The web series by YouTube channel Cheers, What’s Your Status, has been nominated for The Indie Series Awards 2019 under various categories.
It is also claimed that this is the only Indian web series that has made it to the elite shortlist for this award ceremony. The web series has been shortlisted amongst popular series such as Giants, After Forever and nominations from across multiple countries like USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and others.
Among the 30 categories, What’s Your Status has been nominated in five categories – best drama series, best writing, best ensemble (drama), best editing and best original song. News Today spoke with the the head of Kingfisher Digital Marketing, R Sandeep Balan, who shares information about his journey of venturing into web series.
Q: Tell us more about Cheers which is into making of web series.
A: Cheers is our YouTube channel that works under the banner Ultra Shorts in which we create our web series and short films. The Cheers channel is our attempt to tell genuine stories which are relatable and strike a chord with users. Our creations include Rise, Half Day Office Rant and the recent What’s Your Status that went viral, the relatable stories we weave come out of a strong insight. Cheers was less than two years.
Q: Why venture into web series?
A: Cheers started off with a couple of short films like Half Ticket followed by Born Free. Our first web series was Rise. In this, the story needed a bigger canvas. Hence, what was originally meant to be a short film became a web series spanning four episodes. Rise did well and we kept pushing the numbers with every episode. As a format, web series was working much better for the channel and we followed it up with another web-series, What’s Your Status, which was even a bigger hit.
Rise was the only Indian web series to be selected at the Los Angeles Web Fest last year and was showcased at Sony Studios, Hollywood. It picked up an award there and that was a proud moment for all of us. What’s Your Status now has picked up five nominations at the Indie Series Awards including one in the Best Web Series (Drama) category and once again is the only entry from India to make the cut. Personally, it’s been a big high for me as well with the series, winning me a nomination in the ‘Best Writing (Drama)’ category. It also won the ‘Best Web Series’ in the August edition of the Streaming Awards.
Q: What are your on-going and future projects?
A: I am currently working on a few web series concepts and will start developing screenplays and dialogues.