WHAT THE SPEAKERS SAID
By Jyothi Venkatesh

Session : If CONTENT IS KING-WHAT WORKS?
MAHESH BHATT
Mahesh Bhatt said that times are changing fast. “We have made a film with a lady called Ilene from Cape Town. It is great mainstream cinema opens its doors and allows a leading lady from S.A to be part of it.
At one time make believe cinema was looked down upon. Now even the bureaucrats feel that there is some relevance in Indian cinema. People from Switzerland, Italy and New Zealand hard sell their locations with attractive package deals to India producers. However let me strike a note of caution. Before we go abroad to shoot on locations there, we should make an attempt to explore the virginal locations in our own country, like we did when we made Paap.
The danger lurks over our heads of us becoming victims of hype. The media saying the industry is a giant is like keeping Charminar cigarettes in 555 packets. I have managed to stay afloat by making at least one hit film every year Reality is quite different from what the media is projecting.

VIVEK VASWANI
We should start talking about profitable and non profitable films rather than good, bad, hit and flop films. The tragedy with us is that we just make films to pay off our debts. America does not deal with debts. We are in the business of servicing debts in India. It is because I am left with only Rs 24 out of Rs 100 on a cinema ticket. Content is a king but not for the poor producers because there is a lot of difference between gross and net collections. In the history of Indian cinema no film has lost money till date. It is only the producer who has lost money. We are only servants of IDBI, the government or the stars.

VINOD PANDEY
Human minds want new things all the time. Or else we could have made Kismet again and again because it had clicked in a big way 50 years ago. Today there the need for syndication cannot be overemphasized in order to ensure that producers are secure and are not exploited by vested interests. We should make an effort to reach beyond frontiers and geographical barriers and stop being parochial. There is also a greater need for self censorship and editorial responsibility.

SUDHIR MISHRA
Content is in the head of the viewer. When I watch a Shahrukh Khan film, I see the story whereas a clerk in my office will see Shahrukh Khan and not the story in a film starring him like Main Hoon Na.Cinema succeeds at different times because of different reasons. A film like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro finds an audience again and again though it was a big hit way back in 1983 because it was an adventurous film. However when I was working with Kundan Shah in the film, we did not know that it was going to be a cult classic. Attempting anything new is like walking on a tight rope. There is no sure fire formula for a super duper hit in this unpredictable business. Unless and until you fail, how you will be able to know what is good content.

PRAKASH JHA
Contents mean different things to different people. It is a combination of packaging stars and depends on who is presenting it. A story well told is most likely to work. The structure of the film industry is structured in a very haphazard way. NFDC failed in its mission because of non availability of channels to release parallel cinema. In Hollywood, 850million dollars are spent purely on developing the screenplay whereas the basic problem here is the paucity of good screenplay writers. We rarely adapt from good literature in India .An actor becomes the primary part of contents though he has to be the last. You structure your story according to the availability of an Ajay Devgan or a Shah Rukh Khan or a Suneil Shetty. I was lucky to have been able to bridge between contents and packaging.

KUNDAN SHAH
We shouldn’t lose hope but continue to make small viable films. Most of the time we go wrong when the script is at fault. A family social used to work well in the 70’s but today it will work only when Shah Rukh Khan is there in it. Today values have changed and a Dostana may not work at the box office. The failure rate is 80% in Mumbai industry. I was told that it is the same in Hollywood too. Ganga Jal worked but every film cannot be a Ganga Jal. The reason Hollywood survived is it went beyond contents with special effects. They went on to make animation films like Shrek. To survive today you have to evolve a different kind of content which relates to the youth today.

BASU CHATTERJEE
Stories still remain the main content even today. I have taken stories from literature. I had made Rajanigandha about the exchange of letters between two girls. It was the screenplay of the film which made it click at the box office. I choose a story and take the artiste. You should never make a film if your heart does not allow you to make it. You should stick to your point of view as a filmmaker when you set out to make your film. I should know because I have made 40 films till date, most of them as a director

INDU MIRANI
It is a tragedy that a writer’s work is trampled upon by every one. He is paid the least. A film ought to touch your mind, heart or body. Like Baghbaan and Murder did. Hum Tum and Dhoom weren’t great films by any stretch but they were packaged beautifully and hence clicked at the box office

SESSION : New Horizons-Production, Revenue Sources and International Marketing
NITTIN KENI
It is a tragedy that though Indian cinema goes to over 80 countries, it commands less than half per cent of the business in the world.. There are very few active distributors overseas. The rest of them are just traders and half among them are mere pirates. It is sad that we are unable to exploit the potential of our films abroad properly. You should decide who you are targeting your film and market it accordingly.

VINOD KUMAR
Talking about the marketing of films overseas, Vinod Kumar, the secretary general of FPFAC, which has organised IIFC said, "The way Indian content is being marketed today at festivals is not sufficient; when you are a seller you need to go ahead and promote big time, just having stalls at a festival doesn't suffice, we need to market months in advance."

