Indian
Cinema completes a full-blown 100 years & looking back in time Indian
Cinema seems no less than a wonderful epochal journey. It was the year of 1913 when
the legend of the Indian film industry Dr. Dadasaheb Phalke presented the
Indian audience with his first mookie Raja
Harishchandra. Little did he realize that he was unleashing a form of
entertainment that would probably never loose its charm. The Indian cinema
never looked back thereafter. We moved from mookie to the first talkie Alam Ara. The Indian cinema progressed
to making coloured motion pictures adding the flavor of music to most recent 3D
& special effects features. We saw Indian cinema mature enormously with the
advent of time. The bold scenes, anti heroes, unmarried pregnancies, run away
brides, thugs, mafia raj, world wars, mythology, animation and social issues
all found a place in the Indian cinema; gaining popularity. The moviemakers
boldly picked up prevailing issues & threw it in your face. And boy don’t
they still do it.
We
have also seen the film industry grow commercially at an unprecedented rate.
These 100 years have given the film producers, distributors and various other
new players that came to be associated with the film industry; an impetus to
growth. Cinema has not just provided entertainment but has also touched lives
& been a source of income for millions. This is probably the only industry
that has made use of a host of technological boons given to the society in one
single business all in an endeavor to give a complete movie experience to its
audience. The cinema loved its audience.
Due
to this the business of making cinema also saw a sea of change. Earlier the
film makers / distributors had a single source of making money i.e the
theatrical revenues but as times changed the other forms of entertainment
started gaining popularity. The big screen made way for the small screens into
peoples homes, the world saw the invasion of internet, technology advanced and
piracy made its way into the Indian cinema market. The first Indian chain of
cinema theatres was owned by Jamshedji Framji Madan who distributed about 10
films over the Indian sub-continent annually. Marketing of films was not a popular
thing back then. Raghupati Venkaiah Naidu was a pioneer in
taking Indian films to an International level. He travelled to different
regions in Asia, to promote film work.
Cinema
slowly started gaining popularity in the 20th century. The common man
could afford movie tickets and audiences thronged to the theatres. The film
making business came to be considered as a lucrative industry for both the
producers & the actors. Big budget films started gaining grounds and film
industry also came to be associated with the notorious Mumbai underworld in the
1980s. Though commercial cinema grew throughout the 1980s, banks &
financial institutions shied away from lending money to the film makers and
hence the association with the underworld stemmed from financial requirements. That
changed eventually.
Each
vertical associated with the Indian cinema was growing. The queues outside
Cinema halls told the story. The second line of business that is the film
distributors (earlier negligible) had started forming their own clout. They had
emerged to be the next generation film makers. Indian cinema started forming
early contact offshore with its films making inroads into the Soviet Union,
Middle East, Southeast Asia and China. Some of the mainstream film stars like
Raj Kapoor gained international fame across Asia and Eastern Europe. This was
just not true for the hindi films, it was the likes of Satyajit Ray that also
gained recognition on an international scale. The Indian films had made to the
inside of the foreign lands. The challenge was to market the Indian film on the
foreign land.
Parallelly
marketing of films as a concept had started gaining ground back home. The1940s
to 1970s saw an infusion of romance and action movies. It was during that time
that industry saw hits like Sholay, Do Bhiga Zameen & Deewar that made
massive collections at the box office possible. Film makers had slowly started
realizing the importance of marketing and this gave birth to a whole new
association. A full fledged marketing team, a formal marketing budget came to
be associated in the Indian film making. We were adopting the west.
Following
the Hollywood model, many film and entertainment companies realized the
importance of reducing their dependence on the actor/ actresses to make the
film a success. This lead its way to the studio model. Under the studio model
the production, distribution and the marketing of the film is in the hands of a
single entity. One of the biggest challenge in film business is taking the
film to the theaters. In earlier times
lot of films remained in cans and never saw the light of the day and this
resulted in lot of producers going out business. With studio model the cost of film came to be
recovered from multiple sources, and it came to be seen or still is one way to
increase the chances of profitability for each film. The producers formed a
clout with the distribution & substantial theatre chains to sell each movie
with pre-decided revenue share. Distributors started financing the films at
various stages & acquired distribution rights on a global scale. They could
acquire films at various stages & market it under its own name. A clout of
actors also came to be associated with these organized distribution players. Due
to this the actors started charging a comparatively lower fee, which kept the
cost of a movie, and the incremental returns were then shared under a profit
sharing model based on the commercial success of the movie.
With
the advent of studio model lot of creativeness came into movie making. Earlier
the moviemakers were selling hope,
thrill, emotion in their endeavor to touch lives, but the age of realistic
movies was missing. The movie makers were now experimenting with changing
times. But these efforts were restricted upto an extent by government owned
National Film Development Corporation. This is slowly changing now. We saw a lot
of films released in the last few years on social issues which have been
appreciated by audiences and have been commercially successful too.
Simultaneously
the music industry had started making its way, the television industry was
growing & the internet had started penetrating. The world was undergoing
rapid technological development & the entertainment industry used each
vertical to de-risk its business. With
the entry of 3G and 4G the time is not far away when the consumer will be able
to watch movies on their mobile phones. Small beginning has already happened with
YouTube and similar other music sites clouding people’s lives giving the viewer
an opportunity to watch the music & trailers at a minimal/no cost. This
will throw another stream of revenue for the film producers.
The
potential of Indian cinema is also seen by the global studios with many of them
already present in India. With already lot of organized Indian players present,
the structure of the film industry is set to be corporatized which in turn
brings in a lot of professionalism and transparency into the industry. The time
is not far off when the Indian film industry will be on a global scale like
many of the Indian industries. We will have the gleaming lady on the
international scale. Who knows the next Brad Pitt or the Ryan Gostling would
compete on the winner trophy at the Manikchand Indian Cinema Awards.
Snehal