Film Exhibition in India
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Sometimes I look back at the late 1980s as cable TV first crept into India. Or at least that was when we got a connection at our home. From 1988 to early 1994, I can’t remember watching a single film in a theatre. Every Sunday afternoon, the cablewallah would show the latest release without fail. Imagine watching Khuda Gawah and Hum on a 21-inch TV set. The biggest lot of the audience, the middle class who could afford cable TV kept away from the theatres. But I also remember my mom telling me that only rowdies go to the theatres nowadays. And the mosquitoes would bite and that it would get really hot because the A/C wouldn’t be turned on. And today, here we are in India, so many of us, who despite having access to the latest pirated DVDs at the street corner, will still go watch movies the way they are supposed to be seen. And even if don’t care for the film, we still go because theatre owners come up with something or the other everyday to dangle a carrot in front of the audience’s nose.
Today city theatres are sleek, hep, and serve as everything from a restaurant, to a hang out spot, to a bar, to even a comfortable place to sleep. Take the Abirami Multiplex in Chennai for example. The back rows of the theatres are fitted with La-Z-Boys instead of regular seats. The seats recline almost 180 degrees. You settle in, press a button to summon the dude from the food stand. Tell him what you want and he brings it to your seat. Oh, and if the movie sucks, catch a nap.
It’s amazing what decides where you want to watch your movie. I go to the beautiful looking Sathyam multiplex coz apart from their superb sound and projection quality, I love their flavored popcorn. And if I’m in the mood for frankies with my movie, then I’ll hit Inox. I remember going to a theatre in Mumbai where I could have a Dominos pizza delivered to my seat.
But this is all we see as an audience. There are a lot more developments taking place behind the scenes that a lot of us don’t notice.
Traditionally, movies have always been screened of a 35mm film print. It is still the most widely used format in the world for exhibition, and beyond any doubt still offers the best picture quality. But in India, cost, size, logistics and flexibility take precedence. So we’ve gone digital and theatres in South India at least are slowly and steadily phasing out the use of prints for exhibition.
There are two companies handling digital exhibition in India. One is Real Image with their QUBE technology and the other is UFO. Most films in India today go through a Digital Intermediate process, or DI as it is more popularly known. This process involves scanning the negative of your film, each frame into a still image (DPX format), and color grading on a computer. As a result, films are looking better because digital grading offers more flexibility and precision than traditional optical color grading. Once the film is graded, these rendered still files are then printed back to negative out of which prints are made.
But if you are going for a digital projection, you can skip the printing bit which is quite an expensive process. Your DPX files get re-encoded into a JPG 2K format, put on a hard drive and are projected by the QUBE, and it looks beautiful! The downside however with the QUBE projectors is that on very wide shots with heavy screen displacement, the picture jerks, and quite distractingly at that. Hopefully a glitch which will be sorted out soon. For films that are graded optically, the film needs to go through an HD telecine after which it is projected from the QUBE in an MPEG-2 format at 1K res. When telecined, be it on QUBE or UFO, the picture looks a little washed out, but very clean nonetheless. So instead of having to make a print which costs around Rs. 50,000 each, you can deliver the film on a hard drive for Rs. 20,000 a piece.
The UFO technology takes this concept even further. Instead of J2K or MPEG-2, it goes for a high bitrate MPEG-4 format. This makes the file size very small. A UFO server is installed in the theatre, and instead of a physical delivery of the film, theatre owners can download the film via satellite, enter a screening license key, and screen the film at pretty decent quality.
I can already hear the purists saying, “This is BULLSHIT! This is not quality. It’s like watching on a big screen TV! It’s not how movies are supposed to be seen!”
True. I agree with you. But first one needs to understand the current exhibition scenario in India. Try going beyond the city into the interior or moyfusil areas. The theatres are horrendous. The film projectors are at least half a century old. Multiplexes may have installed Kinotons and Xenons but outside they city, they’re still running poorly maintained Arcs and carbon projectors, where you’re lucky if colors show up even remotely correct.
Additionally, the projectionists are very lazy in these areas. The frame will be off, the focus is almost always off because the projectionist is a 70 year old guy with warped eyesight and no glasses. So he focuses it to how he sees it right. In fact I have even had that issue in the famous Mayajaal multiplex on the outskirts of Chennai, where almost every 35mm projection is out of focus.
The other problem in interior areas is that theatre owners decide to become editors. If they feel that your film is running too long, or there are scenes that are offensive to their audience, or a song that is boring, they wont hesitate bringing in a pair of scissors, some tape, and chop it right off. There’s nothing you can do about it, and chances are, you probably wont even know. I have even heard a first hand account from a village theatre owner himself who re-cut the print coz the sequence of events didnt make sense and was confusing an uneducated audience (a particular Mani saar film).
So in this scenario, digital projection is a gift from god, dare I say. For one, theatre guys cant mess with your film. Which is a huge relief. Secondly, India still lives in the villages, and the films in these interior areas where a huge bulk of the business lies, can look a lot better on QUBE or UFO than they do through the old 35mm projectors. Thirdly, you cut the cost of prints. For distributors and producers who are releasing their own films, this is a huge saver! In fact the UFO system works even better for interior areas because of the satellite downloading capability, so you even save on transportation and shipping costs.
So yes, from a purist, technical point of view, D-cinema is certainly not where it should be. DPs hate it. Most of them at least. But in a lot of other angles, it’s helping cinema get a wider reach. It is creating an opportunity where more smaller theatres can be opened up in non-urban areas at MUCH lower costs! The fact still remains that outside the cities, in India, we just dont have enough screens. But imagine how much more our movies can be distributed with more screens, installed at cheaper costs, at better locations. How can one be so sure that smaller films like Bheja Fry or A Wednesday, or Aamir will only run in the cities. D-cinema offers a low cost window to at least try selling these movies to more people. I am sure the villages are equally starved to watch something different as well.
