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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."
Only 1 film in 12 makes a profit? Perhaps the films are not intended to make a profit, but instead are money laundering?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Digital cinema will cut down on piracy and help the industry to increase its profits.
Last time I checked it was 100x easier to pirate a digital format by simply copying it as oppose to the usual digital-camera-at-screen method or even more difficult and costly telecine process.
Maybe they're big, in, um, India???
that this will cut down on piracy, but it will certainly be interesting to watch what happens. This is one area where DRM would work very well. There are others, of course, but this one application is a good place for DRM and encryption etc.
Besides, all those call center reps need a night out once in a while
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Its movie about Indian but not a bollywood movie. The movie was made in UK
The reason the digital system will reduce piracy is, in India movies are usually copied while moving the film tape (reel) from one place to another.. For example a movie released in a particular city might just have one reel and it has to be shared between cinemas and are exchanged on a show to show basis...
"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.""
"But, but, it doesn't hurt anyone"
"It's free advertising"
"I never would have spent the money on it anyway"
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!
Awesome. I loved it.
:)
And it's about cricket.
high budget microphones to hear their voices while singing every 2 minutes.
Rapsani: You killed my brother, how dare you then sleep with my sister!
Hajil: No, it was him Gandapana! Look, he's running away. Let's Sing!
Then you see 30 indians break into a dance while the evil killer is running away WHILE singing AND dancing.
I bet the stories in Bollywood movies are much more interesting than the stories of today's Hollywood movies, regardless of how much they sing and/or dance.
I have seen Bollywood films such as Mashooka, Saathiya, and Yeh Dil, amongst others. While I'm not a fan of American cinema, I think I am even less of a fan of Indian cinema. I found their films less than entertaining. The plots often lacked originality, and the filmmanship was subpar. They're often billed as being professional-quality, but the editing, audio and the general direction was often quite bad.
They are lacking overall, especially when compared to the masterpieces that regularly come from mainland Europe. Not that I'm suggesting every European movie is better. But if you pick one at random, the European one will most likely be far better done, the quality of the acting will be much greater, and it will be far more coherent.
If there's one good thing about the Bollywood films, especially compared to Hollywood ones, is that they're far less commercialized. That is, they're not plastered with ads for Coke, for instance.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Actually, this really isn't true.
The music industry and the film industry rarely have people crossing over.
They work together very closely, as music is a very important part of the scene, but singers rarely become actors and vice versa.
However, every Ms India / Ms India who became Ms World / Universe / Foo automatically has a long acting career ahead of her
People outside of India should care, why?
Because they're adopting a different technology strategy than companies in the US are. In particular, they're opting for better than we have now (if not better than we hope to have), and sooner to market, and cheaper. This is something that should make people
It's not as if these guys couldn't be selling us this technology in the near future, while our "better" technology is still trying to get off the dime.
I'm sure it's an aquired taste
Well, it's more of a cultural difference, the way that Hong Kong audiences love an incredily corny tear jerker. You probably don't realize how ridiculous the movies your countrymen like until you live someplace else. I kid an Indian friend of mine whenever he's going to piss his wife off by working late that she's going to make him climb to the top of a grassy knoll and dance around a tree. He hasn't thought of it yet, but I suppose he could tell me to check for a bomb strapped to the bottom of my car when I'm in the same situation.
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Do the terms E-Cinema and D-Cinema have anything to do with the fact that 99% of films that are coming out these days are B movies?
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
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:
= 13294051
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?
Here's a better article:
:-P
http://www.bollywhat.com/darkside.html
(As we Indians say: "Google zindabad" long live google)
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 a conflation of Bombay and Hollywood.
Many agree with you about the star system. The star system is waning though; the list of stars is short and has been static in the US for a while.
A lot of market research shows that younger generations are not really star-centric. Celebrity is disposable, so no long term relationships are made with actors/directors, etc.
So to address your statement, the story is actually far more likely to sell a story in the US film market. More accurately, HIGH CONCEPT. This is what hollywood terms a film that can be summarized succinctly, usually in the title. For example: Titanic... or The Perfect Storm, Anaconda, et al. High concept films focus on the simple catchy idea that is easily conveyed. This reduces costs because a name cast is not necessary; the film sells itself. The title is a marketing phrase. The way hollywood hedges bets is that they tie a name cast to a high concept film and assume that all bases are covered. Tom Cruise in American Samurai, or Tom Hanks in Castaway. These are sure moneymakers and everyone wants to bankroll those.
The star system is more effective for the older crowd. 45-64s make up about 25% of the moviegoing pop in the US, the second biggest chunk behind the 12-24s. Stars matter to them; they establish relationships with their artists and nurture those relationships.
That's why your summer blockbuster is packed with your rapper/pop star du jour and suitably MTVed dialogue. Serious films with stars are more likely distributed during the rest of the year on non-holiday weekends but most likely during Oscar season, typically considered to be the fall and winter.
