The Myth of the “Target Audience”
iView Author: Arati Raval (Mumbai, India)
Email: aratiraval@gmail.com
The Myth of the “Target Audience”
“You know, this film is for the urban audience.. From, ummm..say 20 – 45 year olds.. Youngsters and family audience.. I am sure they will love it!”
Have heard something like this? Nothing sounds really amiss when you first hear it. But when you give it a thought, it’s a very complicated thing to understand. The questions that come to my mind, amongst others, are:
Urban audience? What’s that? Don’t cities have all kinds of people?
From age 20 – 40? How do they know teenagers won’t like it?
Family audience? Matlab? Grandmother to 5-year old or mother father 18-year old son? Or husband wife?
Is there any such thing as a ‘target audience’??
Then I joined a production house. I worked on the release of 5 films. And I saw the whole process. My head was muddled about the whole idea of trying to sell a film. Maybe it still is. Because marketing, but its very nature, is a creative, subjective medium, just like cinema. Ethics may or may not exist. We go by the judgment of 5 people in the room, who may not know stuff themselves. And when we try to commercialize a creative medium like cinema and use another creative medium commercially (read ‘marketing’) to sell it to people who may or may not be interested, well, you get the drift. It does get complicated.
So… finding a ‘target audience’ is technically an academic exercise done to filter whom you want to talk to. Of course, you can’t talk effectively to our billion plus people all at once. So you put filters. And from there on, honestly, it is a very subjective decision. So, the CEO feels that ‘urban audience’ will like this film. The EP feels ‘20 – 40 year olds’ will like it. The Marketing Manager thinks that ‘films in this genre did well in Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore in the past’ so that underlines what the CEO said. The screening evoked excited reactions from the young ones in the team, so you can increase that sample size to the entire youth of our country. OK, there seems to be a general agreement.
I am not trying to downplay the entire process. I am just amused by it. About how adhoc and subjective it can get. Of course, we cannot get too technical about this anyway. You never know with our audience. So it is an exercise that everyone conducts. It is a necessity. A necessary evil? Probably. Many times, we get it right. Like Rock On!! was aptly ‘targeted’ at the young ones, and it worked. The film caught on better than what they thought and the campaign was spread to smaller cities as well. Mumbai Meri Jaan was sensitively marketed to the ‘urban audience’, probably because they had all witnessed the blasts and other such modern terrorist acts first hand, or at least heard stories from people they know. Their assumption was pretty much bang on, that someone in Jhumritalaiyya, who has a million problems of his own, wouldn’t be interested in what happened in Mumbai some time back. It was just one of the headlines for him. Again, it worked.
A Wednesday - Minimal. Not too much noise. Bang on. Hit.
Jaane Tu..: Lot of noise + color + youth + music overload + Aamir all over the place = Houseful opening.
And then, there are always surprises. Like, Rajshri thought Vivah is a ’small town, family audience’ film. But people in Bombay and Delhi lapped it up just as well. Tashan was positioned as a ‘cool’ film and marketed to the youth. It didn’t even get an opening. A very rare thing for a YRF film, Rarer for one that’s so star studded – Akshay on a roll, Saif on a high, Kareena fresh after Jab We Met, Saif-Kareena’s first film after their popular link up. Great music! Man, they had everything going for them. Nothing, nothing worked. It’s another thing if a film flops once the audience rejects it. But Tashan failed to even gather one houseful on the first Friday or Saturday. Ditto for Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic. Targeted towards the kids, neither did it bring them to the theatres, not did it make them laugh. Of course, marketing cannot make up for a bad film.
And then, there are some confusing ones. Krrish, targeted, again, to kids. A universal hit. I know of grandparents and parents who loved it. It’s like marketing McDonalds – lure the kids, the families will come in too. It worked and how! Munnabhai MBBS and Ghajini. Not targeted at anyone in particular. While the former picked up only on word of mouth after a moderate opening, the latter opened houseful and remained that way for the first few days. Of course, both did well only because people liked it and not because of the marketing. Another film that comes to mind is Om Shanti Om. Noise was made synonymous with marketing. SRK and Deepika were just everywhere one could imagine. I guess for general entertainers, it’s like selling Coca Cola – visibility is the key because people have already decided to go for it, you just need to keep reminding them about your date. Chak De India was not marketed, at all, to leverage on either the SRK or the YRF superpower. The film still opened houseful. In this case, we can argue that it’s an SRK starrer. True. But still a case in point. Satya didn’t use any marketing gimmick. Just the usual TV promos, posters, press interviews.. The works. It opened fairly well and went on to become a hit. Good films get lapped up in the strangest of pockets. From what I know, Satya was a pan-India hit.
