We must challenge Foreign dramas; Costa
Having a number of popular teledramas to his credit, award-winning director Sunil Costa has called for efforts to enable Sri Lankan teledrama to go global. Having directed miniplays such as ‘Romeo Juliet, ‘Rodha Hathare Manamalaya’, ‘Sihina Wasanthayak’, ‘Piyasa’, ‘Pinsara Dhosthara’, ‘Sudui Usai’ and recently awarded ‘Sudu Andagena Kalu Awidin’, he warns that if the artistes do not act and try to improve the quality and standards of the art of audio-visual medium, Lanka would be far behind some of the smallest countries in South Asia.
He speaks about his newest drama ‘Can you hear me’ and his attempt to go international by releasing it to social media with English subtitles. He hopes that it would be translated to about 200 other languages.
“For the first time in country’s teledrama history we are trying to go global with our drama. This is an initiative we did with the National Rupavahini and if we succeed this would be a massive leap,” Mr. Costa says adding that the both television channel and the producers would financially benefit. He said his teledrama which was released few days ago has already been viewed by more than 50,000 social media users.
He said his newest drama ‘Can you Hear me’ could be watched in any language with subtitles now. “If we can reach at least around 0.001 percent of international audience it would be a big victory. This is the first time that a local teledrama was released on social media with subtitles,” he says.
Highlighting the most important benefit of going international, Mr. Costa says the country’s drama industry would get the international exposure it needs. “Our artistes and technicians like editors, camera directors and art directors would have a chance of getting picked by foreign directors,”.
The experienced director says that teledramas which were now viewed by five to six million Sri Lankans would be increased by several millions when we go global. He thanked National Rupavahini management for the bold initiative it took with the drama team.
He says that the free-to-air concept by the traditional television is gradually getting outdated in the world. “The journey of traditional television is limited. This is going in a different direction now. We should be ready for that change. Our next generation is not a generation who would watch television. They will use social media. The viewing platform of people is gradually changing. The place that was occupied by the radio was taken over by television and the place of television is now rapidly being taken over by the social media. There is an advantage of this. Earlier our audience was limited to Sri Lanka but now we could go to international to show our culture and identity to millions of people. That is the biggest advantage in changing to social media,” he explains.
“Our total audience is around 20 million. How wonderful it would be if we could expand it to around100 million. Our market would be widened. We have really talented artistes. We should not get scared about Indian, South Korean or Turkish productions that are being shown here. In fact we should be able to challenge them,” he states.
“One might question where we would get money to go for such productions. But as soon as you start there would not be money. Everybody start with difficulty. I might not get benefitted for what I have started now but may be those who are going to replace us would,”.
Mr. Costa also said that our artistes should be armed with professional qualifications to produce quality dramas. “What did Turkey do to promote its TV drama industry? It initially started opened schools with professionals who had working experience in the industry as teachers. We too need to get those interested in making drama and films learn it first and get them qualifications. Also those elders like us who are already in the field should be given NVQ levels and we also should study what we don’t know. A grace period of about two years should be given for this transition and later we should allow only qualified artiste to work,”.
“This drama and film school could be opened to foreign students as many students in other South Asian countries would prefer to come to Sri Lanka rather than going to India to learn. This would be another foreign income generator.”
Mr. Costa warns that if we don’t take this seriously and remain static, even smaller South Asian countries like Bhutan would surpass us. “Countries like Nepal have already gone ahead of us and we are losing. If this continues we would not be able to get any position in South Asia despite having large number of talented people with us,”.