Era of the showrunner, backbone of OTT content

OTT is booming and like any boom has ushered its work culture In turn it has created new job profiles too A new role that assumes supreme importance in the digital space is the showrunnerPut simply he or she is the bridge between various creative heads because OTT shows are sometimes handled by multiple directors particularly in the case of anthology pieces writers as well as producersExplaining the role of a showrunner Suparn Verma codirector of popular web series The Family Man 2 explains The creation of shows on OTT platforms is a bit different from films and television You have showrunners because multiple directors sometimes come on a show and direct various episodes Sometimes two directors including a showrunner direct episodes with another director A showrunner maintains a cohesive vision across the season Sometimes a showrunner may never direct but he maintains the consistency of vision across seasons because shows are not limited in seasonsFor instance the recent Anthology Ray has Sayantan Mukherjee as the showrunnerDirector Srijit Mukherjee who directed two of the four stories in the film defines the role of a showrunner as A showrunner is like a creative producer He takes creative calls and he is the unifying factor of the anthology in this case He has the birds eye view of the anthology bringing the four shorts together and deciding with the platform how each short should beVarious storytellers are credited as showrunners in digital contentFor instance Alankrita Srivastava is the showrunner for Bombay Begums while filmmaker Imtiaz Ali is the showrunner for SheFor Raveena Tandons upcoming digital debut Aranyak has Rohan Sippy as showrunnerHow does having a showrunner make things easierHaving a showrunner is a great asset to the platform and team because there is one guy responsible for everything and he maintains the quality control and consistency across seasons says VermaThe filmmaker adds A show for a platform is like making four feature films in one go Its about writing for four feature films and shooting four feature films which is why platforms like Netflix Amazon or Hotstar sometimes prefer more than one director for a show Sometimes the showrunner is also the director of the show but that again depends on their timelines and workloadAlso Read Manoj Bajpayee on choice of medium Creative people shouldnt have favouritesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever