Banking on the funny bone

‘Funbucket’ is a popular comedy web series, started in 2015, directed by Harsha Annavarapu, Director, Telugu One Youtube Channel. Since then, every Saturday, at 4pm, a new episode of comedy show in simple Telugu language is released much to the delight of the netizens. No wonder, they have crossed 20 million viewers. The series will be launching its 75th episode this Saturday at 4pm.

Harsha Annavarapu hails from Guntur district and he started his career in 2011 with short films. It was while pursuing his engineering from RBR college, Guntur, he made short films like ‘Stand India’ and ‘Laila Majnu’ that got huge response; he got almost 10k viewers at his first shot. ‘Laila Majnu’ was the big break for him and he got offer from Telugu One to join them as director.

The 26-year-old shares, “I started my journey with short films. From there people started recognising me. Then, we started making several comedy short films in Guntur along with my friends, until we moved for professional jobs to Hyderabad.

After the good response for ‘Laila Majnu’, I got a call from Telugu One’s Youtube channel that they need a director. After joining them, I continued doing comedy shows that included some pranks and concept oriented comedy shows.

I also did almost five web series, each one of which was a failure. After much discussion with my team members, I came up with interesting concept called, ‘Fun Bucket’. I thought, we have many online jokes circulating on WhatsApp, Google and Facebook – so, why can’t we do episode-wise comedy series on YouTube.”

‘Fun Bucket’ started in 2015. “I started with 2-minute video clips, which went viral. I started uploading on my website, but it took a long process to circulate – almost 2 to 3 months. When I went to my village and came back after two months, people started telling me - ‘dude your videos are very popular and superb’, they are circulating on WhatsApp and Facebook. When I checked into the YouTube page – I saw 30k views on my videos.

Everyone in my team was surprised. From there on, we started working seriously on these projects. Our team members are very good and they are all from different places, but live in Hyderabad. Among them Rajesh, Trishul and Harsha were with me since my first work.

One new member joined us recently, Mahesh, who is from Rayalasema. He came to me to work as assistant director. He started his career with ‘Fun Bucket’,” he shares.

On the milestone that ‘Fun Bucket’ has reached, Harsha says, “It’s quite a different feeling. It is only after ‘Fun Bucket’ that people started doing web series in Telugu language. Previously, there used to be only short films, but now it is web series that are more popular.”

“Before shooting, we discuss the jokes, and then on the spot, we develop it further. We are trying to project different types of episode and trying to add up new things. We use natural expressions and we include everything, which is based on current affairs,” he adds. Harsha and his team plan to take ‘Fun Bucket’ to atleast 80 to 100 episodes. Meanwhile, he is planning his first feature film.

By Heena Mishra