An average Indian when asked whether he/she has heard about “Raja Harishchandra” being the first movie produced in India and “Alam Ara” being the first talkie, would reply a ‘yes’ more than 50% of the time. But very few would know that the first documented presence of movies in India was on 7th July 1897, when a silent movie which was all of 6 scenes long and a runtime of 10 minutes was shown in Mumbai (Previously Bombay).
It’s true that there wasn’t much time gap between the beginning of world cinema and its foray into India. However, the West realized the true potential of cinema as a business much faster than India. That was probably the reason why the first Academy Awards (Popularly Oscars) were given in the year 1929 in the West, compared to first Filmfare Awards in India, which were held in the year 1954. The Image of the Academy Awards has skyrocketed ever since then. The value of Filmfare awards is considered as any other marketing play to make viewers glue to the TV sets so that huge bucks can be made out of the advertisements telecast.
Also making mockery of the situation in this context are the ever growing new awards which keep coming year by year. Almost every TV channel has a set of awards associated with it and in order to make sure that seats are occupied with celebrity presence during the event, they make all kinds of efforts (which are even unethical at times).
Consider this, Shahrukh Khan, one of the biggest movie stars in India has been nominated for or has received a Filmfare each year since 1993!
Many would argue that the main reason Indian Film Industry (or Bollywood as many say) is not as successful as Hollywood is because they could not make right choice at the right time. Indian actor Dilip Kumar was offered the role in the Hollywood film “Lawrence Of Arabia“but he turned down the offer for reasons best known to him. Later the same film made the lead actor Omar Sharif a star in Hollywood, with an Oscar nomination.
Also there were talks that the movie which made Steven Spielberg the biggest director in Hollywood and a name to recon with, “close encounter of the third kind”, was in fact a liftoff from the script that Indian director Satyajit Ray was working upon. Spielberg, however, has furiously denied the allegation and Satyajit Ray never commented on the matter in his lifetime.
One of the first people who realized about west being a market which if exploited carefully could became a market almost 100 times as big as India is the famous Indian Director Subhash Ghai. He understood the true market potential when his movie “TAAL” broke into the Top 20 list in USA, later he stated:
“I am making movies for the West market, so why would I worry about the sensibility and the Rs.7 that I am getting from a cinema hall in Bihar when it’s fetching me $ 7 in USA.”
Although strategically it did make sense but what Ghai missed was that even in west a viewer is sensible enough to spend money on a movie which is good, and not what Subhash Ghai did in “Yaadein”, a film whose fate is legendary and is considered by many as an epitome of a poorly made movie.
So who decides which movie is good and which is not and how can one can realize that which movie is worth watching and which is not? The question becomes even bigger in an era where each movie, even before its launch, comes with tags like “super hit” and “blockbuster” and after release changes the tags to “running to packet houses”.
Well the answer to the big question is Movie Awards.
Here awards do not refer to Filmfare but global awards like BAFTA, OSCARS, and GOLDEN LION. It has been observed from time to time that when ever a movie is credited with prestigious awards, it creates a buzz and thanks to the sanity of the jury that most of the time the awards are given to the movie which is actually well made, irrespective of the fact whether it has big stars in it or not. The so called buzz makes headway for it to be seen by as many people as possible and if it’s really good to the senses of the audience, it is obviously earns its share of business. But there is always a catch! Not all good movies win awards and not all movies which are well made do great business. This is where west has taken the lead and is reaping the benefits. Movies which get nominated in prestigious awards are nominated by humans and not gods, so what does it take to convince “That particular set of humans”? Although it a basic necessity that the movie should be a good one at least if not an exceptional one.
The producer also should have right channels and contacts to make sure that decision makers watch it.
When after a slew of failures Sir James Matthew Barrie wrote a stage show about a boy who never grows old “Peter Pan”, he knew instantly that in order for it to be a success the grown ups need to be shown the movie from a child’s point of view. So he played a perfect marketing ploy. He brought seats himself in the auditorium and later when the show was about to begin, he filled those seats with young audiences. It was an instant success, the grown ups laughed every time the little ones did. Each of them tried to understand why a child laughs at a particular scene, and in doing so they became a kid at heart, and that is what that led to the show’s huge success.
Human mind is strange, it has happened to all of us every now and then.
But it can anyway not be denied that good movies are produced in India too. So how is it that the largest movie producing industry in the world has not won a single Oscar on its own (but only in collaborations)?
The problem lies in the fact that Indian producers, directors, actors most of them go after quantity rather than quality and in order to have a quality product one needs to invest time, which is considered a waste. It is been proved by Aamir Khan, again one of the biggest superstar in Indian film horizon. He despises the Indian Awards but still goes after the big ones at the Global level. His execution of the strategy he built for Lagaan is a perfect one and needs to be followed by all others in the fraternity. He made the film with right people, with right spirit working spirit and finally showed it to right people. He knew that winning an Oscar is a prestigious thing, but equally important was that it is seen by as many people possible world over.
