Telefilms – Category undone?
I am a huge fan of good telefilms. But, Indian television is just not able to wake up to the magic that can be provided by a good and tightly done one hour telefilm. Yes, most of you would hark back to the era of ”Star Bestsellers” , but that was more than 10 years ago and Harsh Chaya had a lot more hair on his dome than now. In fact, I am hard put to remember most of the names of the titles brought out then. But, that was the last rash of big talent that Hindi cinema got at one go. Tigmanshu Dhulia, Sriram Raghavan, Anurag Kashyap among others are the flag bearers of the new cinema that we see and savour now.
What ails the telefilm bracket in the Television channels?
1. Lack of serious patronage by viewers (TRPs), thereby the lack of advertisers who are the lifeblood for any creative initiative on TV.
2. Tight budgets that producers are not able to contend with – in terms of quality and viability.
3. Taut screenplays that actually enhance the feel of the film, even while keeping the costs strictly under check.
4. Talent that is not willing to work for less than normal prices.
5. Talent that cannot pull off taut drama for 60-70 minutes (note that here people have an option to go away from the film as they control the remote, in films they are more captive, although if you serve me “Kirkit” kind of movies, I shall still walk away from the theater, no matter what!)
6. The Director is using this as a vehicle to move up the ladder rather than treating this as a competent medium that can breathe all by itself.
7. The Production (read rental) costs are not getting any lower and the compromises that one has to do is just not worth the bother.
8. Story writers are plenty but quality low.
9. Channel apathy towards off beat themes, thereby creating the same sort of human drama, that cannot appeal all the while.
10. All of the above.
11. None of the above.
I would venture to look at the positives of the telefilm category now:
1. Competent Telefilms are a safe business identity all the while. Yes, the rights to buy still lie with GEC fellows and they are that half a dozen. But, it is much more than before. Also, there is good money to make in the Ancillary business here, if one chooses to look that way.
2. Without doubt, they are more interesting than the other nonsense put forth by these channels as entertainment (and now they have started with unending hours of children crying on television…)
3. Actually, some of our good short stories, Indian contemporary literature and classics can be adapted to great effect.
4. Young directors of notable merit shall get opportunities.
5. If (and that is a big if) the tide turns towards good content in telefilms with the viewers keeping their fingers away from that remote, then the advertisers shall flock in and Indians shall discover a new way of spending their 10 pm to 11 pm slot in life! Knowing the channels, they shall all do the “herd mentality” bit! Screen may next host a section called the “Indian Telefilm Awards”.
6. New talent in Indian cinema shall come up through this category again and we shall discover our next Kay Kay, Zakir Husain or Irrfan.
7. There shall be a lot of work for the film industry as a whole on the bread and butter level, thereby making it easy to be in the eye, sharpen the saw and create that unique “tipping point” situation to enter into the big league while others step up and take over this category.
8. Good directors looking for talent need not go fishing. They need to just tap that red button on their remotes.
9. Young technicians finding it difficult to get good work will get just that – Good work.
10. We, the cine lovers here shall have other things to discuss rather than “Fight Club”, “Clockwork Orange” and “Chungking Express”.
Differing? Anyone??
Tags: Indian Television, telefilms
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
If tele-films mean the films that haven’t been released in theatre and are directly screened on TV, then there are quite a few more examples (other than Star Bestsellers). If you take into account the series called ‘Simply Stories’ on SAB, (which was really sad) and then there’s Zee Studio which aired a few 30 minute student films. (which was even more drivel).
.
But what’s good, is that there’s a channel called Lok Sabha TV, govt. channel, it airs a lot of diploma films from FTII and other such independently financed films and documentaries. Yes, agreed, that the films are not made with the intention of being aired on TV. But they are quality films and you need to see them.
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And I would like you to clarify these points.
“2. Without doubt, they are more interesting than the other nonsense put forth by these channels as entertainment (and now they have started with unending hours of children crying on television…)”
Interesting for whom? Housewives? Children?
and,
“10. We, the cine lovers here shall have other things to discuss rather than “Fight Club”, “Clockwork Orange” and “Chungking Express”.”
It’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’,
Do you really believe that if at all some financing comes through for the market of telefilms, they’ll be discussed and dissected? Are the filmmakers of our generation at par with the cinephiles they aim at?
