Hindi
Paramount launches VooZoo in vMTV and There.com
MUMBAI: Paramount‘s digital entertainment division is launching VooZoo application in MTV‘s vMTV virtual world and Makena‘s There.com.
With VooZoo, vMTV and There.com members can send each other video emoticons called Voohoos, which are made up of video clips from Paramount Pictures‘ library.
The Voohoos last for a few seconds and capture famous one-liners from a gamut of movies including Footloose, Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop and Mean Girls.
Members of both the worlds will be able to purchase the clips for $1 each and use them when chatting with other members.
Furthermore, instead of just quoting lines from pop-culture figures like Cher Horowitz Clueless or Ferris Bueller‘s Ferris Bueller‘s Day Off, members can actually express themselves with the actual movie clip, which plays in a small window above their head.
Over time, movie clips from Paramount Pictures‘ library will be made available to There.com members. All of the movie clips offered will comply with There.com‘s PG-13 environment. Consumers will also have the opportunity to purchase a DVD via a sell-through capability that will pop up once a video clip is selected.
In addition, MTV will offer clips reflecting the best pop-culture moments from its stable of shows.
The VooZoo application is currently in private beta in There.com and will be available in vMTV some time in the next quarter.
VooZoo in vMTV and There.com marks the third migration of the application onto multiple platforms since its debut on Facebook last month.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