There are several more examples.
As more differentiated cinema gets made (Welcome to Sajjanpur, Mithya, Black Friday, A Wednesday etc.), the need to understand marketing of films is only increasing. Cinema is competing with all forms of entertainment – from bowling and a nightout at a pub to a drive and shopping. 500 bucks for a couple to see a film at the multiplex is a lot. Do we know how to fight for the cinegoer’s wallet? The dynamics of our society have radically changed. Are we prepared?
The point remains. Is there any such thing as a ‘target audience’? Billions are spent in wooing them. Do we really know who they are? Would we ever know what ‘target audience’ really means? Is identifying a target audience merely a routine, mandatory exercise that all Producers just have to do? As we begin understanding more of our audiences (or so we think), are we making things simpler or more complicated? If there is way to genuinely understand it, I would love to know. It will make for some fascinating study. Because I have an inkling that maybe, just maybe, many of the success stories that we have seen, could well have been flukes.
Tags: "rock on", A Wednesday, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, Target Audience, Tashan
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
Arati, just one suggestion from my side, market a movie based on its content. Trying to hype up a movie on whether hero has 6 pack abs or 20 pack abs, or heroine as a 0 size waist or 0.00005 size waist, or whether X is sleeping with Y or Y is sleeping with Z, or whether X,Y,Z are having a threesome might work for some time, does not work always.
Its been quite some time, since i seen a mainstream Bollywood flick, marketed on basis of its content. Its always some hero’s abs or heroine’s waist or the hero and heroine being an item or some item number shot in Antarctica for the first time.
I believe that the notion of target audience isn’t entirely a myth but it comes after the quality of film. I would any day prefer a small town/family audience aimed but honestly made Vivah rather than a youth audience aimed but ininteresting Tashan. Ofcourse first the film has to work irrespective of its audience. A film like TZP didn’t looked to go beyond a certain audience and no one imagined it to have housefull boards in small towns like my own. Mind you TZP didn’t get a terrific opening but because of word of mouth it grew better.
But n the other hand it is also true that Vivah was a blockbuster inspite of not staying in multiplexes for too long and not finding much acceptance witht he youth but Barjatyas knew their audience. i do not know much about the internal planning the producers do but the notion of target audience cannot be totally ignored specially when so much is involved but as I said it all comes after quality.
Sample Luck by Chance(I just loved it and have already gone to see it 2 times). Hugely appreciated and had a better star-cast than Rock On but its audience was limited as not the whole of youth could relate to a film with the backdrop of the working of film industry whereas rock On was more generic.
Regarding target audience, well see in the good ole days of Hindi movies being “One Size fits all” kind, it might not have made much sense, but nowadays when movie audiences are becomming more fragmented it works.
There are two ways to build up your audience, either do it genre wise or banner wise. If you take Madhur Bhandarkar, his movies are not universally praised by critics. But the fact remains he has built up a target audience. And yes he markets it based on the content of his movies. You might call his movies shallow, sensationalistic, Aaj Tak kind, but the fact remains there is an audience which awaits every movie of his eagerly.
Since Hindi movies is still not fully genre specific, i think the key is to target the audiences towards a banner or a director. UTV Movies is getting its own target audience, Dharma and YRF has their own target audience. And when i speak of target audience, it is that audience who watches a movie, irrespective of what the critics or any one else says.
If you take the Harry Potter series, it has its own die hard audience, who buy the lastest book, and wait in a line to watch the latest installment. They could not care less whats the opinion of the movie is, they need to see it, coz they love it.
every film has its target audience based on the genre.Its nothing new.Genre are generated either on the plot or age group it is focusing.It is no the new concept.Multiplex audience is new type of cinema culture in India.They are few percenatage of Indians studied in convant or public schools or working in IT,KPO and MNCs.They have created this weekend movie going culture.nothing new in this article..
A very interesting article.
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I think audience can be broadly categorised into 3:
1. Patronizing
2. The audience that will go depending on what others are saying
3. Audience. Not. They will never watch the movie.
The first one, they are ready as soon as the trailors are out for they want to see one of their favorite actors or technicians at work. You really do not need to marketing for them. They are your marketing people to the general audience :-)
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The second one are the ones that need to hear about the movie during pre-release and just released phase. If bad reviews or a bad WoM, you will lose them instantly.
