Audience To Blame ! Really?
This post is in response to KK’s guest blog post and to some extent Anurag Kashyap’s earlier cry for help to everyone on PFC to go out and support a number of small films releasing around the same time. I completely understand the sincerity and passion for good cinema that these two posts represented. While, I admire both KK and AK and a fan of their work, I disagree with some of their fundamental points. Both Anurag and KK seem to blame the audience for failure of alternate cinema. That’s where I would like to disagree, respectfully.
And, I would like to claim that I represent the entire audience community, from villages to cities of various sizes and NRIs when I make this case. I have been part of different segments of the audience community at different points in my life. I grew up in a village where my only window into cinema world was through my visiting cousin who lived in Delhi and would narrate Sholay to me scene by scene, dialog by dialog. My first exposure to moving images on screen was a “Chand Chhap Urea” commercial that a moving van used to bring to remote corners of India. I also lived in a small town which boasted of only one theatre with benches for back rows (VIP Class) and mats on the ground for the front rows. Every morning two people on a pedal rickshaw would go around town shouting on a mouth piece “Bhaiyo behano, , apke shahar mein naya shahkar aya hai, jismein so and so hero hai, so and so heroine ha…” To this date, I have no idea what shahkar means, but at that time I used to be so fascinated, my eyes would follow the rickshaw from my school class room window until it would disappear down the main road which ran through the middle of the town. I also lived in some B or C class cities of various sizes that usually had anywhere from 4 to 10 cinema halls in varying conditions. I also spent time in a university town which was again, kind of smaller than a C class city but had 4 cinema halls and our own university theatres. This is where I first had the opportunity to watch Hollywood films as this small city had the audience for it because of students and faculty being from all around India and some even being from around the world, from countries that India could claim to be the leader of such as Nepal, Bhutan, Palestine. (Many years later got confused why Palestinians wanted another state, I always thought they had one already).
I also had the opportunity to live and experience most of our big A class metros, all of them, except Calcutta. I watched films in legendary landmark theatres such as Metro, New Excelcior and Liberty in Bombay, Plaza, Anupam, Regal, Priya and many others in Delhi, went back and saw them being converted into multiplexes. Now a days I live in California and once in a while I go to Naaz in Fremont to watch films and get transported back to my days in C class towns and cities, No, not by the films but by the condition of the theatres. (Naaz owner probably takes pride in the condition of his theatre and keeping us nostalgic about small towns of India, that’s why he never repairs the toilets where water keeps flowing and he never does anything about the smell). I could be considered part of the NRI audience now, even though I have my doubts if I am the one that YRF and Dharma really target. Their target seems to be second generation NRIs or people who moved overseas in 70s and 80s.
You see, I have been a part of different segments of the audience and understand how our mindset works. One thing I have always found common, majority of the people everywhere want better quality cinema, even though the definition may vary from place to place. That’s why I cringe whenever the people from our film industry put the blame of failure of a good film squarely on the audience. I understand their frustration, when they put their best effort, sign up films that they believe are good, instead of the ones that would make them more money, and the film goes down on box office; while at the same time crappy masala movies make money. I understand all that and the temptation to blame it all on the audience, “apni janta aisi hi hai, they’ll never grow up, audience gets what they deserve as cinema etc. etc.” I am sorry, but I disagree.
In my opinion, the flaw lies with the films, the presentation, and marketing and in fact I would say the whole business model of it. I don’t think the movers and shakers in our industry spend enough time understanding their target market and the requirements of different segments of the target market. I mean all of the industry, including the big wigs on the commercial cinema side. Many of them may claim that they have figured it out when they are in fact groping in the dark. Otherwise, how else you would explain the big percentages of flops on commercial side of the house.
Just to be clear, I am looking at it purely from box office perspective, not from what else is wrong in our films from a cinema quality perspective. I don’t want to go into that territory as that gets analyzed a lot on PFC – lack of good scripts and good writers, as the most well known problem besides others.
