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Showing posts from September, 2012

Film Promotions-Are they really necessary?

Well the answer to this question is yes,at least for grabbing initial eyeballs and getting the movie a good opening which has become of paramount importance these days.Agreed that promotions cannot sell a bad movie but it can definitely get more out of a bad product.   There have been movies which are exceptionally good but have suffered due to lack of promotions.No wonder movies like Gangs of Wasseypur with a modest budget of under 20 crores are also keeping aside some budget for promotions.No doubt if the product is good it may pick by word of mouth and subsequently earn money from DVD or home video but even smaller films are also now realizing the importance of promotions and film promotions have come a long way from posters and trailers to being promoted everywhere from serials to malls to events these days Firstly we need to undersand why film promotions have become so big now a days.The reason is today the audiences have a wide variety of choices for entertainment-there ...

TV Channels will not buy films before BO verdict-A good news for the audience

Just read this news item in some of the leading newspapers today. Now this is good news for the audience as it will improve the quality of movies. In the earlier days there used to be only two sources of revenues for the movies-the box office collections and the music rights. Filmmakers very well knew that the product has to be very good otherwise they will lose money. But post 2000 other sources of revenues also came into being like Satellite rights, DVD rights, music downloads and through radio and music channels, radio although was always there but its resurgence was in 2000s only. There have been movies which didn’t’ do very good in terms of theatrical collections but did well on other counts, the case of movies like Johny Gaddar, Sehar, Manorama Six Feet Under and Ek Chaalis ki Last Local. Some movie don’t work initially upon their release due to various factors like less promotions  new starcast, unconventional themes but find a following later due to...

Indian Television from 1990s-2000s

I wonder that in spite of hearing everybody cribbing about the quality of television these days most people still end up enjoying the same kind of shows and rejecting the shows which attempt to break the mould barring few exceptions The production values have definitely are top notch these days in the serials and some are almost on par with movies.But the quality of television shows has gone down with each passing day although the revenues and TRPs touched the roof The reason for this rise has not been quality of shows but other factors.Economically the country has done better in the new millennium which means more income and hence more TV sets.Secondly peoples' lives became easier in terms of usual chores with the coming of technology be it in consumer durables,telecom or computers.Also the borrowing became easier and the overall streamlining of the entertainment business led to more channels and more shows. Initially,most of the serials used to be weeklies...

Indian Movie Critics need a reality check...

Dabangg,Ready,Bodyguard,Rowdy Rathore and Bol Bacchan have two things in common-firstly all of these were panned by the critics and second they all made more than 100 crores.This makes me wonder-do critics really matter ? The answer probably is both yes and no.Yes because we may go and see these films making them 100 grossers but we do read the reviews too and no because if the review mattered none of us would have gone and watched these movies Critics probably should not have a universal criterion for reviewing the movies,the genre of movies should definitely be considered and also the intent of the movies.None of the above films claimed to be anything more than entertainers.The films unabashedly claimed that they aimed to entertain the audience and not preach something or give out a social message.Sure there are films like 3 Idiots,Munnabhai series and Taare Zameen Par who do both-that is give out a social message in an entertaining way but not all movies can do so and even if the...