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The third one, they need maximum convincing, if at all, for e.g. they form a larger part of the general audience in case of an “off-beat” movie. Or at times, how much you try to convince them, it wont help because they have already made up their minds. Or even if they go, they may go with a biased mind.
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Most of the audience falls in second category.
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Having said all that, I feel the movie speaks to the prospective audience in an another dimension (for a lack of better word) where the prospective audience makes the decision to watch it or not. I have seen so many examples that even if movie follows the same convention of marketing, few work and few don’t. Even if the contents are around the same quality.
As far as i know the total “seriously regular” theatre going audience is around 10 crore only.This lot decides whether the movie is a hit or a flop,mind you this is not your first day first show audience.This audience is not the target audience but movie buffs who love movies of any genre.So if this audience spreads a “STRONG WORD OF MOUTH” whether it is a good film or bad then and then only you have the result.The maker/production house carry no weightage whatsoever for this lot,for THE EQUATION of film dynamics changes every FRIDAY !!!
GK
‘target audience’ is not a myth at all. in fact, unless u know for whom u r making a product u will not know how to make the best product. in cases like ‘tashan’ and ‘yuvraaj’ … big banners in general … they try to follow a ‘please all’ policy. when stakes are high in terms of movie budget, they just cannot target a niche-audience, it has to be mass-marketed. but small time film-makers with small budget decide beforehand whom they want to cater to. not all small-budget movies for a niche audience does well because they have probably not made a good product. at the end of the day, a movie tat has substance will do well. but recognizing ur target audience will help u add the ingredients that they look for and market it better.
Nice article Arati.BTW Tashan did not have a good initial & one of the reasons for that was the YRF-multiplexes spat which saw the movie releasing only in single screens & standalone multiplexes.Also another reason why the movie failed an initial is that the promos sent a wrong signal.The early promos if you remember had the dashing cast walking across & the songs.It made the movie come across as a cool action flick with lots of eyecandy.The fact that the movie was more of an 80’s spoof was a shock to the audience.In fact YRF should have released the promos of Akshay riding his scooter in his Ravan get up & his corny dialogues along with that of Anil Kappor doing a Big B act in his “angrezi” that would have made a difference, not huge but atleast marginal.
@vishesh : apart from the 3 categorized audience, there is a 4th type…the move-overs.
now wats tat ?? this is the audeince who has come to watch devD, dont get a ticket and they r ok to watch bill barber…was just an example. i see lots of ppl falling in this catgory because of the multiplex culture, this does not happen in single-screen movies.
40% of the people on weekends come to watch a movie of their choice, but dont get tickets and they will watch any movie instead; but will not go back home without having watched one.
Yes I wouldnt call ” target audience funda” to be an illusion.Every movie has a TG- it may be universal,city centric, for the youth etc.But marketing for a movie needs to be specific keeping in mind the content and the TG.Ideally it should be a mix of both.Vivaah was positioned as a family film.Now families exist in both the big cities & the smaller towns.So all over family audiences patronised it.I remember wathcing it in Secunderabad and while I was like WTF during a lot of portions- all around me there were lots of large families having a blast & I knew the movie would click.
I think failure of “Tashaan”, “Yuvraaj” and now “CC2C”, clearly proves that the “One Size Fits all kinda movie making” is passe. I mean even in the so called small towns, those movies are not being taken seriously nowadays. The audiences in small towns and smaller cities are totally exposed to the latest trends thanks to the Net and 24/7 Cable TV. And their tastes have changed also.
I am staying in Bhubaneshwar, which is a small town kind. It does not have too many theaters, and most of the movies that are released are the standard mainstream stuff. But people here are able to watch Rock On or Wednesday online or on DVD, straight off the racks. And when Rock On came to theaters, it was a huge hit here. The fact is even the youth in the small town are changing, they are as aspirational, as fashion conscious as their big city or metro counterparts. I think maybe the marketers wud have to do a total revision of this city-small town stuff.
Also on what basis does some one call Chandigarh or Kochi or Vizag or Nagpur or Mangalore as small towns, these places are booming urban centers, with a sizeable population, cosmopolitan in nature. You would not find much difference in lifestyle of Kochi or Mumbai or Chandigarh. Nor is there much difference between lifestyle of Bangalore and Mangalore.
Marketing in India is still stuck in a stone age, thats my take. The so called small town India, has been changing, in all aspects, and i think the marketers seriously need to do a revision of their estimates. But then as i said before, most of the marketing whiz kids, rarely get their bottom off the chair, and go into the field. They are more content to sit and propound some vague BS, which they learnt from a couple of books.