If you look at it purely from business perspective and do a 4 P analysis, you would find so many things are wrong. Biggest challenge is probably ‘Place’, the smaller films are just not available in places outside the A class cities and multiplexes. Somehow the revival of alternate cinema seems to be closely linked with multiplexes. The last I read, in the latest conflict with multiplexes, all the negotiators in the front were the leading big wigs of main stream cinema. That explains who benefits most from multiplexes. On the other hand, there is a decent size audience outside of our biggest cities, in B and C class cities that never gets to see the good films. I am not saying that you need to take the alternate cinema to every villager, but at least in cities and towns, there is a middle class segment that yearns for good cinema but in most cases doesn’t even know that a Tehaan is releasing or what OLLO is all about. If the cinema theatre owners are not interested in showcasing smaller good films, may be there is a different route. May be, there is a way to hold shows in private theatres owned by clubs or may be releasing the original DVD in parallel is the right way to go, but there is definitely a lot of business being left on the table here.
Price is another concern. Speaking purely from financial perspective, why should it cost the audience the same price on the ticket window if it doesn’t take the same amount to make a smaller but good film. By offering a cheaper meaningful alternative, compared to big budget main stream commercial cinema alternate cinema could capture a bigger swath of the audience in its initial days of release. After that, these films have a better chance of making it through word of mouth publicity. May be not all multiplex and theatre owners would agree to it, may be you could start with a small group, in each city, visionary sort of businessmen who see long term value (even financial success) in promoting alternate brand of cinema. This could also be a way for the theatre owners, distributors and other parties involved in the trade to create some competition for the big banner producers and studios.
Promotion is an understandable issue. We are talking about extremely low or barely existing marketing budgets here. But a way has to be found. How can you blame the audience for not watching the film when they have never heard of it? Most smaller films are looking for a niche audience, and it’s even more expensive and harder to reach a niche audience than it is to reach the mass audience. As I stated earlier, multiplexes may address parts of it but not the whole problem. May be there is a way to form a co-op or to form a parallel NFDC type body, but completely privately funded that invests in later stage promotion and marketing of selected smaller films. Just like venture funds who specialize in different stages of start ups, why can’t we have private investment funds who do the same for films. To begin with, conscious cinema makers like Anurag Kashyap and Vishal Bhardwaj and others who have made it to an extent, could come together and form these entities that would purely invest in later stages of a production to market a good film that meets the mark. If I understand this correctly, this model exists in Hollywood, where Slumdog as a finished product changed multiple hands before Fox picked it up and started actively promoting it. The Hollywood model seems mature with smaller spin offs of bigger studies focusing on investing in various stages of smaller niche films. But a start has to be made in India as well, if we want a long term future for alternate cinema.
That brings up to the 4th P, Product. You would assume that this is a given, after all we are talking about smaller, good films here. But this is where the fundamental problem lies and it’s interconnected to other 3 Ps. How do you make sure that a small film by an unknown director with mostly unknown star cast is a good film and worth my time and money as audience? Some of the smaller films have been atrocious waste of time. There is, unfortunately, no way to find that out. Personally speaking I have been disappointed by smaller films almost on as many occasions as I have been by bigger films. Almost all of Vinay Pathak films after Bheja Fry fall into this category. Films like Oh My God, Dasvidaniya, Straight raised expectations but didn’t deliver. These and many others came across as half baked attempts with some interesting plot ideas but no script and bad execution. These films do more harm to the cause of alternate cinema than the bigger masala films which we all expect to be in a different category altogether. Is there a solution here? Potentially!! Once again, some sort of branding mechanism would help sort of private censor board, only in a positive way. This board should comprise of conscious film makers who have made it and believe in promoting or encouraging good cinema and should stamp films that they like and would like others to watch. Some marketing money could be spent upfront in making the board known to the audience but that would be small and one time expense. Once the board is well known and their certification or branding process is familiar to common folks, people would be re-assured that when they are stepping into a theatre to watch a small film, it’s an OLLO or KKG or Dev D, not a Straight or Barah Aana or Aaloo Chaat. This could very well be the basis for the private fund suggested earlier to pick films for investment in later stage promotion or marketing.