Re: Bollywood. Bollywood movies won't cross over here for two reasons. Americans on a whole tend to be very culturally arrogant. If Bollywood films don't already fit the existing view Americans have of Indians, they will not be embraced. Americans watch films to affirm themselves, for the most part... and this attitude transcends racial, gender, and age lines. Americans for the most part, feel themselves superior.
Also, Bollywood movies are bound by cultural restraints that will make them less than viable here.
The other side of that, is that a Bollywood star who tries to cross over here risks alienating his bollywood audience, to the point where he/she might not be viable over there any more.
So much of the world has become acclimated to consuming our product, it is more likely that they'll come towards the US style of filmmaking as opposed to the other way around.
un burrito me trampeó.
Mario Puzo wrote about it in The Godfather so it must be true.
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Bollywood has discovered a very effective method of preventing illegal copying of their films.
They make mostly Hindi musicals.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
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.
The way I've read the article, I don't think that DRM has anything to do with their reasoning as to why this will cut down on piracy. For all we know from the article, they might not even be incorporating DRM in their digital copies.
The main problem seems to be that it simply takes so long to get celluloid copies rolled out to everywhere at the same time, and a large part of this is because the expense makes it difficult for smaller theatres to get movies quickly. People then buy from the pirates because the genuine copies aren't available.
It's similar to what happens in developed countries outside the US when the industry tries to hold up a movie or TV show's international release for anything from months to years until whatever overseas seasons they think will be most profitable. People ignore the industry and simply pirate copies from the US. (Hence the regionised DVD players, which have been an attempt by the MPAA to make it difficult or illegal for people to import and export movies between countries independently from the industry.)
The main difference seems to be that Bollywood isn't withholding movies intentionally --- it simply can't get them around everywhere quickly enough. Lower cost digital systems mean that Bollywood distributors can distribute more widely and more quickly to the much smaller population centres, meaning that people will have less incentive to pirate the movies.
So Indian movie production companies are an insider industry controlled by several families. Many crappy movies are produced, but the profits from just a few hits sustain those companies. And many of the so-called new talents are actually related to higher powers in the movie industry.
How is this different from Hollywoood?
Everybody is missing the point here. The point is not that they are fighting piracy, but changing the way feature films have always been made and shown. If anybody has even taken a film history class, you would realize the effect film has on the audience, compared to ordinary digital. If you are going for a certain effect, you will use film. Film is far superior to watch than digital.
The real issue here is the industry is cutting costs, while making us think it is better. We will all remember the days when we used to use real 35mm prints and how much better it was. A film projector projects nothing more then it projects a picture. Most of the time, black is on the screen rather than a picture. Digital projectors don't do this.
Film is expensive, it is hard to work with, and it becomes costly to edit and reproduce and distribute. But we don't care about that. We should be concerned with the inferior replacement of film by digital. That's the difference between going to a theater and popping in a DVD at home. The film experience.
The U.S. isn't the whole world. Bollywood movies regularly crack the top ten lists in the UK, are extremely popular in the Arab world, and have many devoted fans in Russia. In a recent UK poll, Amitabh Bachchan showed up as THE top movie star. Bollywood is developing much more of a following in the US as well. Even if you don't have an Indian cinema or an Indian grocery-spice-video shop in your area, you can sample the films through Netflix. After a while ... they kinda grow on you.
Digital cinema will cut down on piracy and help the industry to increase its profits.
In absolutely all cases i can think of going to digital has actually made piracy not only easier but faster. Gone are the days where someone from the cutting room or the projector room would have to go through the lengthy process of transferring to a digicam or whatever. Now that the films will come pre-digitised, its just a matter of moving bits from one format to another.
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"Their target audience doesn't want to see realism, or even something down to earth. They want to see love stories where a poor person is escalated into another caste because their lover (not in the literal sense) is wealthy. They want to see 20 exotic locations that they will never get to physically visit, all compressed into a single movie, even though there is no reason whatsoever within the plot or storyline to visit 20 different locations"
Y'know, I'm not a impoverished Indian villager, but I don't want pay money to see day to day stuff either.
Why should I pay money to see dark movies about the bad guy winning, or stupid violence when I could just turn on the TV and watch the news.
And if I wanted cynicism, there's plenty of it nowadays for free.
Say all you like about movies like "Finding Nemo" but those do make money, it makes me wonder why Hollywood makes the usual movies they do - if they're really interested in profit. Do they have some sort of agenda or something?
At least Bollywood is making what their target audience wants (or will at least settle for). Whereas just look at this year's lack lustre stuff from Hollywood.
Movies made by heartless accountants or executives or committees?
Seems almost like either there has to be some Emperor's New Clothes syndrome somewhere (Yes sir, the movie will be a hit), or they are intentionally doing this.