Vishesh movies, Madhur Bhandarkar and Rajshree really know how to market their movies well.
They know who their target audience is, they will reach out to that audience only, they really dont bother much about what critics say. At end of day, they manage to have a succesful record.
One reason why Farhan Akhtar’s Don did well, was that he aimed it straight at the multiplex audiences. Yeah Don was a conventional masala flick, but the narration was not the standard masala one. I have watched both AB’s Don, and SRK’s Don, and yeah one of the few who liked both versions.
Farhan stuck to the original story of Don, but his narration was totally different. It was more slicker, more westernized. It was not just the twist in the tale, but even the smaller things too. For eg the diary in AB’s Don is replaced here with a CD, which does make a lot of sense, considerign nowadays people use CD’s or pendrives to store their personal information.
Subash Ghai in Yuvvraaj however still stuck to old elements, like the wicked mamaji, the too good to believe Bade Bhaiyya, which some how did not strike a chord. And it was too westernized to appeal to the small town audience.
I think right now either one goes the Rajshree way totally catering to the small town crowd, or the Farhan Akhtar, KJo way catering to the multiplex audience. Trying to do an in between wud only result in a Yuvraaj or Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon, both of them total disasters.
Arathi,
I am really curious why ‘Luck by Chance’ failed. Whats the marketing sector’s take on that? Is it just that people couldnt relate with the protagonist’s ambition and struggles as you say? Then how do people relate with stories of underworld? Fashion was an average success if I know right.
Is it that after seeing lots of stars in the posters everyone had overexpectations regarding their screen duration? Or was it the unconventional ending? Or was the story too predictable? Some one tell me.
@scriptlarva
I think with LBC maybe it was too subtle even for the target youth audience. Most people I know think of it as just another reality based movie a la madhur bhandarkar film. but whereas Madhur bhandarkar makes movies and label them as realistic inspite of a movie being manipulative, Zoya was much more honest to the subject. When i saw it I simply was in awe of LBC but i somehow knew that it wont work at the BO.
@G.K. Desai comment 6:
‘As far as i know the total “seriously regular” theatre going audience is around 10 crore only’
if that was actually true then assuming an average ticket price of 60 bucks an average film should be earning around 600 crores gross in India only. Even the biggest hits do not have a cumulative audience of more than 3-4 crores in India. Its mainly because most of the people in India still do not have access to cinema halls(forget multiplexes) or even if they do have they do not like going there.
Good article aarti
You take any specialized product, why just cinema, still you will face same dilemma. My point it has more question marketing than cinema. Why we don’t try to think like production oriented entrepreneurs. If the film (product) is well made, it will sell and it will define its target audience. This is because every film is unique and hence it should marketed as Steinbeck piano and not as Yamaha Piano… it is more of project marketing and less of product marketing
I know it has practical implication as such as limited release, where to release , how to position.
But then there could solutions to that well. I mean as production oriented entrepreneur I will show the film a test audience or some film festival. And let the film define its audience and then release accordingly. Latest example is Slumdog. Do Indian film companies have that patience? Do have that festival circuit in Place?
So when Ratnkar say “Marketing in India is still stuck in a stone age”. I can’t agree more. As predictions of, those who claim to know everything about film will go wrong, things as festival circuit and test audience will evolve
Now there is one more question How you approve project? One may say you need to define TG for that film
As already mentioned it is like Steinbeck piano … ie specialized product or standalone project… which may not have a specific TG… it may define its own TG …altogether different TG than previous one… may be its TG is similar to XYZ film… So best way to approve a filmmaking project by evaluating “screenplay and craft of filmmaker” in isolation … as project will take shape … the idea and definition of TG becomes clearer and clearer …
Identifying a target audience does help a writer or a director write a more focused script than what he/she would have written otherwise.
Dev D, in my opinion was written with a certain target audience in mind. This was the 18-35 age group, and these were the people who made up the viewership numbers. The producers weren’t concerned if families didn’t turn up, nor did they bother about the NRI audiences.
From a business point of view it helps in determining the potential revenue and consequently setting a films budget.