Now this doesn’t mean that the audience always gets it right. It’s sometime very hard to explain the success or failure of a particular film. But in most cases, if you analyze carefully, you can always see where things went wrong. Of course, it’s easier to do that in hindsight than foresight; otherwise every film would be a hit.
Thanks for reading……will continue in next part and would analyze box office success or failure of some recent films from where and how I see it.
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
Well thought out. One thing i agree most about is that a ticket to a small budget movie should be way cheaper than a ticket to a big-budget movie.That will definitely help attract audience that are too unsure about a particular small budget film to pay big bucks for watching it in a multiplex.
Right on the money when you say about marketing…..more out of the box thinking also should help, coupled with a more lenient censor board
I liked reading your brief autobiography of an Indian movie-theatre-goer. Makes me see the whole of the world where the Indian movie has most of its life and meets its fate.
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A Singh…the approach you take is entirely one sided…KK and Anurag are correct to a large extent…your logic fails when it comes to Kerala audience of the 80’s and 90’s or current Tamil movie audience….
Today tamil cinema largely accepts different and unique alternate cinema over commercial affairs…the change is slow but sure and definite…there are a group of youngsters who crop up every year with brilliant small films which succeed and such films are the ones which are eagerly awaited as against big budget masala flicks, many of which have failed as usual…
It is a fact that without mass movement..cinema cannot succeed…all marketing can do is create awareness…Nobody sells movie tickets via direct selling….even if they did, its upto the audience to buy the tickets, which we dont…as simple as that…
You, who represent major chunk of the audience should first start asking yourself what is the benefit of watching a ‘Black Friday’ over a ‘Bachna Ae Haseeno’…Try that…come out with a logical answer..then we can think about other audience…It should start from within…
As far as I am concerned, you are equally responsible alongwith other bollywood worshippers for the bad quality of Indian cinema….Any 4Ps , SWOT or other gimmicks will not shift the blame….
singhJi and kaykay’s views are on opposite ends of the spectrum. we need to hit a middle-ground here. in a country where entertainment is a staple diet, where we prefer watch saas-bahu sitcoms over NGC/Discovery/History channels, where aajTak has higher trp’s than ndtv/ibn news channel…so…who is to blame?? the service providers or the ones lapping it up
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how can we explain things like shyam benegal, govind nihalani etc going commercial and making not-so-good movies. how we can explain why dostana did better than dasvidaniya, both releasing on the same day. a post that i had written long time back: http://passionforcinema.com/why-dostana-and-not-dasvidaniya
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audience wants escapist cinema, true…but who overfeeds them??? the movie-makers, producers, directors….who is here to make a fast buck…everyone. so, we have sajid khan and farah khan making hits out of bad movies. johar/chopras etc have their traditional audience base just as kaykay and their ilk have their audience. we just need to widen this base…
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at the end of the day, from BO perspective there is nothing like bad cinema as long as it brings money. from audience perspective, there is nothing like bad cinema as long as it entertains. now, we just have to marry the two…try to make good cinema which wins audience as well. u cannot expect a BO hit if u alienate the audience…as in ‘no smoking’. devD embraced the audience, took them along the journey….and its superhit
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film-makers and audience should share the blame for it. film-makers because they take the audience for granted and make crap movies. audience because they accept these crap movies as they are lazy to find a good movie. when they enter a multiplex they want to watch something and not return home without some cine-gloss. so, they goto watch a particular movie, not get tickets of that movie so they end-up watching something else … like ‘paying guest’ :(
Cinema is an Art, hence a subjective matter, end of story, people will always have their own sets of choices and tastes, and they are entitled to it, it is upto you whether you change your cinema according to their taste, wait for their taste to change, or change your audience.
The way I see it, parallel cinema has to find a new and innovative way of reaching audiences, instead of taking the conventional multiplex/theater route which is biased more towards commercial cinema. Until that is done nothing will change.
It’s easy to blame the audience. If artists have the guts they should follow their own calling and stick to it. Their target audience will find them sooner or later. Satyajit Ray didn’t stop making quality films because the masses didn’t help make him millions. The same people who complain about the audience today jump at the Yash Raj film tomorrow.
