Pouring huge amount of money in movies is increasing but the quality is not. Many failed to understand what happened to the Indian cinema which had glorious past of creating great films which reduced to dumb, senseless bollywood masala movies. It is not that India was deprived of talent for all these years. Everything was done with some purpose … and that is business. Let’s see how.
Customer is god.
But we need consumer. Who is consumer of movies? If you think that the answer is everyone. It is not. Everybody watch a movie but not everyone is paying for it. From a producer’s point of view the very first customer is distributors, whose customers are theatre owners whose customers are people who go to theatres to watch movies. So, ultimate consumers who matter the most for producers are people who go to theatre for watching movies.
[For those who are unheard of this marketing lingo, consumer and customer are two different concepts. To explain in simple words, ‘customer purchase a product’ and ‘consumer is consumes it’. For example, Mother buys dairy milk chocolate for kids. Here, Mother is customer for dairy milk and kids are consumers.]
The point that I want to make out from above discussion is movies are NOT made for people who watch it on television channels or on pirated CDs. But for the people who take trouble to come to cinema hall to watch it.
Well that doesn’t mean that this is ‘the’ only way of making money. Producer can sell overseas rights, broadcast rights, music rights and etc. But money earned by the other means is function of success at the box-office or to be precise prospects of the film’s success at the box-office. As many of the rights are sold before movie is released.
What consumer wants?
[I tried to get hands on some study on which did profiling of people who go to theatre and what takes them to theatres. Unfortunately I didn’t found anything. So I will make a profile based on my understanding.]
Prominent segments are college-crowd at weekdays and families at weekends. Both of the segments look at the movies as mean of entertainment. They want spend some time away from their routine problems. Movies show them what they just can dream about. Big houses, trip to foreign, sensuous girls, comedy situations, item number, and good wins over bad. But this what the consumer wants? No one is interested in watching the cruel social reality of what is happening around. That they see anyways on newspapers and channels. They are in cinema hall for 3 hours of fun. And no one can do entertainment job better than a masala movie. Considering that Indian viewer is not yet mature it makes logically sensible to put your money in masala movies.
[Let’s finish the post with bollywood-style-ending…]
Masala movies are past, now things are changing….
Off-beat movies like ‘Lagaan, ‘Rang De Basanti’, ‘Swades’ ‘Chak De India’ and ‘Taare Zameen Par’… are well accepted by audience….
This will prompt more film makers to take up and this will bring revolution …
Movie lovers will be freed from evil crutches of masala movies…
And Indian cinema will get back its past glory….
OKEY… it was just a too-good-end-to-be-real… But isn’t what movies do too… selling dreams...
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