Celebrities in Mumbai now get their own Bandstand on FB

Facebook is a place where people connect with their friends and family and discover and join conversations about news, entertainment, sports and their broader interests.

Facebook's office in Mumbai is often visited by artists and celebs from across the spectrum and, the Facebook team engages with visiting artists and creators to help them learn about and experiment with new products and features such as Facebook LIVE. That's how the idea of creating FB Bandstand came about, it is an integrated space that combines art with technical support to facilitate Facebook LIVE interactions.

On the launch of FB Bandstand, Saurabh Doshi, head of media partnerships at Facebook said, "Artists and Celebrities from across the world and India are using Facebook LIVE to connect with their fans, interact and engage in real time in an authentic and refreshing way. FB Bandstand is a unique space for talent to be able to go live easily in a creative and fun way when they visit FB office in Mumbai. We hope we get to view many fun and memorable moments created at FB Bandstand."

The room, FB Bandstand, has been designed keeping in mind the creativity, imagination and craftsmanship of local artists, which is reflected in each wall which have its own independent theme, thus also attempting to provide a variety of shoot backgrounds:

The first wall that greets the eye is the 'Garden Wall' and captures the scenery of a garden with a rolling view of the outdoors created through a layered style of depth painting. Combined with other 3D elements, it provides the subject a calm, easy going and candid ambience, that one normally experiences while being in the lap of nature.

The second wall is 'Origami Art Wall', which has interconnected floral patterns interspersed with small origami pyramids that give the impression of golden sun light reflecting on them.

The third wall opposite to this is the 'String Art Wall' that shows a colourful burst of musical and other audio-visual instruments flowing across frames, depicting how the experiences created by them are seamlessly available across mediums, for people to enjoy.

Whether one is a movie-star, a sportsperson, an artist, musician or a journalist - celebrities and public figures have come to truly enjoy using Facebook LIVE as a way to interact authentically with their fans. Facebook LIVE has been the focal point of many conversations lately and we wanted to go a step further by providing a space where public figures could go live easily and experience the goodness of Facebook Live as an interactive video format in a fun and refreshing way.

The streaming feature of Facebook LIVE encourages #nofilter spontaneity with which viewers can enjoy real-time not just as spectators, but as a truly engaged audience adding their comments to the conversation or asking questions and even emoting along the stream's timeline using the reaction buttons.

Apart from providing ample choice of backgrounds, the focus is also to make available a simple array of equipment that allows one to explore various audio-visual formats of LIVE - from a simple camera phone to a multi-camera set-up that can be accessed easily. There is also a choice of various musical instruments and other props for artists to use.