@17 Arun Prakash
Identifying a target audience before the script also results formula film making. And as Author points in her article , it may not always appeal to its targeted audience.It is like eating a regular thali and such writing approach should be taken for a daily TV serial and not for specialized dish.And 18-35 is very large audience dude. In India it almost 80 to 85% of moviegoers or rather theater goers falls in that category and moreover almost every Hindi film is targeted towards to 18-35
@everybody
Other problem i see in taking approach of production oriented entrepreneur is allocation budget. Such entrepreneur will put all he has in it … approach like Gurudutt did for kagaz ke phool… and points mentioned @16 is only possibility of independent producer-director
Otherwise from POV of commercial producer Budget allocation can be done by evaluating risk
Risk can be evaluated on the points like 1)how experimental the script is (how different from accepted norms) 2)How experimental director is in terms visual style 3) if both things are experimental then is there is any commercial star is willing to take risk (i personally i won’t consider thi … but that could be a consideration).4)And of course the his own gut-feeling. So i think identification of TG is not necessary till the final edit
@Ratnakar
Eventhough I agree with ur views on DON,I feel that to some extend DON’s success can be attributed to the fact that ‘Jaaneman’ which was released along with DON was a weak movie.I feel that with so much of entertainment options available today competition among films released on same day also have to be taken into consideration.Ghajini as well as RBBDJ gained because they were solo releases.This week Billu Barber will do better business but ‘StoneMan murders’ will be out by next week because audience first preference will be ‘Billu Barber’.If broadband takes off in a big way,then I feel that small movies instead of releasing in multiplexes along with star studded movies,should bypass theatres all together go for online release and through that they will be able to find their audience.I think that is going to happen in future
Sharath- we have umpteen examples of multiple movies releasing on a same day & also doing well.Lagaan & Gadar is probably the best example for that.So its not necessary about competition alone.If you talk about Jaaneman & DON let me remind you that the publicity for Jaaneman was quite good & surprisingly the critics favoured Jaaneman over DON.But ultimately what matters is the audience preference.
Scriptlarva@ 14- If we compare LBC to a FMCG product let me tell you something.Sometimes the product is supposed to be quite good – based upon R&D feedback & initial customer feedback.Also marketing puts in a lot of resources but still consumer’s dont take to it.Though a lot of postmortem can be done- it would be tough to actually say what went wrong.This happens with very few brands where almost everything was right except the end result & LBC is also similar to this.
@Shimit
Average ticket price in single screen halls MAJOR SMALL TOWNS all over India is still 20-30 rupees and not 60 !!! So if at all we take 23.5 rupees per ticket for 10 crore audience you get 235 crores of GHAJINI . The total occupancy of our country India in the first weekend with all shows housefull will give you gross 33 crores and that is maximum then monday onwards collections drop , in GHAJINI case the STRONG WORD OF MOUTH was positive and the collections soared uo like a rocket with extra shows and extra housefull(HIGH TICKET PRICES) boards, the same thing happened with GADDAR and KKRISH !!!
GK
@14 Scriptlarva
LBC had FLOP written all over it right from the word go, forget the PR the production house did pre-post release ,they didnt realise at the script level itself that only 2 lac working people know the filmi lingo,inside jokes etc, they should not have attempted this subject in the first place for the drama is difficult to comprehend for an average cine-goer. They should have kept the film-making as a backdrop and worked around a story of either KONKONA or FARHAN,if you have noted for just pre-climax the director conveniently came back to the KONKONA track which she had lost it totally after interval,also the climax was nearly similar to that of PAGE3 again KONKONA in it , so the same people saw the same 2 climaxes !!!
GK
@G.K.
I do not know the average ticket price exactly but it ranges from 100-250 in multiplexes and yes i know that it is 20-30 rupees in smaller towns(in fact i live in a small town) so there. figure of 60 was according to Box office India which puts a figure of about 55 as average ticket price for 2007. And Ghajini’s Gross collections in India are nearly 175 crores. And also there is still a lot of scope for the business to increase as according to calculations Ghanjini only had 3 crore viewers(including repeat viewers) so there is no such limit like u mentioned of 33 crores. In fact multiplexes are increasing rapidly. I’ll bring to your notice a trend of first week since the year 2003 for the biggest openers:
2003-Koi Mil gaya ~11 crores
2004-Main Hoo Naa ~14 crores
Veer Jara ~ 17 crores
2005-Mangal pandey ~ 17 crores
2006(year of revolution in terms of BO revenue)
RDB ~18 crores
Fanaa~22 crores
Krrish~30 crores
KANK~28.5 crores
Dhoom 2~32.5 crores
2007-OSO ~37 crores
2008-SIK ~
contd.
2008-SIK~40 crores
RNBDJ~42 crores
Ghajini~64 crores
Now dont be surprised if even the record of ghajini is surpassed in the near future as the number of screens is constantly increasing and I dont think it would soon stop as there is much more potential.
