With less than ten days left for Oasis, the Oasis English Press sat down with Anshal Shukla, the StuCCAn for the Department of Visual Media (DVM), for a quick chat about how they are preparing for the fest.

‘There has been a difference in knowledge transfer because of COVID hitting us the past two years, but I’m sure we’ve bridged up the gap by working harder this time,’ said Anshal. DVM has evolved from being a “CCTV” department that used to record videos to a full-fledged tech-supplying department that provides support to all three fests the campus hosts. They work on developing applications, websites, servers, and any other software that a club or a department requires. They recently launched the Oasis 2022 mobile application, which allows any BITSian to book tickets to professional shows, order food, search for events, and make payments.

According to Anshal, the only major hurdle the department faced was the relatively short gap between BOSM and Oasis this year, forcing the workforce to split so as to manage the workload for both fests. Post BOSM, the mid-semester exams and Diwali break also prevented them from working at full capacity. Anshal reiterated that the department was compensating for the lost time by working long hours on an everyday basis. He shared, ‘Our workforce stays up till 4–5 AM to work on multiple events. We have almost  4–5 hours of StuCCA meetings every day and we also interact with clubs to look out for whatever issues they may face and rectify them.’ He also thanked the StuCCA for being supportive of his decisions.

According to Anshal, the only prerequisites for joining DVM are an interest to learn and the willpower to work under high-pressure situations. He claims to have learnt a lot, especially in the field of coding, through DVM.

‘When we started, our aim was to pull off at least what we had done in 2019 after this huge gap but we are now confident that we will be able to do something much bigger than what we did in 2019,’ said Anshal. In order to make sure that the 50th edition is a special one, DVM plans on releasing a mobile game that they have been working on for more than a year. It will be a first-person shooter taking place inside the graphically recreated map of campus. Anshal promised that DVM has made sure not to leave any stone unturned when it comes to making this Oasis the best one so far.