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Today we have people like Vishal Bhardwaj and Abhay Deol who have not compromised on their quality of work. Stop complaining about the audience. Do good work consistently and your audience will find you, sooner or later.
This debate reflects chicken and egg syndrome. No one can take sides entirely. While, it is true that audience sometime makes the so-called meaningless, commercial films a hit but this is not always the case. In the long run, a good film always finds its audience. It happened in the past when many films did well in the dvd circuit or through umpteen re-runs on satellite channels. That line can be explored as a possible revenue model. Small filmmakers or purveyors of parellel/art/aletrnate cinema needs to find differnet approach towards ditribution. The multiplex model is not going to yield desired result. To put the blame squarely on the shoulders of audience as KK did at the begenning of his article is a bit unfair.
Good one Singh. The whole plot falls flat when the film makers start pointing fingers at the audiences. The day these film makers start owning up the failure of their films and also the way the industry functions right now, they will come up with ‘out of the box’ ideas themselves. Blame game is understandable where you are venting out your frustrations… but the point is it doesnt forward anything at the end of the day. The day the film makers take responsibility for everything and start modeling the films promotion, and also the quality of the films i am sure the audience will start acknowledging it and there will be a huge shift in the way industry starts operating. Results might not be immediate but the journey is well worth taking looking at what it can really cause for the future audiences and artists.
Regards,
Sharath B S
Make guest appearances of big stars in small movies mandatory. And while promoting, market it as his movie. So a SRK can appear for just a minute in the film. But the posters can carry a life size image! THat way the damn family audience gets fooled. Good idea no?
Dont blame the audience at all! We watch and like whatever our intelligence permits. We arent going to zabardasti pay and sit through a movie which we are not sure of or know that we wont enjoy. I personally am a fan of big action movies like Terminator, Matrix, Face Off, Transformers, and upcoming Avatar and 2012. apart from that shrek, ice age, finding nemo also make me go to a theatre. I watch comedy movies like Golmaal and Hera Pheri on pirated DVD. I watch movies like Sardar, Sarkar, Black Friday, Oye Lucky, etc when they come on TV.
Now my kid is just 2 years old. When she grows up, I would have to force myself to go through Narnia kind of movies as well as SRK/Aamir movies.
Even though I can afford to go watch a movie in a theatre with family every week. I would only do that once a month. And watch the rest on pirated DVD. PRICE here is a big issue. I wont go to a theatre until prices are below Rs. 90 a ticket. (Exceptions for 2012 and Avatar)
The initial few paragraphs are wasted in establishing the fact that the author represents the ideal audience, which is a total waste of time and digression from the point. Lesser said about the analysis the better. There can be an improvement only if the audience feels that they are not getting money’s time’s intellect’s worth by watching a movie and they want to spend their energy in something which is satisfying. As far as the audience, they just go with flow and are made to believe that big-budget/big-banner/big-star movies are only good (truth by repetition). As long as the audience remains like the one represented here, God bless Indian cinema!
Vasu is right about aduiences made to belive about big budget is right. But what else can we do? There are so many bad movies around that it takes everything, from our own analysis, to reviews to friends’ reviews to realize that the experience would be worthy. Its not like ticket prices are Rs. 20 that we can go without thinking, and walkout if we dont like it. So most of us go by popular reviews and take a decision. Im sure that the crux of the situation is ticket prices. Cos on an average a family visits theatres once a month. If you wanna increase that, reduce ticket prices. That way more people would try out different movies.
Very valid points.Since you talk of 4Ps of marketing..I was introduced to another P,the 5th P at my work place.5th P is people for us.Now if we bring in the people dimension..all the rest 4 P points you make stand nullified.Bottom line-People and their taste/mindset should be also accounted for.In that case KK and AK blogs stand vindicated.But you did make some very valid counter points.
Great piece of work indeed ….and you know that is how our audience thinks….you said not to blame….but then who else my dear friend…AK was not accepted as an Different filmmaker but you must be aware that what he had gone through to finally reached here. The point is it required continuous small steps to introduce the changes in cinema. its easy to choose an easy path and make routine stuff but difficult to make a out of box flick. I don’t mind how many flops are coming but at least they are making their contribution in changing the era. It will take time. But just think if Gandhiji doesn’t start fighting and putting very small efforts then how we could be free.