"In the US there are 7,200 video rentals stocking Indian fare. If a producer were to make 7,200 copies of his movie and stock one each with each video rental it would provide an additional source of income. Sadly that's not how things work out here," he said Further commenting on the need to market the movie during release overseas, he cited the example of Bend it like Beckham in whose international selling he was involved. "The movie had less than $2million as the marketing budget for Asia Pacific, and it grossed $42 million in 4 weeks."

"If Spiderman were to release in India and only posters would be put up at some restaurants and hotels, would it do the kind of business it has done in India, then why do we do this when we go abroad to sell our fare" questioned Vinod.

The entire session was sprinkled with a lot of wisdom and real world experience. Vinod Kumar concluded the session saying "What we need is distributors/ producers to come forward and join us to market Indian content abroad not only during festivals but all year round".

PADAM KUMAR
There are 180 terrestrial channels all over the world which beam Bollywood films. I know 65 of them but do not know the rest. The Foundation should see to it that the data about such channels is made available to the producers so that they are not exploited by pirates and middle men. We should get rid of the mindset that a film is meant to be seen only in theaters and start exploiting our films through alternate means and make money. My film Supari may not have clicked in India but I succeeded in marketing my film through Kazaa dot com, a hacker site which turned legitimate by selling music downloads. As a small filmmaker I do not get theatres to show my films, I will have no other alternative but to pirate my won films in order to survive. You cannot try more than Warner Brothers or Twentieth Century Fox as far as eradicating piracy is concerned even if your intention may be genuine.

Session: Film Financing
K. KANNAN (Bank Of Baroda)
IDBI’s only mantra is that money has to come back. Red is the only color that we in banks do not like. We feel that financing a TV serial is easier because ads back up the production of a serial. Besides the fact that financing a serial is a short-term deal, there is a feeling that film isn’t an organized industry. The extent to which we can give finance to any producer depends also as to what extent the distributors are ready to underwrite their films. We treat a producer as nothing but a CEO of a film. We look at financing a film on three different levels. Pre production, production and post-production levels. Ideally we expect to get the money lent to producers within twelve to eighteen months.

DEEPANKER MUKOPADHYAY (NFDC)
The first time any film was financed by State Government was when Ray was given two lakhs to make his first film Pather Panchali. Ray had shot 4000 feet and was struggling to get money to proceed with the shoot when he approached the then C.M of West Bengal- Mr Roy. The government has since then made several crores out of Pather Panchali. In 1964, Film Finance Corporation was set up and filmmakers like Satyajit Ray, Shatanaram and Bimalda were given loans to make their films Mahanagar, Stree and Do Dooni Char respectively. The trend was reversed in the 70’s after Bhuvan Shome when a total new wave emerged. 27 Down was made on a budget of just three and a half lakhs in 1971.It was Raakhi’s first film. It was sold in 1999 to a satellite channel for eight lakhs. If The Rising proves to be a success, it will become a landmark and open the floodgates of co-production. If NFDC had not happened, there would have been no Rajnigandha, Nishant or Ankur

RAJESH KUMAR SINGH (Film Maker)
If today the entrepreneur is not encouraged, he will vanish. We need to achieve breakthroughs as far as filmmaking is concerned. If you can pre sell your film, you do not need money. Bankers and financial Institutions should look at the film industry as a normal kind of industry, and provide loans and encourage producers to grow and add to the growth of the industry. It is sad that today a film producer is a suspect in the eyes of a banker, though the film industry has a structured and well-organized set up.

Session: Focus SA
LAWRENCE MITCHEL
We are locally rooted but globally connected. ACBC is the broadcast leader in the continent of South Africa. We cater to all those who love Bollywood. There is a huge increase in Bollywood products in South Africa. In fact Bollywood films on television dominate every Saturday evening. We have seen films like Devdas, Munnabhai M.B.B.S and Dil Se.

JOHN HARRISON
South Africa is a very well developed film country. We have all the necessary equipments, which a filmmaker will need to shoot his film in our country. It is just a myth that all these equipments are very costly. South Africa is a haven for filmmakers who want to shoot in exotic locations with no bureaucratic hassles.

LIEZEL BRUCKMAN
We co-ordinate with models from South Africa. Our models have been sent to various countries to work in their films and ad films on a regular basis. There are 30 national languages in South Africa. We look forward to a cultural exchange between models from India and South Africa on a regular basis.

PIETER COETZEE (Counsel General, South Africa)
Till 1992, all the passports issued in India used to mention that Indian citizens are not allowed to travel to South Africa. Now things have changed. We have made things easy for people to go to South Africa. We do not charge even a single rupee for visa. We only need proof that you belong to any producer’s body. There are specialize people who look after all the travel requirements and accommodation for film crews in South Africa too.

