards and entertainment based shows it makes it easier for us to convey such demands as the relationship that we have with artists helps us.“ Responding to this SamitGarg added, “For us it is very important to put together a storyboard and once we get the story right which typically stems from the need of the event and the clients it is only then when artists come in the picture.” Sharing his personal opinions Roshan Abbas explained that in some situations it is the clients who have a very unclear idea of what they want. Most of the times all they expect out of their event is to be bigger than before, better than before and louder than before. “There is also- cheaper than before”, commented Karan Soorma. When asked about the most bizarre demand for customized entertainment made to them, Karan Soorma responded by narrating an incident where an entire wedding venue had to be shifted from Goa to Dubai to accommodate the performance of RahatFateh Ali Khan. Another issue faced by the wedding planners today is determining when to agree for providing customized entertainment experience and when to refuse it? As Roshan Abbas asked if there was a ball park figure below which the wedding planners should not undertake the pain of customized entertainment. SamitGarg responded by saying, “If the budget of the wedding is below 50 lakhs customized entertainment efforts are not worth it.” Adding further and responding to the top three requests the panelists usually receive for customization at weddings? SamitGarg replied to the question by saying, “Short and impactful, affordable and never done before.” Speaking on the issue of ascertaining the credibility of a wedding planner who claims to have done customized entertainments? Samit added that due diligence is one practice a client can follow to sift credible wedding planners from non-credible ones. When asked by the audience if hotel venues are at a disadvantage compared to open venues when it comes to providing customized entertainment at weddings. Samit responded by saying that hotel venues were not at a disadvantage because of their venues itself but because of the fact that these venues come with a big list of Not-to-do’s, which is the primary reason why an event planner feels it is better to organize social events outside hotel halls and auditoriums.
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Cheil India, already one of India’s Top 5 advertising and marketing communications agencies, has been growing its business aggressively over recent months. Closely following a number of business wins (including mandates for brands such as Timex and adidas) and a string of awards at creative festivals, Cheil has just been named as the Creative Agency on Record by health insurance giant Apollo Munich. The account, which was most recently with JWT India, was awarded to Cheil after a multi-agency pitch. Commenting on the development, Shiv Sethuraman, Cheil’s Group President for South-West Asia stated: “I am absolutely delighted to share that we will be partnering Apollo Munich as their communication agency.They are one of the most trusted and respected companies in the financial services industry. Cheil India has been on a hot-streak and we’ve been gathering momentum over the past few months. We look forward to creating some truly inspired and creative work for the brand in the days ahead.” Added Kundan Joshee, Senior Vice President-Integrated Services at Cheil India: “We are extremely excited about working on Apollo Munich. This win allows us, as their creative partners, a lot of scope to create powerful and compelling brand communication. We are also putting together an integrated team structure for Apollo Munich that will enable us to create effective solutions that work across and beyond the conventional boundaries of medium. ” The agency will be servicing the account from its South-West Asia regional headquarters in Gurgaon. They will be assembling an integrated team with specialists from ATL, Digital, Social along with Strategic Planning to provide the brand with effective solutions.
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The entry process for EEMAX Global 2015 awards are now open at http://www.eemaxglobal.com/ as EEMA through EEMAX Global aims to celebrate and honor the best events and experiential marketing projects from India and around the world. Interestingly, for the first time, entry for EEMAX Global 2015 are open to both EEMA and non-EEMA members from across the globe and applications are expected from agencies in India, Asia, Middle East, Africa, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and USA. In the latest development for EEMAX Global 2015, Sabbas Joseph, President EEMA, shared the winner determination process for the honor. The process will involve processing the award entries through: Shortlisting byScreening Jury headed by Michael Menezes, EEMA – Patron and including domain experts from amongst the EEMA NEC. Voting by the International Jury of Experts(weightage 75% of voting to determine winners from the shortlist) Voting by Jury of Peers (weightage 25% of voting to determine winners from the shortlist) The winner determination process will choose the winners in 27 categories that span entertainment events, social events, sporting events, weddings, exhibitions, digital marketing, CSR initiatives and government events. The EEMA NEC would adjudicate over entries for Education Programs in India. Jury mentoring duties will be fulfilled by EEMA NEC members, Sameer Tobaccowalla, Atul Nath and Sushma Gaikwad and hence the agencies led by them will not be participating in the EEMAX GLOBAL The rates for the application process are mentioned below. It is to be noted that the timelines set by the Awards Management Team are sacrosanct. Members Non-members Opening of entries 10 August 2015 10 August 2015 Early bird submissions for awards before EOD 17 Aug 2015 Rs. 5700 Rs. 8550 Closing of entries 25 August 2015 25 August 2015 Entry fee for awards between 18 – 25 Aug 2015 Rs. 6840 Rs. 9690 The EEMAX GLOBAL Awards are scheduled for 20 September 2015 at the Taj Lands End Mumbai, India and would be preceded by the EEMAX GLOBAL Conclave on Sept 19th and 20th at the same venue. The participation fee details to attend the event/s in the table below: Members Non-members Early bird participation fee for the full day – before 25 Aug 2015 Rs. 7000 Rs. 10000 Early bird participation fee for the award night – before 25 Aug 2015 Rs. 4000 Rs. 6000 Participation fee for the full day – after 25 Aug 2015 Rs. 8500 Rs. 12000 Participation fee for the award night – after 25 Aug 2015 Rs. 5000 Rs. 7500 To know about EEMAX Global award categories-http://everythingexperiential.com/eemax-global-2015-announces-award-categories-calls-for-entries/ If you have any suggestions, recommendations or concerns, connect with priya@eemaindia.com orsunil.mehra@eemaindia.com
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Rashi Entertainment emerged as a winner in the multi agency pitch & bid process by Delhi Tourism & Transportation Development Corporation to win the rights to conceptualize, execute & manage Swaraj Parv in Delhi from 14th – 16th Aug 2015 at Central Park, Connaught Place. Swaraj Parv will be a celebration of the 69th year of India’s independence and aims to capture masses with multifold cultural programs throughout the day and wide array of entertainment in the evening. The event will be inaugurated on the 14th Aug by the Hon’ble minister of Law, Arts & Culture Sri Kapil Mishra & chaired by Hon’ble Chief Minister of Delhi, Sri. Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Sri. Manish Sisodia. Entertainment during the day will comprise of Kavi Sammelan, Bands & DJ while the evening capsule will have artists like Sonu Niigaam/ Sunidhi Chauhan, Ghazal Mushayra’s etc. Speaking about bagging the prestigious event, Rajeev Jain, Director, Rashi Entertainment says, “There is indeed a feeling of euphoria and pride in the team. Our pitch was driven by concept & creativity which set us apart from our co bidders” Speaking about the Logistics, he further elaborated “The logistical intervention required for an event of such a scale is put in perspective when you consider that we are expecting a footfall of about 2,00,000 people and an area of 5,00,000 Sq. ft. is to be fabricated on the theme of ‘Independence Struggle’ of India. All aspects of this event are being managed and executed by Rashi Entertainment, right from planning and celebrities to venue management, F&B and other logistics.
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