Mudra reaches New York Festival 2005 finals in TV category

Mudra Communications has won the finalist status at the New York Festival 2005. What makes this news sweeter is the fact that the agency has won the nomination in the TV/Film category.

For the uninitiated, while Indian agencies have had their share of nominations and awards in international events, these felicitations have been mostly confined to print and outdoor categories. Getting noticed for work in the TV/Film category has been few and far between.

Titled 'Save Water', the TVC is a public service campaign sponsored by consumer electronics company, Electrolux.

Elated about the nomination, Hemant Misra, president, Mudra Communications, says, "This, indeed, is great news for us coming at close of the year. What's even better is that we have won the nomination in the TV category.”

The film, as is the case with many public service campaigns, was aired only for a brief period because of low budgets. And for the little time that it was on air, Mudra executives say, the ad received a positive response.

Save Water opens on a man in an arid land, pumping the lever of a water handpump. After several attempts, a tiny drop of water appears at the mouth of the handpump. Right at that moment, the camera pulls back and what we see is that the man is actually standing in a shallow vessel, partially filled with a watery liquid.

It's actually not water but his sweat that has trickled down because of the extreme physical activity. And that drop of water meets the same fate, like many before, of evaporating in the hot air. The ad ends with some advice – 'Water, use it wisely'.

Talking about the film, Saurabh Dasgupta, creative director, Mudra Communications, who has written the film, says, "The film, in a symbolic way, puts forth a situation, in a rather startling manner, that in the coming years may become a sad reality.”

While White Light Moving Pictures has produced the film, Arjun Mukherjee has directed the movie. The cinematographer of Save Water is Arvind Kannabiran, who has also worked on Ketan Mehta-Aamir Khan's The Rising.

Earlier this year, Mudra had won 11 nominations in print and outdoor at the NY Fest; one of which fetched the agency a Bronze World Medal. This was for the winning entry 'Polio Ladder' created for Pahel, Dainik Jagran's social cell. The team that has worked on the campaign include Amitava Sengupta, ex-creative director, Sandeep Basu, associate creative director and Dasgupta.

Since the list of nominations is long, the nominations have been clubbed category-wise for the sake of convenience. The five nominations under Press include campaigns done for McDonald's, Godrej FairGlow, HBO and two ads for Dabur's Nature Care. In the ambient media category, the work done for Felix Lounge Bar (for Kanpur based cinema Rave), Krack Cream and NGOs Sidh and Pahal (two entries) were the finalists. The 11th nomination is for a poster campaign for Samsung in the outdoor category.

© 2004 agencyfaqs!