Session :Technology In Film Making
KIREET KHURANA
Animation is an art form, not technological prowess. We cannot afford to underestimate or fail to emphasize the importance of man behind the machine. We should remember that special effects are just an element in the story, not the hero of the story. It is pertinent to se5t our own priorities when we set out to make an animation film, and keep in mind the fact that the biggest star of your film is not the actor or the actress but the story, story and the story. We should lay more emphasis on thorough pre-production for special effects driven films. It is difficult to believe it but the fact is that Jurassic Park had only 6 minutes of VFX

N.CHANDRA
Sync Sound is not an invention, because before dubbing came into existence, there used to be sync sound when people sued to record the sound on the sets and sue the same for the final track. They had different cameras like Mitchell, which was very huge with big blimp. Though uncomfortable, it was noiseless but it could not provide any solution to filter the outer noise such as traffic sound, public disturbance, wind sound, playground noise etc During the days of the loop system, the actor used to depend on director’s judgment who was sitting with the sound recordist in the recording room but now with the facility to listen to the Ok take along with the picture in the theatre itself, the actor took over. Even the recordist started giving judgments. It took more time for the dubbing because the director took the back seat with the associate director and the recordist acquired the knack of reading the actor’s mind and started thinking of turning directors themselves. The biggest example is my own recordist A. Radhaswamy who told me that he would no longer work for me as a recordist and turned a producer and director of Marathi films. Out of the five films that he had made, three are hits and two super hits.

RAMESH MEER
After having worked for the last 38 years in more than 350 films, I decided to go in for stereoscopy and create a film which cannot be pirated. I started work on Abracadabra for Dheeraj Kumar. It was inspired by Harry Potter. It is interesting to note that till today no VSD is available of Chota Chetan or Chota Jadugar because they were 3 D films. Titanic had a budget of 45 million dollars just for special effects. However spending just 1/20th of the budget of Titanic, we can recreate the magic of Titanic with Indian films here. Take for example animation films like Shrek or for that matter any other picture which has had animation and special effects. You will see the names of many Indians in the contribution of the special effects.. We have made abracadabra in just 108 shifts at a cost of nine crores. Only 60 prints of Chota Chetan could be released at a time because the producer had only 60 lenses. For Abracadabra, there is no need to spend extra on buying the lenses for the projector.

Session: Ad Films, Documentaries & Features- New Horizons
KAILASH SURENDRANATH
I make commercials for prime time viewing because I have a captive audience. We make commercials for specific clients. A well-made ad always clicks. You need not use a celebrity to endorse any and every product. Our commercials have been recognized all over the world. We make 20 to 30 commercials for Pakistan every year, though it isn’t allowed officially because of the tension between both India and Pakistan. We have made a few films for the West too. It is a new horizon for the ad filmmakers. Today we should make use of the Internet as one of the tools to make commercials for the entire world. We can exchange technical crew and work either by going abroad or bringing people here from abroad

KABIR KHAN
We have in our country as many as 74 satellite channels but no one is having space to show documentaries and short films. Another problem dogging the documentary filmmakers is that even if we get funds for making documentaries and short films, where are the outlets to screen them for the audience?

DINKAR CHOUDHARY
Instead of treating the small screen as our competitors, it is high time the documentary and short filmmakers started making use of the small screen to reach people. I am very optimistic as far as the future of the short film and documentary movement in India.

YAKUB SAEED
It is really sad that though documentaries produced by Doordarshan are not censored at all, documentaries produced by Films Division. It is indeed ironic that both come under the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting.

U.B. MATHUR
Funding and marketing are two main problem areas for documentary filmmakers. Vinod Ganatra’s Hedda Hoda has been selected for screening in several foreign countries but the tragedy is that it is yet to be released in India where The Children’s Film Society of India has made it.

ZAKIR CHINDE
Contrary to the wrong notion that today people are just not interested in watching short films and documentaries, the fact is that people do like to watch interesting short films and documentaries. These films should be shown during the interval of a feature film. Also steps ought to be taken to see to it that short film packages are rotated round the country to create awareness among the people about the short film movement.

Session: Packaging, Promotion & Marketing of Films
SURJIT SINGH
Selling is just one of the objectives of marketing. The approach of a filmmaker should be that of the brand management. The key element is the activation of the marketing process at the concept stage, not after the film is made. Today products and services are bought, not sold because of increase in the number of brands. Branding pre sells products/services to buyers.. Branding differentiates your cow from the others cattle and creates a unique image about your product in the minds of the consumer. However it is pertinent to note that marketing cannot work in isolation Keep in mind the fact that films have a short shelf life and there are no retakes after the release. Poor marketing may not be detrimental but high decibel marketing does not help a poor film.

SANJIV MEHTA
We at UTV had dared to break traditions and divided India into 25 different territories instead of the traditional 6 territories; in 29 States of India. We have a data base of nation wide cinemas. We produce eight to ten films every year; distribute them as well as outside films. Wee distributed Lakshya, Phir Milenge. The circuit concept is not relevant for us. We make it a point to take the pressure of marketing off the producer in India, UK and USA and give all commitments in writing. Our commitment at UTV is not just to distribute a film but to comprehensively market it as well. The attitude of How Much They Will Pay should be replaced with How Much We Can Work Together For Mutual benefit. As distributors we make it a point to exploit and expand the potential of our films in traditionally weak markets. We also go in for local sponsorships in all territories to build hype and retail OTG activity.