“Only 14.6 per cent of the films were able to recover their expenses through theatrical releases”, said Mr. Anjum Rajabali, screen writer of Ghulam, Rajneeti and Aarakshan fame. He felt that a lack of appropriate systemised story-telling or script writing was the primary reason behind the dismal numbers.
Mr. Rajabali was speaking at the second edition of the film summit organised by the Indian Institute of Management Rohtak on Saturday, 22 July 2017.
He recalled, “Back in the 90’s, a hundred films were made per thousand bound-scripts in Hollywood, whereas in Bollywood the metric stood at a mere three written scripts per hundred movies.” “Scripts, in Bollywood, were all delivered orally,” he continued.
Quoting Hitchcock, he said that the three things you need to make a great film are, “the script, the script and the script.”
He warned against stereotyping the audience based on their occupation, class or gender. Citing the examples of ‘Chak de India’ and ‘Taare Zameen Par’, he said, “When movies based on women’s hockey and a dyslexic boy can become Bollywood hits, you can’t stereotype what the audience likes. Everything depends on how you deliver the story”.
Mr. Rajabali concluded by saying, “The golden key to the art of film-making is a good, enriching and engaging story-telling experience.”
Director and co-writer of the upcoming movie ‘Newton’, Mr. Amit Masurkar also graced the event. The film has already won awards at the Berlin Film Festival and Hongkong Film Festival. His previous film, Sulemani Keeda was released in December, 2014 and was well received by audiences on the digital platform.
Mr. Hardik Mehta, writer, director, actor and script supervisor, said that the audience is now moving away from television to the digital platforms. His film, ‘Famous in Ahmedabad’, won the Best Film Award in the Non-Feature Film category at the 63
rd National Award ceremony in Gujarat.
Director IIM Rohtak, Prof. Dheeraj Sharma initiated the proceedings with a thought-provoking address. He wondered whether the purpose of films is to influence the society towards something new or to genuinely reflect what is happening in the society. “The reason Hollywood movies are so popular is that they are marketed well,” Prof. Sharma said.
IIM Rohtak Film summit 2.0 was presented by GAIL, Indian Oil, Equinox and Downtown.