Playmetv: Taking online film education to India, Spain

Arjun Chatterji, 30, MD, Playmetv is a masters in Chinese, has done a short stint in advertising and filmmaking. His mentors are Nik Powell and Bill Gates. His mantra is an innate self-belief, inherent creativity and a personal vision that drives him to say nothing is impossible.

His love for celluloid made him learn Chinese and it was in Shanghai that he found his true calling filmmaking. He was born and brought up in London, but with strong Indian roots.

A graduate from Edinburgh University, Arjun started his career in advertising but soon found happiness in putting together a handful of short films. Not happy being just a film-maker, Arjun decided to turn entrepreneur and took his love for cinema online with Playmetv.

“We are launching the world’s first online global film school. So, I am trying to connect different trades of industry around the world from India to Spain, to Mexico, to the UK. It will primarily be online education using interactive video content,” he said. 

Innumerable rejections did not deter Arjun to continue his mission of creating a one of a kind online creative academy. Not only has he managed to get private investors on board but is also collaborating with National Film and Television School and National Endowment for Science, Technology and Arts.

Arjun generates revenue from three sources; subscriptions, theatre download and advertisements.

He helps to serve the world with its online experience by the end of the year. Initially, a service for the UK, he looks to take the Playmetv to Spain and India by 2010

“The Indian film industry is booming. We have 40 odd productions being shot in London alone. So, that seems to be a fantastic market. But what we found in India when I traveled out there in November is that the film industry is taking off but does not necessarily have the infrastructure to support it.”

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18’s exclusive interview with Arjun Chatterji:

Q: Will it be just film education?

A: Yes, just film education for the moment but it can be scaleable to different disciplines within the creative industry as well. So, we are looking at 2-3 years to roll that out to music, drama and theatre.

Q: What was the hardest part of getting it done?

A: The hardest part is you don’t have a track record.

Q: So, people did not take you seriously?

A: They did not but my enthusiasm and energy did come through. I was constantly knocking on people’s doors and taking 1000 rejections.

Q: What kind of numbers are you targeting initially?

A: Initially, I am targeting quite small numbers. It is going to be quite an exclusive film school. So, 3,000 members within UK and in year 2 they will broaden to 10,000 members across India and Spain as well and by third year we are hoping for 25,000-30,000 members

Q: But filmmaking is about touch and feel. It is about hands-on experience and about going up there with the film camera.

A: It is very difficult because film makers love to have that one-on-one interaction, they love the hands on experience but what we are really trying to do is combine and integrate online and offline experience together. So we have got delivery partners across the country where you can learn about theory online and interact with mentors and tutors, industry practitioners online and then you go offline and network with other film practitioners, find out sources of different service providers and collaborate in that way. So it’s really a platform for collaboration.

Q: Are you looking at getting back into the directors chair?

A: I still write all the time, I write my own scripts. I traveled to China last year to the Shanghai International Film Festival pitching two scripts there. I am still very much in touch with that creative side

Q: you talked about trying to bridge the gap-how do you propose to do that?

A: It is about networking, it is about education as well. We found a lot of investors that we are talking to did not know how to invest in films; what returns they were going to get?

Q: What are the returns on investments so for?

A: It is very unreliable. In the film industry, there is obviously so many films coming out and releasing at the same time that your strategy has to be absolutely spot on. The investments can be very lucrative.

Q: Banks in the UK, are they easy to access in terms of financing for films?

A: I think you have to come with certain finance to the table and they will provide that gap financing

Q: Who are the people in the UK who would typically invest in a creative movement at this point in time? Is private equity looking at you at all?

A: Private equity is and hedge fund investors. We find a lot of investors in the city wanting to invest in creative initiatives as well.

Q: What are your plans in diversification? What more do you want to do? Are there ideas you are toying around with?

A: I really want to develop this online platform at the moment because I think it is hugely scalable into different sectors. So, it will start off as an education platform but scale up into mentorship, recruitment and the film distribution platform as well.

Q: What about the skills development platform?

A: Absolutely. It is a continuous professional development. The way we set up our film school is that you don’t stop learning at some one point, it is continuous throughout your career and that is really what the government is now trying to stress in this country and it’s a huge area of growth.

In terms of the downturn, the global economic scenario at the moment, I think people turn back to training in education in order to in enforce their skills.

Q: There is a lot of talk of trying to corporatise it but hasn’t really taken off. The money is coming in and the investors are coming in but the infrastructure and the ecosystem hasn’t really developed?

A: Exactly, that is still lacking. There are amazing schools, Whistling Woods was recently set up as a private film school and then there is the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) as well. Those are fantastic film schools. Some of those key skills they were just learning on the job was that there wasn’t necessarily a school they could go to. If they were to go to that school, it was prohibitively expensive and inaccessible. So, we found the gap in the market there to teach specialized skills.