@scriptlarva
madhur’s formula is simple: show the perception of a particular industry and then reveal it’s seamier/immoral side.
LBC did not show me the glamour. It assumed I knew the glamour and went breaking down my perception of it. It showed me the grime and the manipulative side of it. that’s why i think it didn’t do well. of course, the ending kind of rubbed it in.
Satya was definitely not a pan-India hit. It didn’t lose much though, because of its modest budget.
Thank you so much for all your responses! I am so happy that so many of you’ll have different POV’s on this.
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@Ratnakar: I dont know if we are stuck in the stone age..But my main question was, I have seen far too many people have no damned clue on who they are talking to, and they market.
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And if Directors begin making films for a particular audience, it will begin becoming a problem. Like Page 3 was an honest film. And when Madhur began making his films for an a’udience’, we saw the quality drop.
@Shimit: Points taken on TZP and LBC. I agree. I met people who thot it was a documentary on filmmaking and they couldnt care less about it.
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@Vishesh: An interesting take on the audiences. Maybe I agree.
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@Crazyrals: Yes, I have met that fourth category often too!
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@Yayaver: Exactly my point. The audience is not just made up of film fanatics. Cinema is competing as a form of entertainment. hence our marketing has changed. My question was if we know how to cop
@GK Desai: Yes. But I am essentially talking the pre-release marketing that results in opening. Our film business has turned into a first weekend game. Hence marketing plays a very imp role. Of course, word of mouth works wonders too.
@crazyrals: But its not as if all good small busdget films have worked and all bad ones have failed. Like, 1971 was a brilliant film. It couls have worked. Just that no one knew when it came and went. very unfortunate.
@Sethu: I totally agree on the Tashan point. Yes, it didnt strike me as that.
@Ratnakar: Maybe Rajshri etc knew how to market. But when their films keep disappointing for sooo long, how long will the loyal audience keep going??
@Scriptlarva: I wish I knew! I guess there was no big PULL for LBC. It may not be conventionally entertaining. I really dont know. My heart ached to see LBC in empty theatres.
@Njudo: Thanks. I agree. Marketing rules do not change with industries but maybe we must know that its a creative product we are selling, supposedly a piece of art.
@Sharath: Yes, Big fish eats small fish will continue to happen for some more time unfortunately. But I am sure I see it changing. For the better.
@ Scriptlarva
LBC is an interesting point of discussion indeed.
Personally I didn’t like the movie at all. The plot was very predictable, empathising with the lead was rather difficult, but to me the dampener was the fact that there was no focal point to this panaromic picture. Too many things being told…very haphazardly done. There was no concrete message to take home, and it wasn’t very entertaining either.
The ending was a total let IMHO. Konkana Sens character takes the Lead on a guilt trip. How far can you go to achieve success? when this “bhashan” comes from someone who has “come to terms” with her own “adjustments”. She had a 3 year affair with a sleazy director just in hope to be cast as the lead in his film…the bhashan didnt sell…nobody in the audience felt for her. I think thats where Zoya just lost the plot.
That brings us to the question., did LBC have a target audience? If it was for the ‘masses’ family wamily and all that…then there wasn’t enough for the kids and grandparents.
If it was for the young multiplex audience…then the whole moral high ground disconnected it from that target.
If it was made for the strugglers…then it was too glossy to be real, Fashion showed a truer picture of the fashion industry…this was way too dolled up. and strugglers know it.
If it was made for all the filmi junta…then every movie should be a superduper hit…ghar ka khaana bhala kaun nahin khaata?
I think LBC will do well on DVD front.There are some films for which audience are not in a mood to go and watch it in a theatre,but have plan to catch up later on DVD or TV.I think LBC belongs to that category
@Cliff: I liked LBC. It was totally disheartening to see the empty halls. But yes, all the poitsn you raised about the ‘target audience’ are valid. But, if Zoya wold have thought of all these questions before directing the film and Farhan thought of these before producing it, dont you think the very essence of filmmaking gets diluted? At the same time, you cannot NOT think of these things because you are not making a film for yourself. So.. where does one know one needs to stop thinking? Tricky, all this!
@Sharath: Yes, which again brings me to another point. Why do hard core cinema lovers wait for the DVD release of a good film? I know of diehard filmi people who see Singh is Kinng in the theatre but wait for the DVD release of OLLO. Why?? I mean, seeing OLLO in the theatre will make a world of difference to the film rather than seeing SiK! The former needs people in the multiplex far more than the latter..