Sound is another major issue plaguing movie exhibition in India, and there’s a lot to share, but more on that in the next post.
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very valid point vijay.
hoping that more players turn up to offer such services. last time i was there, i heard of either QUBE or UFO (or something similar sounding , im not sure of the name here) where even the distribution is through wireless netwrok. something like u download the movie for projection (this is for multiplexes though – smaller halls)
have you heard anything more about them?
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Yes DPac. What you heard of was UFO. It downloads via satellite. Pyramid Saimira has bought lot of theatres in interiors and have converted them to UFO because its so easy to distribute.
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its a big big step.
precursor to a revolution if u will. i hope more filmmakers and (producers primarily) reinvent themselves and take this oppurtunity up…
sun rahe hoooooooooo bhaaailog?!!!
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Well, producers and distributors dont have much of a choice anymore because exhibitors are insisting on it. More convenient and less work for them. Plus they dont have to deal with prints clogging up space in the projection booth or sit there and shift between reels and load and unload and all that shit. Lot of projectionists are out of work because of this.
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Very ineteresting,..
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Vijay,
I don’t want to be picky but…but cable television started 1992 in india not in late 80’s i guess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_India
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Ravi – Vijay is not referring to cable television as we know it today. What he is probably referring to is a pre-cable TV phenomenon, which was more localized. Cable-wallahs would connect a number of houses in a locality through cable, connect a VCR to it and play movies that people could watch at home. I remember it was in 1987, when some enterprising people started this in the apartment complex where I used to live in Delhi. They used to play the latest movies from morning till late at night.
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In Mumbai almost all the single screen theaters have tied up with UFO movies due to which the movies are shown in an amazing clarity..the downside is that most of the single screen theaters don’t have a good quality sound system due to which it’s a problem in following dialogues especially if it’s recorded in sync-sound.
On the other hand, the multiplexes have an amazing sound system, but they do not have digital screening due to which the screen looks dirty and the print does not seem to be clean..
I don’t know why multiplexes haven’t got into digital screening (except for Fun Republic), maybe the cost of going digital in all the 5-7 screens is too high..but it’s disappointing when u pay through ur nose for a movie and u can’t get a decent print quality also..
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Even though we think that we Indians all are so alike and yet we are so different.
When I was reading through the article, your take on theaters back in 80’s, I wanted to share a different view point.
I am from Andhra Pradesh, and it is not an exaggeration that we are the most cinema crazy people in India. We might not be as star crazy as tamilians but I am talking about the shear number of movies made and watched in theaters and how the cinema business was always evergreen booming over here.
70’s, 80’s, 90’s Andhra always had highest number of screens compared to any other state.
The theaters and the facilities in Andhra & specially in its major cities like HYD,vijayawada, vizag were far superior than any other big cities in India at that time.
In 80’s as a cinema fanatic myself, on casual visits to diff other cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai had been to theaters over there too, I could clearly feel the difference in the seating comfort, A/C, over all maintenance and the sound quality.
Most of my life was in hyd,vijayawada and as far back as I can remember, the theaters were always almost 90%+ occupied…specially in vijayawada no matter even if it was a C grade cinema or even a rerun of old B&W classic its almost always houseful. May be that was the reason theater owners tried to provide best of the facilities compared to the industry standards at that point of time.
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interesting..
changing times newer technology…..
could be a potential winner of an idea…
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Yes indeed it was a great trip down memory lane. I still remember the theatres in the 80’s. Out of focus, editing by the cinema-wallas, ceiling fans noise, small u shaped booking window, toilets where “pranaayam” was the ONLY solution ( I have improved my breathing due to Theatres alone ! ) wada-pav stalls, taking home bed-bugs, broken seats with no cushions left, public pile up to see the photos of the movie-shots, framed in glass show-cases, the cycle-park jams, wow !!! nostalgic !!
I think digital exhibition would be made available almost everywhere ( multiplexes atleast ) in a couple of years.
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@Sudhir – Multiplexes are slowly going digital. I cannot speak for Mumbai, but in the South it is happening.
As far as the sound is concerned, there are a lot of things to talk about, and a lot of reasoning behind why the mess ups are happening. That’s the topic of my next post.
And the cost of going digital is not high at all. In fact it’s very cheap. a 35mm projector costs a bomb. But if you go for QUBE or UFO, the company will come install the projector, you sign an agreement with them. and the equipment quite beautifully fits into your existing infrastructure.
Also because of the way the payment structure works. QUBE guys make 20K per QUBE HD and only they can master it. UFO has a different pattern where you pay a license fee for however long your movie runs and they give you very good deals on it too.
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I know that Inox is looking at feasibilities with UFO and others are following suit. PVR may have already struck some sort of a deal by now. This digital streaming thing is fast catching on.
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Hi Vijay, thats really an interesting article up there…Um sure you have done gr8 homework on the subject matter..just wanted to check if digital is the way to completely eliminate prints in the near future? or do you think prints will still exist?
Also, i havnt heard the digital technology being boasted by our Indian big producers or distributors though they have availed the benefits of it to a gr8 extent….
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Dear Vijay,
Does this mean that one can make a film digitally and then distribute or does it require 35mm film still for passing the film in censor board.
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this is very interesting, could u tell about the way ufo works ,how much do u have to pay for a release in 10 screen(3 shows a day) for a week?
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