Celebrated filmmaker Karan Johar, TV czarina Ekta Kapoor and Sudhanshu Vats, Group CEO,
Viacom18, were a part of the panel discussion ‘Mastering A New Reality’ at the
recently concluded International Film Festival of India (IFFI) 2017. The
discussion touched upon the phenomenon of growing emergence of online content
providers and if that can be considered a threat to cinema and movie business.
Ronojoy Banerjee, the moderator of the session, started off the
conversation by pointing out that content is the king. He opined that the
digital journey is quite exciting and that the broadband penetration has been
going up and is growing by 30 per cent every year. Bannerjee also said that the
real revolution is taking place in terms of mobile handsets, and projected that
by 2021, 80 per cent of mobile traffic will be video led.
Profitability in movie making is probably at an all-time low.
With more competition coming from online content providers like Netflix and
Amazon, how has movie-making as a process changed? According to Karan Johar,
movie-making has advanced tremendously. Johar further opined that the general
standard of cinema has taken a quantum leap in terms of narrative, technology,
etc and everyone has upped their game. “What is alarming to mainstream cinema
when we talk about purely theatrical business is that we have seen a downslide
only because the energy that surrounds entertainment has been enhanced
considerably. There are so many options available to the cine-goer or the
consumer – be it digital, television or mobile handset. And this downslide we
have seen in the last five years,” Johar said.
The filmmaker further went on to express concern, stating that
films may soon start getting the stepchild treatment, thanks to the booming
digital world. Johar further said, “I really feel the need to protect it and
I’m sure many other filmmakers across the world feel the same. Now when good
films are being sent to festivals just for finding digital platforms for it to
release on, it sort of breaks my heart because cinema used to be the only
platform giving us the community feeling of watching and experiencing the
film.”
After ruling the TV space for the last few decades, Ekta Kapoor
has now shifted her focus to the web space in the form of web series. After
getting rave reviews for Rajkummar Rao-starrer ‘Bose: Dead/Alive’ , Ekta is now
working on her next web series, which will revolve around Mars Orbiter Mission
or Mangalyaan, that was launched in November 2013. While speaking at the
session, Ekta said, “Digital content is specific and polarised for individual
viewers. The content differs from domain to domain. As a creative individual,
the idea is to cater to the audience in terms of their age groups. It doesn’t
necessarily need to be the same content for everyone. In one year, I do shows
like ‘Bhramrakshas’ and the web series ‘Bose’ and ‘Ragini MMS Returns’ for
different audiences.”
Sudhanshu
Vats sees two dimensions to it as we go forward – one is the theatrical aspect
and the other, which comes as good news for filmmakers, is that in the last one
and half year, the digital medium has become a promising stream of revenue that
is going to take the industry forward. “We need to think about getting the
filmmaking budget right,” Vats said.
