Entertainment
Sidharth Malhotra learns tricks for Bollywood from Oscar legend Richard Taylor
By Radhika Bhirani
Wellington: Bollywood actor Sidharth Malhotra on Monday met Richard Taylor, New Zealand’s creative genius and five-time Oscar winning talent, here. He says exploring the filmmaking hub of this Pacific nation was a revelation.
Sidharth also sampled what went behind the scenes of Hollywood trilogies like “The Lord Of The Rings” and “The Hobbit”, apart from having a chat with Taylor, who has won five Oscars and multiple BAFTA trophies for his work in visual effects, costume and make-up.
The actor entered the world-famous Weta Workshop with a childlike enthusiasm, and kept getting mesmerised at every stage of his tour. The armour, weapons, creatures, prosthetics, props and costumes from several films that the company has worked on, are part of the eclectic display.
“It is amazingly planned and very work-friendly. It was great to see what goes behind the scene and what goes into making a particular film. Also, it was wonderful to see how Sir Richard Taylor is about his work and how connected and involved he is with his crew.
“Clearly, he’s a genius who is not concerned by anything other than his work,” Sidharth told IANS after his meeting with Taylor here.
He was also inquisitive about the making of the costumes and make-up process.
The actor, who visited the facility — a major tourist attraction here — as part of his appointment as an Indian ambassador of Tourism New Zealand, is a “Lord Of The Rings” fan himself. And so, whether it was the miniatures, the sword, the sculptures or the bows and arrows — he was fascinated by it all.
If given a chance to transform into a character, Sidharth says he would have chosen the “lone ranger” Aragorn from “The Lord Of The Rings”, a film that Taylor worked on closely with the legendary filmmaker Peter Jackson.
The 30-year-old also got to sample the prosthetics department, and received a memento by Taylor, who is a lauded as a dignitary here.
Sidharth spoke to Taylor about the making of prosthetics, costumes for period dramas and about a future collaboration with Bollywood.
Shankar’s “I” was the first Indian film to take the services of Weta Workshop, whose creative portfolio also includes “Avatar”, “District 9”, “The Adventures of Tintin”, “Elysium”, “Krampus”, “Warcraft” and more. Taylor also expressed an interest to join creative forces with more Indian filmmakers.
After meeting the crew here, Sidharth felt that if Bollywood could learn something from this place, it should be to “get people from non-film background” to work in design teams.
Later, the “Ek Villain” star also visited the Park Road Post Production, a premier post production facility owned by Peter Jackson’s production company, in the Miramar suburb here. From the foley unit, where the sounds are recreated using a variety of materials, to the sound mixing department and recording studio — Sidharth toured it all. The experience, surely, was memorable for him.
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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