I respect your points …but you are an audience and you don’t know how this bollywood functions. If we are here to break monopoly then these are the stepping stone and foundation for that. It’s a different ball game.
BUT I WELCOME THE IDEA THAT THERE IS NO HARM IN MAKING SMALL BUDGETS FLICKS AS LONG AS WE CAN KEEP THEM INTERESTING & ENTERTAINING.
TNX
Great writing.If we look at Basu Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s films most of them were small-medium budget films with good storyline and good music.They were successful and are watched even today.In fact all of Basu Chatterjee’s films had unknown faces e.g Vidya Sinha and Amol Palekar in Chotti Si Baat,Girish Karnad in Swami etc.Even utv’s films last year like Aamir,Welcome to Sajjanpur,A wednesday were very successful though none of them had a “STAR” and all were medium to low budget.Fact is that UTV promoted them well.
Raunak, Jibin, Virginia,
Thanks for your remarks.
Ram V.
Yes, I don’t know Tamil Cinema, but hope you are right. I hope it’s not like Hindi film industry, because we do see new directors, new ideas but not enough of them make money. Besides, it’s probably easier segmenting and reaching out to niche audience because of smaller territory.
Benefit of watching BF over BAH? What benefit are you talking about? I, as the audience would watch what I like and perceive to be a good film, assuming that it’s available where I live and I can afford it. It’s up to you as a film maker to identify me, segment me and make sure your product and promotion reaches me.
Crazyrals,
I disagree with your point in second last paragraph. NS was a well made film, meant for specific audience , not for the entire masses. The challenge was it didn’t reach the audience and was promoted more like a mass flick, with Bipasha Basu dance numbers, which it wasn’t. The point is all kind of films should be made and can co-exist but film makers should know from the beginning who they are trying to reach and how they’ll reach them.
Vineet,
Cinema is an art and to each his own. But it’s also a product at the end of the day and needs to be thought of and managed as a business, which is where it’s heading anyway with all the corporatization. I agree with your second point, parallel cinema needs to find a new way to reach the audience.
Dazed,
Somewhat strong language there. KK and AK are certainly doing their bit and more for good cinema and it must be very hard to be in AK’s or KK’s position where you see film after film, your highest quality work doesn’t make money. I hope they don’t leave the fight, it would be a loss of us, the audience as much as theirs. But the audience is not in a position to do much about it until we resolve the issues I raised.
Manish,
I agree, chicken and egg, to an extent but audience exhists, however small it may be, once you figure out how to reach them, awareness will spread and audience numbers would build up over time. Aren’t we a billion plus?
Vinay,
That’s an absurd point. I feel cheated and insulted when big stars make appearances the film is promoted using their faces. That may draw some innocent people to the theater but would generate more bad will and kill the word of mouth that the small films depend on.
Vasu,
I am sorry I couldn’t satisfy you with my write-up, you were probably not t reader for it. What you call autobiography in the beginning was to establish the fact that audience is not monolithic but comes in many shapes and sizes and require different marketing and promotion approaches. Stars and big banners are not the guarantee of a good film but that only mechanism available today to judge the quality of a film today. That’s why I am proposing more such mechanisms be available, may be a parallel branding or certification process. You probably didn’t read the entire post for that.
Deepak,
Yes, KK and AK and others need to be saluted and celebrated. They are certainly heroes, not ordinary mortals like me. I also agree that small steps would lead to big change someday, I am only suggesting more such small steps and some big.
Anindya,
I am not sure if Basu Chatterjee films made money in those days and whether they were looked at with such fondness as we do today. But I agree such lighter small films probably have a better chance of making it than more grim ones.
enjoyed reading about the different audience communities you had the good fortune to be part of
reminded me of some of my own.
Thanks, A.Singh.
Well written and detailed article.
Looking forward for your next article.
Singh babu, the big actor making an appearance in a small movie was a sarcastic remark please!