Entertainment
Craig and I had a blast mixing ‘Uttama Villain’: Kunal Rajan
Chennai: Sound designer Kunal Rajan says working with Oscar-winning sound mixer Craig Mann in Kamal Haasan’s Tamil musical drama “Uttama Villain” was fabulous. He says the two had a blast mixing the film, slated for release on April 2.
“Craig and I have worked together on a few Hollywood projects. When I was starting ‘Uttama Villain’, I asked him if he would be interested to mix an Indian film. He was so excited. He was telling me how he had just done a musical titled ‘Whiplash’, and was very excited to do another musical,” Kunal told.
Craig, who pocketed an Oscar for his sound mix in “Whiplash”, was extremely collaborative and gave it his very best to make the movie sound the way it does, said Kunal, who had previously worked with Kamal in “Vishwaroopam”.
“In ‘Uttama Villain’, sound is going to be much more realistic, unlike ‘Vishwaroopam’, where everything was larger-than-life. Everything that’s shown on screen has to convey emotions. It’s a film with strong emotional content,” he said.
“Vishwaroopam” was an action spy-thriller set in present day, while portions of “Uttama Villain” will take audiences back to the eighth century.
He said it was challenging to reproduce the right sounds of a bygone era.
“There are a lot of period instruments such as swords and trumpets. It was challenging to capture these sounds. But thanks to a very good foley team that has worked on some big Hollywood projects, we pulled it off. We used different props to recreate the sound of several period instruments from the eighth century,” he said.
For great sound, Kunal believes the relationship between a sound designer and a film’s music composer should be strong.
Ramesh Aravind-directed “Uttama Villain” has music by Ghibran, who had also worked on “Vishwaroopam 2”.
“I’ve been extremely lucky enough to have Ghibran in ‘Uttama Villain’. Ghibran and I started talking about ‘Uttama Villain’ even before we even started working on it. When we knew we were going to work together, we started discussing about minute details,” he said.
“For instance, there’s a scene where Kamal waves to thousands of people in a mall. With so many people screaming, a scene like this also requires music and it has to go in tandem with the screaming. Both should be equally loud but shouldn’t overlap with each other.
“It’s very important to have these kinds of discussions with the music director because if he doesn’t know what I’m doing in sound, he’ll do his own thing in music. Finally, when they’re put together, they clash,” he added.
Kunal, who will be working with Kamal on his next project as well, said his knowledge of sound in Indian films and American style of sound mixing got him an opportunity to work with the actor.
“Even though I know how Indian films sound, my knowledge comes from an American style of sound mixing. When I do an Indian film, I can’t mix it like I mix an American film and at the same time I can’t mix it like I mix an Indian film either. What I try to bring to the table is a little bit of both American and Indian style of sound in mixing,” he said.
“If you go very subtle like American, it doesn’t work in India because sound quality in most Indian theatres is not that great. When you marry some aesthetics of the West with Indian aesthetics, I think it sounds beautiful because there are some things that are good in American way of mixing and some things that are good in Indian way,” said Kunal.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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