Hi,yes tele-films are not that popular with channels in India, however there is hope coming soon..
with so many channels looking for content I am sure it is soon going to put a smile on all those are just waiting to tap this market.
so folks get your script ready!
(did I hear an echo of what a hope?)
Cheers
Ravi Shivram
@Sameer – I have not seen the other ones, I had heard of them..tried seeing the one on SAB but wanted to choke myself after about ten minutes of viewing that particular story..so lost interest!
Do see a few things on Lok Sabha TV, they are good, but they are not telefilms..they are films on TV.
Clarifications –
1. Children are asleep or not allowed to watch these so called family serials. I dont allow my daughter to stay awake for so long. Housewives do watch. But at 10 pm if a GEC decides to core focus on them, then Indian entertainment has a long way to go in understanding their clientele. Colors did it and succeeded and so now all of them are doing the same.
2. It’s A Clockwork Orange. Pardon.
3. Film makers are not. That is a truth. But, a category to die out because of apathy from mainstream cinema and TV hierarchy alike…something I don’t understand.
Indian TV is full of crap. It is either full of Fake reality shows or crap dramas. ALL Indian Entertainment products are made for all demographic groups.
Special @ 10 was crap. Zee Tv used to show a Tele-Film sort of show every weekend a few years back. Don’t remember the name of it, though.
There are no series like Scrubs either
@Indraneel: You have legitimate concerns my friend…. we don’t have any worthwhile telefilms… not even a decent miniseries…let alone a full-blown scripted long series…can you think of one, even one scripted series on air right now, which is worth our time???
Contrast this with Hollywood, where we have had several memorable TV series in different genres.. who can forget Boston Legal, House, The Practice, Scrubs… in recent years, Californication, John Adams, Angels In America… and these are just off the top my head…
The point is these series had top-notch actors and directors working on some excellent raw material.. everythig came together… in India on the other hand, rarely will you find our top actors working on TV excet for silly game shows or voyeuristic, cave-man reality TV…
Can we hope for a performance by any of the current crop like that of William Shatner or James Spader in Boston Legal? Or Hugh Laurie as the misanthropic maverick Dr. House??
Only our filmmakers know the answer to that one
Well said gentlemen. But the aim of Indraneel is somehow just to draw attention.We simply can’t abuse filmmakers and even I don’t know whom to.Long back I have a tendancey to not to blame audience but today yes I can.All scraps are being played on TV and we call that entertainment; bullshit.lot of factors govern the behaviour of audience.Who is this audience..could be a city man, could be a villager….TV aims to attract all house wives but those who are not working.It shows our growth as nations because majoirty ofg people don’t understand what they are watching.For this ; I simply respect people like Anurag kashyap….he makes what he wants to make and every single film of him made an impact and mind it…THESE SMALL BUT CONTINUOUS STEPS ARE CAPABLE OF MAKING A DIFFERENCE ON THE MINDS OF PEOPLE THEN THEY WILL START UNDERSTANDING THIS TYPE OF CINEMA.
As far as telefilms are concerned, we need not big names but courage and interest to make few good.Indraneel was just trying to blow a light….change has to come from us not by abusing but by contributing. tnx
Indraneel, ‘Telefilms’ is what they used to call them years ago. It’s time to market such films differently and present them as something else, say ‘A film specially made for Television’.
And, upping the budget will definitely help. There are so many other avenues of recovering costs nowadays.
@Arun – Yes, that can definitely be a possibility. In fact, a very good way to even market the films.
@Deepak – Yes, I am looking at giving the attention but also looking at a format solution
@Aditya – A long way to go before we see something remotely like Boston Legal
I was and I am a fan of the star best sellers.some of the reasons i can now think are the following:
>Different stories (you can bring out the stories out of loosers, goons, bad men, psychopath and thoughts or ideas which were considered untouchable during those times)
>experimental narratives (one dares o try it on cinema)
>Be it Actors, Directors, Story writers, cameraman or other technicians, everybody was so passionate and wanted to do good work. most of the actors, Directors and other technicians who were involved in Star Best sellers then have made it big now.
> That was one of the best platform for anyone who wanted to tell a story, perform, shoot and make it big.
> For viewers too it was something that brought them something new to munch on every time when they watched Star best sellers