A good beginning with technology
That technology is a double-edged sword needs no explanation. It’s proven conclusively in the very field we all love — movies. If someone thinks that putting a good quality movie with a lot of goodies on a DVD and selling it to movie-loving public is a good idea, someone else comes up with the nasty ploy of packing 5 low-quality movies on a DVD and selling it for cheap on the foot-path.
This ugly head of piracy crops up possibly nowhere else more than India and China. So, the beheading too has to be done in the very same regions of the world. In India, two new efforts have begun in the recent past.
First, it was Moser Baer with their low-cost VCDs (starting at Rs. 28) and DVDs (starting at Rs. 34). They have started selling through stores and also online. Agreed that their collection is at its infancy — not more than 153 titles in any language. It will take time for the big movie bosses and home video companies to come around and see the logic. If renting a pirated DVD is going to cost Rs. 30-40, as a consumer, am I not better off buying an original for the same price?
Now, Rajshri — the grand old production house and the makers of Maine Pyaar Kiya and Hum Aapke Hain Koun more recently — have perhaps triggered off an online revolution in India. They put out Vivah, their latest offering, online for $9.99),at the same time as the theatrical release, a la Bubble. They have the movies like the earlier-mentioned blockbusters for free online viewing and for download at $4.99 a piece! They have non-Rajshri movies like Hera Pheri and excellent good old serials like Malgudi Days too. I was dumbfounded when I learnt about this initiative. Yes, Rajshri might be trying to garner a first-mover advantage; but we can’t disregard the anti-piracy effects.
It may be early days for both these ventures. But to me, they hold promise.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
having been initiated in torrents a few days ago – i am really skeptical. why would folks shell out even $5 bucks to buy a movie when they can download the same dvd-quality movie, sometimes a better version, with all those annoying macrovision enabled adverts and non-skippable warnings removed. greedy mpaa and the other powers that be have their heads up their stinky asses. period.
randramble, you bring up a wonderful point here about online distribution. I’m surprised we have not had too many discussions about it. I was extremely surprised when I saw Vivaah available for download for 9.99 the day it released in the theaters. In a place like the US, it’s a great way to reach those people who live in areas where there arent Indian theaters closeby and even for the student population, majority of whom do not own a car.
Online distribution is a great way to reach out to a mass audience. Also, promotion online is cheaper and more effective nowadays. It’s a great way for short filmmakers to expose their work to the world, and in some cases, perhaps make a little money out of it.
wb, all said and done, it is like a chor-police game yaar. The manufacturers will come up with higher end copyright protection, and the geeks will build another software to break it and pirate it. It will be a neverending game. It all has to head towards a point where content just becomes free like network television, and advertising runs the industry.
By the way, Sydney Pollack’s next film is a pretty big budget one on the Bush Vs. Gore farcical election and Florida recount. This film is actually even skipping theatrical and going directly for online download. I am not sure if they are doing free streaming or paid downloads. But the face of distribution is changing considerably.
Vijay: good to know your thoughts. But if advertising runs the industry, wont it also end up dictating terms and won’t we end up with something like television?
Advertisers are slowly getting more and more creative with their work, and the emphasis nowadays is in ensuring that promotion is not blatant and obvious. Unfortunately, the nature of entertainment is such that if it has to be free or extremely low cost, it has to succumb to advertising in order to generate revenue. And industries in general, following the Google model are moving towards freely accessible content. In the digital age, piracy now is simply beyond anybody’s control and they cannot put a cap on it. The only way out in my opinion is to offer a better quality than the pirates, at the same cost – FREE. The flip side, you bundle some advertising with it, and people would rather give one or two minutes of their time for better quality, than give one or two dollars.