Cinema has changed a lot since we were
children. Icons of the past like Bimal Roy and B.R. Chopra had a social message
to deliver which would enrich family values or glorify patriotism in a newly
independent nation. The stalwarts from the east, Satyajit Roy, Mrinal Sen and
Ritwik Ghattak took our cinema to the world and gave us international
recognition. Then came the era of unadulterated entertainment and Raj Kapoor,
Ramesh Sippy, Manmohan Desai and their compatriots gave our generation unparalleled
joy and reason to bunk classes and cycle miles to enjoy for three hours! Then
came the television and it changed everything. The days of Silver Jubilee and
Golden Jubilee were gone forever.
Along with the art of film making the science
of marketing the film became equally important. Some additives in the film,
which had nothing to do with the plot and everything to do with the box office,
became vital for the success of the film. With liberalization came the competition
from Hollywood films and with bigger budget for both film making and film
publicity they gave our own film makers a stiffer challenge. But the biggest challenge came from the home
entertainment industry catered to every living room by the ever increasing
number of television channels. Established cinema halls started closing down
and lucky ones got transformed into small pigeon hole theatres with fabulously
costly tickets.
Only big budget extravaganza managed to reach
the big screen now and that too for a limited period of time. This era also saw
Indians migrating to all corners of the world and right behind them went their
films which they did not want to miss. Along with them the locals in these
places also got addicted to our films and die hard Amitabh Bacchan fans erupted
in Emirates as did Rajnikant admirers in Japan. Not only Hindi films but even
Bhojpuri films found a niche market overseas and films became a very vital arm
of India’s soft power.
But competitive marketing spelt doom for the
not so big budget films and most of them were relegated to streaming and
television and they were once in a while seen in film festivals and group binge
watches. With alternative cinema—any
sort of cinema that isn't mainstream—they are out of luck in terms of getting theatre
space and having people come to see them. So Netflix and home entertainment
remains their last resort. But it seems that is not at all bad!
The convenience of
watching films at home, on large and powerful television and through a home
projector in the movie room, with friends and relatives, snacks and drinks is
actually dissuading us from going to a movie theatre. The traffic woes, the
fabulously costly tickets, the overpriced food and drinks, the inconsiderate
audience interruptions and the parking problems all together are not helping
the cause of the movie theatre and giving a fresh lease of life to alternate
cinema.
But wait! That is
not all. The 4th generation industrial revolution has silently crept
in and it threatens to change the films as we know them today. Films
like James Cameron’s Avatar, the largely computer-generated, 3-D film, Terminator,
about an indestructible human-machine cyborg, and Titanic, with its
hyper-realistic feel for the unsinkable ship’s disastrous end, were created with the most
advanced technology. Cameron
continued with the system he created, refined it with every film and the next
production from his stable can be expected to be even more mind boggling! While
Terminator was shot on film, Avatar was not. Back then while making Terminator
they used glass paintings, foreground miniatures and
stop-motion animation, and all that was very innovative and state of the art, but in Avatar all the visual effects were
digital!
The new Sci Fi and
animation movies are only the beginning of the new generation movies. We might
envision a future in which an entire set is digitally created, with actors
dropped into it live without further post-production. Take the ‘tiger in boat’
sequences from 2012’s Life of Pi, for example. Rather than shooting
the actor on a boat in a pool, then adding a digital tiger in post production,
you could create the scene first and then have the actor perform in the digital
set, in real time!
If the explosion
of material in YouTube and TikTok is anything to go by you can imagine what
these non-celebrity anonymous creators are up to. I am certain that soon they
will be ready with full length feature films of their own. The expense of
creating films has long served as an entry barrier to many creative geniuses
but with newer and smarter technology we can expect a boom of low budget and
small crew movies which will not shy away from risky ideas because there will
be very little to lose. The industry will become more democratic in expression
and more chaotic to govern. You think the market leaders of yesterday are not
concerned? Fuji has announced
it was not going to produce commercial stock any more and companies such as
Panavision and Arri have stopped making new film cameras!
Movie making is
about storytelling, about juxtaposing images, about creating a feeling with
images and music but the technology that delivers all this is changing at a
pace faster than you think! Artificial Intelligence has made inroads into film
making and made it smarter, grander and cheaper. With better and cheaper
cameras and advanced softwares specialists like cinematographers, sound
recordists and editors will either have to metamorphose themselves into
software engineers or they will become obsolete. AI will write scripts for
animated characters and its efficiency of generating human faces and feelings
will get even more refined. This may either make your favorite hero and
heroine redundant or will immortalize them forever!
I do not rule out
creating one’s own film, sitting in front of one’s own computer. Virtual
Augmented Reality will make the film viewer so much interactive that he or she
may decide where the story line goes. Wearing a V.R. headset the viewer may become
a protagonist of the film himself and then only his imagination will be the
limit! Haptic body suits and virtual reality simulators to integrate senses
like touch, smell and taste may integrate the viewer in the story and smart
glasses or contact lenses may give him/her the visual experience which no
theatre can match!
No, I am not the
only one gazing at the crystal ball. Martin Scorsese, the American Italian film maker
whose career spans for over 50 years has in an open letter to his daughter he written "The art of cinema and the movie business are now
at a crossroads. Audio-visual entertainment and what we know as cinema—moving
pictures conceived by individuals—appear to be headed in different directions.
In the future, you'll probably see less and less of what we recognize as cinema
on multiplex screens and more and more of it in smaller theaters, online, and,
I suppose, in spaces and circumstances that I can't predict."
Will I
be missing the passion of Aradhana, the romance of Bobby, the thrill of Sholay,
the song and dance of Guide and the gut wrenching emotions of Saransh? Well
yes, I will, but being an eternal optimist I am sure the best is yet to come
and the past is there only to enrich our archives.
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