Ever watched a small film and felt like
you’d seen it before? I was just watching a trailer of a forthcoming film and
it suddenly struck me that I’d seen it many times before. The formula was down
pat to the last comeback. The Hero just the right type of chocolate and the Heroine
just the right sort of damsel in distress. A flowing dress fluttering in the wind, wrapping
itself across the hero’s face while he had just the right sort of ecstatic
expression. Promo song shot in slow motion in just the right sort of exotic
location. The heaving bosoms and chiseled abs doing just the right sort of orgasmic gyrations. It’s not like there
was anything wrong with the trailer, more a case of nothing being right with
it. It was just plastic. Commercially it
had ‘Investors will lose big’ written all over it. The poor sods don’t know it yet and nobody
has bothered to articulate the reasons to them. Right now they’re probably
popping champagne at a party to celebrate the anticipated success of their
classic.
So, why is it that on seeing a trailer of a
film most viewers can make out exactly what the film is going to be like? Why
do viewers decide to drop a load of money on one film and give the other a
complete miss? It’s because most viewers, unconsciously of course, can smell
the sameness on offer. This sameness
works in opposite ways for different budget or types of film.
For a large budget film, for example a
Rohit Shetty or Salman/SRK film the sameness works as an advantage. The
audience knows what to expect. There is comfort in knowing that the formula
will be exactly as per template. It is like going to a well-known buffet
meal at an average restaurant. The standards are set not too high, yet they
seem high enough, and there is a bit for everyone. Minor variations in story and execution make
the experience predictable and therefore enjoyable. The audience doesn’t want sushi suddenly
replacing their chicken tikka. Predictable is nice and comforting.
Now when a mid to small budget movie tries
to do the same thing it falls flat leaving many producers/distributors
bewildered. After all didn’t they play safe by sticking to a template that
works? They dismiss their leading actors as unlucky or worse untalented. But look at it from the point of view of a
viewer. Where is the attraction? Why would a viewer commit to paying money to
watch a small film that looks like something that s/he’s seen before? Using the buffet meal analogy imagine going
to a roadside eatery for a buffet meal. The vegetables are less than fresh, the
cheese cheap and the curries made with rancid oil. Add to that poor ambience
and plating and…. you get the drift.
It is important for filmmakers to
understand where they stand in the scheme of things. You don’t need to be
Einstein to work out that you are not making a big budget extravaganza. Even while I concede that there isn’t a
formula to bring the audiences in one thing is certain; they’re not coming in
to watch tired reruns.
Why then do filmmakers insist on playing
safe? I must have been in a thousand meetings where producers have told me how
to make the project ‘safe’. As an investor in a small or medium budget
film when you set out to make a ‘safe film’ you are essentially setting out to
take the most unsafe punt you can possibly take. The comfort of B list stars, 5 songs, a love
story, 3 act structure, a dying mother’s love and a sappy happy ending are
actually no comfort at all. These
devices may have worked once upon a time but now they are sadly out of date.
Risky is the only safe bet available.
No matter how much of an oxymoron the
previous sentence sounds like it is a truth that producers would do well to
understand. Stories that are unusual, stories that are uncomfortable, stories that
push you to think, stories that break away from conventionally established
norms are the only stories that can bring in audiences for a small film. The promise has to grab viewers and shake them
up. But before that the filmmakers have
to allow themselves to be shaken up. They have to buy into a story that scares them. They
have to invest in a story that seems risky or wrong to them. Playing safe is
not an option because there is no ‘safe’ anymore.
