'HIT' OTT: A self publishing platform

With the advent of Over the Top (OTT) platforms, the producers heaved a sigh of relief since their problem of finding cinema theatres which could attract the audience by and large was solved in the backdrop of the pandemic. The Covid19 frightened the movie lovers across the world to visit the movie houses. They are afraid that there might be one asymptomatic person who could spread the disease in a closed atmosphere.

The OTT platforms provided a solution to some extent. However, only a small percentage of movie lovers world-wide could watch the movies on these platforms though relatively they are cheaper to watch on a home theatre or a smart TV if not mobile phones and tabs. Still, the OTT platforms like Netflix, Disney-Hot Star, Amazon Prime, and our own AHA and scores of others made their way into the homes of movie lovers across the world.

In what could be described as panacea for the maladies of small producers, a non-resident Telugu (NRT) Ranjit Kollu along with his friend Venkat created an OTT platform 'HIT' for the convenience of the producers who could release their latest movies directly to the audience. He describes the platform as self-publishing. The producers could decide on whether people could watch the movie for how many days, how many hours, in what time zone and at what time. With a small listing fee, the movies could be exhibited on HIT platform, he said. In spite of all these OTT platforms, the small producers who make low-budget movies with good content are yet to find the right platform to release their movies. However, the Hit.Movie platform caters to not only just small movies but movies of all sizes. Given the existing constraints in India cinema this platform would benefit the small movies to reach larger audiences across the world. HIT intends to be an overseas streaming platform for big and small movies.

The interesting point is that the producers could decide the price of tickets to watch the movie. At present, there is provision on the HIT for watching the movies made in thirty languages.

Ranjit says that there is no necessity of monthly subscriptions. The movie lovers could log in and watch the movie by paying the price of a ticket movie-wise. The movie producers could present their movies to the audience in 150 plus countries in a week. The ticket revenue would be immediately transferred to the connected bank accounts of the producers, says he.

Referring to the latest technology available on the HIT, Ranjit said that the software on the OTT platform would detect the TV resolution and its configuration to show the movie in normal stream or full HD or 4K stream.

Moreover, piracy protection is not available on many platforms. The HIT technicians would provide technological piracy protection for all movies.

The flexibility here is that they could release the movies in theatres in Andhra Pradesh and on the HIT in the rest of the world.

Ranjit said that the HIT is presently available to movie producers to release their content in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and of course India.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shyam Sundar Matham

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