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India's Bollywood Opts for Low-Cost Digital Cinema
Makarand writes "While Hollywood is yet to figure out who will pay for the costly
$100,000 digital projectors required for the digital roll-out of
films, the Mumbai (India) based film Industry (called Bollywood)
is settling for cheaper projectors of a bit lesser quality
available at one-third the price, to proceed with their digital roll-out.
Industry officials call this cheaper version of the digital cinema the 'E-Cinema',
in contrast to the 'D-Cinema' which Hollywood is waiting for. Over
1000 films are made each year in India and just 1 film in 12 makes a
profit. Transporting conventional celluloid prints to remote towns
gives video pirates plenty of time to copy and make prints. Digital
cinema will cut down on piracy and help the industry to increase
its profits."
How about, "Bend it like Beckham" for starters?
Its movie about Indian but not a bollywood movie. The movie was made in UK
True. However, that's not the problem. It dosen't really matter how hard it is to copy a film, it's currently happening.
At the moment, with film, it's not economic to roll out a film everywhere at once. Therefore there is a time lag between the first showings, and when it's available to view locally. This time lag is where the pirates are operating. If you can remove this lag, then one of the benefits of pirated films (faster access) is removed. Digital projectors bring the benefits of digital copying to the movie producers, as opposed to currently, where only the pirates are reaping the benefits.
As I understand it then, Bollywood is trying to defeat piracy by starving the pirates of a market.
BUT I found a press release from RealImage which explains that the distribution method is by satellite.
So I'm assuming they'll use an encrypted satellite feed to send the movies to theaters.
Reading some of their other press releases gives some good info: The distro method is web based, so theaters can pick whatever they want from a server.The other tidbit i picked up is that "The films in the MPEG 2 format will take 20 hours to download depending on the connectivity"
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Yes and no. The problem with distribution is, it costs a couple of thousand dollars to produce 1 copy of a film at a film lab. So, in order to minimize the costs, companies will only make a certain number of prints, and then ship them around. Now, person X at the far end of the country, or another country, cannot go to the movies to go see it. Its simply not available in that region yet. But, he can buy a copy on the street corner because the organized criminals are using digital transfers.
Simply, organized crime is beating Bollywood and Hollywood, because they have a faster distribution model and this cuts into profits.
If it was a digital distribution, there is no delay in shipping, or limits to how many theaters can play the movie at one time. Now instead of "See lowsy street corner quality" or "Not see the movie at all", it will be a choice between "See lowsy version" or "See decent version on the big screen".
So the shift to D cinema is not trying to eliminate piracy, its an attempt to catch up with Organized crimes better, cheaper, faster distribution model.
Low-cost digital cinemas should theoretically slash distribution costs, but I suspect the cost savings will be a negligible percentage of the total cost to make, publicize and distribute the film. What the shift WILL do is slash the cost of distributing the 11 out of 12 films that are money losers in a manner that will transform the industry. Currently, movieplexes *have* to play stinker films for a short while, because the print is couriered to them and there aren't extra prints of the popular films to replace them. The distributor manufactures hundreds of prints of marginal films, and wants to see at least some return on their investment. So the film lingers for a few weeks in the cinema. With digital distribution, money losers can be quickly deleted from distribution at not cost -- it's not like there are hundreds of film prints that suddenly become worthless.
No need to apologize - your bit of speculation is spot on. I'm Indian and the Indian film industry used to be awash in underworld money - it's gotten a bit better in recent years, but still is quite significant:
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http://sify.com/movies/bollywood/fullstory.php?id
Of the 143 Hindi films (excluding dubbed ones) released in 2000, barely 5 or 7 were funded by the underworld. Of the 150 films of 2001 or 140 of 2002, not more than 8 or 10 in each of the two years could have been made with funds from questionable sources. How can 4 or 5 per cent be taken as representing the entire production sector?
Bollywood is used to identify the 100 plus Hindi cinema coming from Mumbai (Bombay). India has major film producing centers in Chennai for Tamil films (Madras), Hyderabad for Telugu films, Bangalore for Kannada Films, Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi (Cochin)for Malayalam Films, Kolkatha (Calcutta) for Bengali films, Guwahati for Assamese films etc., where the other 900 plus films are made every year.
What you see in theaters in UK/USA/New Zealand/Australia/other countries are Hindi films catering to the Non-Resident-Indian audience. And most cities will have one or two theaters that cater to Tamil films, Bengali films, Malayalam films, Kannada films and Telugu films.
The examples you gave were of poorly made films. To understand Indian cinema, try the films of Satyajit Ray, Ritwick Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Aravindan, Shaji N Karun, Shyam Benegal, Ketan Mehta, Girish Kasaravalli etc. You will not be disappointed.
Tat Tvam Asi
It's affiliated with the American MTV, but the shows are produced in Mumbai(Bombay). They show plenty of english music videos, but the majority of videos shown are Indian pop music videos or songs from Indian (not just Bollywood) movies.
MTV India website
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
It's a conflation of Bombay and Hollywood.
Who mods this crap up?
The above comment of yours is applicable to your post too!!!
Indian cinema is not the Hindi cinema you described. The best of Indian cinema happens in regional cinema - Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Assamese etc.
And comparing Aamir Khan to Toshiro Mifune is a bit of a stretch. Aamir is yet to do the body of work Toshiro Mifune did only for Kurosawa. But your quote by Kurosawa on Satyajit Ray is accurate.
Tat Tvam Asi
Oh they get credit. They also have huge fan followings and compilations are a cash cow for Indian record companies. Check out these wikipedia entries.
The problem with that is Mollywood (M for Madras) was originally the Tamil Cinema world. Of course, now the Tamil Cinema world is Chennai since Madras was officially renamed as Chennai. Still, calling Bollywood as Mollywood would be too confusing.
If you seriously think Bollywood movies doesn't make it out of India much, you need to look again. Bollywood movies have a huge market in Russia, China, Africa, the Middle East, parts of Europe etc., and quite a few regions Bollywood movies regularly are among the top grossing.