NEW WAYS to work …part 2
CROWDSOURCING, TV STYLE
It pays to be part of the ‘spontaneous’ audience at a reality TV show
A year ago, had he been asked to laugh for no reason in particular, Vishal Suvarna would have found it embarrassing. Today, it’s all in a day’s work. Suvarna’s unusual career started when he was a final-year science student. He signed up to be one of the several faces that reality show cameras like to fleetingly acknowledge. The attraction was the Rs 500 per shift it fetched him in 2010 and a possible future as a production manager. However, the recent boom of talent and chat shows has ensured that clapping and laughing for the camera is now a source of livelihood for Suvarna.
Among his fellow rent-a-laughers are a few middle-aged housewives and retired men but most are youngsters who cannot otherwise afford to pay their bills without this ‘career’ in hand.
Crowd gathering for TV shows is the job of various ‘co-ordinators’ and ‘suppliers’ to whom the production houses outsource their requirements. If it’s a talk show, they ask for middleaged “aunties” and “uncles” who are otherwise ignored by most channels.
For most shows, jeans-clad youngsters are preferred. Girls who are too dark are made to sit in the back row and the front row generally consists of aspiring models who work only on a nine-hour shift basis.
Says Pappu Lekhraj, a popular name in this business of crowd sourcing: “A good-looking crowd comes at a premium.”
A job that only entails laughing, clapping and dancing might sound easy but it involves a lot of uncertainty and some discomfort — unpredictable timings, endless waiting and a strictly monitored work environment. Phones have to be switched off, meals postponed and the bladder controlled for hours. Lunch is the only assured meal and it could vary from a packed sandwich to a plate of rice.
“Sometimes they ask us to dance when we are dead tired and hungry,” says Meeta, who is still hurt about the fact that she was once rejected for being “too short”.
Contrary to what is seen on television, audience reactions are tightly monitored and directed. When the audience is asked to guffaw, it has to, even if it means tickling your neighbour to get the required effect.
Suvarna has been witnessing the circus of reality shows from the ringside too long to watch its edited version on TV. “It’s all acting,” says the veteran audience member who says that he has seen regulars in the paid crowd circuit appear on reality shows with fake problems.
At most new shows, few in the audience know what to expect. At the beginning of one serious political talkshow this reporter attended, one of the members was heard asking his co-ordinator: “Aunty, who is going to sing?”
You party, they drive
On-call drivers are now steering revellers to safety
Around five years ago, when stopping cars and sniffing began to turn into one of the most profitable nocturnal exercises for the Mumbai Traffic Police, three youngsters named Ankur Vaid, Saurabh Shah, and Mishal Raheja decided to spoil the party a bit.
Given the series of crackdowns on drunk driving, these three party animals came up with the idea of a driver-on-call service for people like them. “Of course, they were cynical but the fact that we would have availed such a service if it existed, gave us the confidence to move forward,” says Ankur Vaid. It soon led to the birth of a service called Party Hard Drivers (PHD). “We have always been against drunk driving but when one of our close friends met with an accident in a similar situation, we decided to launch PHD,” says Vaid. The three pooled in Rs 5 lakh as seed capital and launched the company in December 2007.
One can call PHD or tweet for a driver to take you back home from wherever you are partying or take you from one party to another in the comfort of your own car. Their drivers reach the desired venue for a round trip or a drop back home within 45 minutes. The venture received an overwhelming response from people who are not just regular social butterflies but also celebrities. “Due to the city’s appetite for partying, the demand for drivers is no longer seasonal,” says Vaid, whose venture started off with a team of 40 drivers and now has 150 drivers on board. Initially, drivers were provided between 10 pm and 3 am for Rs 500 with an additional overtime charge of Rs 50 per hour but now they have expanded their services to include corporate and outstation trips during the day.
Every uniformed driver on board is tested for driving skills and a thorough background check is done. Shambu Yadav, who has been a driver with Party Hard for over two years, enjoys the six-hour shift. “We received training which taught us how to greet customers,” says Yadav. Among other things, drivers are also asked not to argue with inebriated customers who lose their temper, reveals Vaid, who is now planning to launch the initiative in other major metros in India. PHD received a boost when it handled Tom Cruise’s travel arrangements during his visit to Mumbai to promote Mission Impossible 4.
New Delhi’s Nikhil Saigal and Shiven Madan have started a similar service in the city called Home Safe that saves car owners the bother of worring about traffic and cops. The service can be availed at any time, day or night.
No comments:
Post a Comment