Magic Bus
Designs, doodles, abstracts and photography — Magic Bus is not your usual studio. Everything is bright, loud and different. But, Madhavan Palanisamy and Radha Rathi, the minds behind it all, are quiet and subtle. “We are non-social people,” admits Radha while Madhavan adds: “People who know us, know us by the work we do.”
Their projects are varied — from photo shoots for Vivek Karunakaran's fashion line-up to the ‘Whistle Podu', the promo song for Chennai Super Kings (though the project's taken up by an ad agency, the video was shot and directed by Madhavan). “We collaborated with the agency, and they wanted to something different — such as a property for CSK and their fans. We thought we'd just do something low-key. We got together a few friends players, and shot a video,” explains Madhavan.
Soon, the video became a rage, with more versions coming up. “The first time we shot the video, we couldn't catch Dhoni. So, we shot it with Raina and Hayden, and whoever else was available. When the song became really popular and started appearing on TV, we roped him in. This year, Magic Bus isn't doing anything with CSK, but I'm doing the official photography for the team,” he says.
Sixxu Podu
EmCee Gonzales and Nivas Prasanna wanted to bring in the flavour of the city to celebrate Chennai Super Kings this season. So, they wrote a song and composed a tune, in a genre that is rarely sung in Tamil — ‘Rap Kuthu'. This duo's brainchild ‘Sixxu podu', a fan video egging on the lions to roar, is now making waves on YouTube.
“Sixxu Podu is a song from a person representing Chennai, in our signature style. In fact, the song is a mix of rap and folk. This is our city's music, and the flavour of the song goes nowhere outside the city. The lyrics and the accent have also been carefully moulded to be completely Chennai,” says EmCee Gonzales, the lyricist.
The song, uploaded only a couple of weeks ago, has over 10,000 views already. A video was shot later, with one dance step throughout the song. The step is “an amalgamation of Hussain Bolt's famous victory pose and the traditional Billy Bowden way of gesturing a six”. Te video also depicts Chennai's most iconic and local flavours. “The video has been made in such a way that over any period of time, people who love this city can come back to it. We have captured places such as the Iyengar Bakery, Venkateshwara Boli Stall, monumental eat outs here. It took us a week of sleepless nights for the song and another two weeks for the video,” he says. The song has also been made into a caller tune in all networks across the country.