“If a movie has won an Oscar, it must have deserved it”.
BBC predicted before Oscars, that if ‘Lagaan’ won the Oscar, the amount of money it would gross in the USA alone would be enough to compensate for the losses that whole Indian film industry faced that year. Now that’s something!
Now how can one say that awards does makes an impact on the mentality of the viewer? Now consider the following data of the movies and the money that they have earned before the movie won any significant award (Mostly Oscar’s).
· Since 1990, only five movie have failed to cross $ 100 USD mark (with most of them inexplicably failed to capitalize on the winning momentum as of the five movies four didn’t have a wide release)
· Life is beautiful (1998), best foreign language Oscar winner had earned $18,369,921 USD before its nomination, but earned another $ 39 Million USD after the nomination.
So it does prove that winning or in some cases even nomination makes an impact on the business that a movie does. Now as far as making a movie which is sensible and will make an impact is not easy but not impossible either. Look at the past movie which has been nominated for best foreign language film category. It will provide a clear picture that the most of the pictures which are nominated have fulfilled the certain criteria:
· They all represent the culture of their respective countries to the deep core showing values, tradition being followed their.
· All of them have showed their presence in the different movie circuits, no bad movies gets nominated.
A number of people around the world have seen Lagaan and have liked it (a single negative point which came out was the length of the movie, which later also being criticized as the major factor for its low gross worldwide minus India) and many have argued that it was a better movie then that year’s winner NO MAN’s LAND (although many would argue that it Amelie was the best one), but it’s a wide known fact that it was the same year when 9/11 happened and America was putting a NO-FIGHT stance, so they obviously voted for the movie which promotes “No fight”.
Still Lagaan do remained a landmark in terms of its efforts in made to get itself noticed by academy members.
After Lagaan, it became clear that if you have proper business acumen and a good movie in your hand you can have a nomination with right amount of exposure.
The nomination is being done by the Members of the Academy and there are selective theaters where they go to see the movie. So the catch is that you need to run your movie in those theaters again and again, but has to make sure that no one puts pressure on the people who nominates, as it can go against them in a bad way.
Next step is to show it to the people who matters, it can be found with the help of using the right channels and right contact and showing them your movie without pressurizing them. The more members you’ll show your movie to higher is the chance of it being getting nominated.
Now if we take an recent example then a very proud moment came for Indian film Industry in 2008 when a very Indian movie, although being produced by an American and directed by an British, was nominated for 10 academy awards “SLUMDOG MILLONAIRE”. This movie was very closely scrutinize by the movie freaks the world over since the news came that it was being directed by Danny Boyle, who is considered to a very good director. It remained in news for a long time due to its unconventional approach, whether is the cast which was all Indian, whether the script which was based on the novel written by Indian Diplomat Vikas Swaroop and was based on the show “Kaun Banega Crorepati?” it had all the ingredients in it to make the critics the world over interested about it. It was not all, it maintained it hype after the shooting was finished, when none of the production houses were ready to release it, there were talks that it might go straight to video like a lot of movies which are not good enough to be released in theaters. It created a buzz that it might not a good at all, at this point Fox searchlight took over the realm of the project and made sure that it had a theatrical release. Now before its wide release it played in the major film festivals to see how it is being liked and reviewed, unexpectedly the first major film festival it played in Toronto International Film Festival gave it the People's Choice Award. From there it picked up the word of mouth and it presence was felt on every site that promoted and talks about films like Rottentomatoes.com, Imdb.com etc, in all these sites which mostly works on word of mouth the ratings it received made it a curious case. People wanted to watch it, in the meantime it kept on playing on a few more circuits over all kept on winning awards. Later it played a nice strategy just in order to be eligible for the academy considerations it had a small release in US in 20 theaters or so. By the time it released their it was already being nominated for BAFTA and Golden Globes. It created a massive interest in the movie. Eventually it ended up winning 7 BAFTA, 4 Golden globes and 8 Oscars and just before its Golden Globe winnings it had a wide theatrical release in US. Up until now the movie has grossed $311,107,572 USD worldwide. The biggest movie for the year 2008 for India is Aamir Khan Starrer “Ghajini” which had an $ 30 Million USD gross worldwide (which in comparison around 10 Times lesser then Slumdog Millionair). Amazing feat for a movie which was considered to be a Indian flick and was expected not to release in Theaters. This movie truly shows the Power of Awards Functions Specially The OSCARS.
Sources used:
No comments:
Post a Comment