By Siddhi Jain
New Delhi, Dec 22 (IANSlife): 'Saath Saath Mein', an original music video featuring the winners and mentors of digital-only musical reality show 'Smule iDiva 1, 2, 3... Riyaaz', launched on Monday. Indian American singer Lisa Mishra, who is one of the show's mentors, feels that in times of hardship, music is the ultimate alleviater of pain.
"It's not just this year, I think historically we have "peace time" songs. I feel music is such a heavenly experience, anytime we face difficulty as a people and a world, we turn to music, it's a great healer. I'm not surprised this happened in 2020 too. I think music has helped a lot of people get through what could easily be viewed as the toughest year in my generation's life. As always, music is an uplifting and healing element," Mishra told IANSlife.
The song also features Jassie Gill and Kusha Kapila, and talks about how when you have a song in your heart, you should get together and sing it "saath saath mein."
The reality show amassed the love of over 15 million music lovers in a six-month run time. Produced by ILN Studios in partnership with Times Bridge, "Saath Saath Mein" was composed, recorded and shot remotely, connecting 25 winners and 3 mentors from across the country, without a physical meet. The song recordings were digitally stitched by Ankur Tewari to create the musical score. A music video was spliced together without an on-ground crew - but with enthusiastic winners who danced away to glory using their phone cameras. The footage was then edited using the animation to transform home-style footage into a stylized music video.
Mishra says about the remote shooting experience: "It was an interesting challenge to go from a location shoot to an end-to-end remotely shot production."
"Shooting remotely was difficult at first but it sort of armed us for what would be the next year of our lives. For most digital creators, we just had to become independent and self-reliant over this summer. Initially it was a lot of learn again because I've been shooting by myself for over a decade but after having a crew and a team in this industry, you have to refine those old skills again and become completely independent," she said.
"I think the talent was exceptional and they exceeded my expectations, although I knew we were going to see a few talented folks every week, the decision was pretty tough in choosing a winner. We've had incredible competitors and major talent on the app. I think a lot of them could have serious careers if they wanted. Mentoring them was easy because of how talented they were. It didn't leave me with a lot of work to do," she said about the participants.
'Saath Saath Mein' is available at iDIVA's Youtube Channel and Smule app.