Hit Movies … Flop Movies.. Why..?

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still images. These still pictures when projected in a theatre at a certain speed through a special projector, give an            effect of a continuous motion picture i.e. the picture which has a motion and in which the characters can speak, sing, dance and can do almost anything!

These pictures are produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects. The world’s earliest motion picture produced was "Roundhay Garden Scene" in 1888. Since then the movie making process across the world has undergone humungous changes and it has developed into an art form and industry.

Entertainment consists of any activity which diverts your attention or helps you to relax in your leisure time. Entertainment can be anything, such as watching a play, a show on a TV or a movie..etc.

Active forms of amusement, such as sports, are more often considered to be recreational activities. Activities such as personal reading or practicing a musical instrument are considered to be hobbies.

There are many types of channels for entertainment. But movies have become one of the mainstream entertainment channels because of the latest technology innovations, the evolution of internet, mobile world, the availability and speed of processing of information, the quality of movie production that is available now a days, the ability to reach broader audience in a short time. People enjoy and feel entertained watching movies from different languages, themes and with different star cast on different categories made by different nationals.

Because of this very reason, even the taste and expectation of the audience has gone up and new bench marks have been set up for movies. Long long ago, we had only black and white movies,  that 35 mm movies, then we got into Eastman color movies, then Fuji color movies and then cinemascope movies... then 70 mm movies. Even in sound track, we had only mono live sound, and then moved onto studio sound and then to stereo sound track.

After that many innovations like DTS and Dolby Sound have taken place. No wonder each department of a movie making process has undergone huge change and evolution. All this was possible only because the cinema throughout the world has embraced technology very well and kept pace with it.

At the same time, the audience has also kept pace with movie quality and their expectation is also quite high now. We don’t expect anything less than a decent storyline, a 70mm, Cinema Scope with DTS, a decent choreography, a great action sequence, a warm photography and a soothing music track and of course great action by all lead actors.

What makes a particular movie a super hit..? As we discussed above, the bench marks for any good movie have been set very well. Every cinema loves goes to theatre with certain expectations. Today’s audience is quite aware and well educated about what to expect from the movies. There are some very basic ingredients each cinema lover would expect from the movies.

Some basic expectations are..

·         A good storyline and screenplay, so that there is some meaning for the whole 2-3 hour production.
·         Storyline can cater to different types of audience based on the taste (Ex: Action movies, romance, comedies, thriller, period movies..etc)
·         No one wants to see a group of disconnected scenes and bundled as a movies and thrust upon the audience. There should be continuity in the storyline.
·         Good performance for most of the star cast.
·         A warm, decent cinematography, sound track, choreography, direction, production quality etc
·         Some wow factors in the movies.. Something that is unique and has not been done before.

Overall theme of the movie caters to a particular set of audience and based on the size of such audience across the world, it becomes either a hit or flop.

We very well know that all the movies produced in all the countries will not have all these characteristics. But still they go ahead and become block busters! (Read as Dabaang-2 ! ). Sometimes it is quite surprising how this happens, but there are many reasons behind such success.

We can see there are some prominent reasons behind such block buster stories as shown below.

 

The advertisement that used to be done for movies has changed drastically now. The budget spent on marketing, creating hype about the movie, PRO etc have gone up. The whole movie production cost has jumped by leaps and bounds. For Ra-One , a recently released bollywood movie, a whopping Rs.52 Crore was spent on was spent only on marketing through various partnerships, which set the record for the largest marketing budget in India.

Such kind of investments, approaches, strategies create lot of interest, hype among the audience and expectation about the movie goes up. Everyone would like to watch the movie in the first 2-3 weeks itself and more in the first week.

The producer would like to encash on such mindset. What they do is release a large number of movie prints  across the world and have more theaters screen the movie at a time. So even if the movie is an average movie, it might well become a hit because of no. of prints released! You might be surprised to hear that for Ra-One almost 3100 cinemas in India and about 900 across the world were showing the movie in the first week!!

So it is the marketing strategy of the produces that sometimes plays on the mindset of the audience and movie becomes a hit.

On the other hand, some movies though not so great, still become a hit because of a reverse strategy. That is, the producer puts in his best effort to make the movie, but does not unnecessarily hype the movie and keeps his expectations at realistic level. In this case even the audience does not have much expectation on the movie. But when it is released, they would have gone to watch the same with least expectations and it would have actually exceeded their expectations and won their hearts!

This is what exactly happened in the case of DON-2. The movie is not great compared to Hollywood movies, but the sheer production quality, some great locales and action sequences have made it a hit and people feel it is worth watching once.

There is another category, these are low cost movies but have a little good story line. Don’t spend much on gimmicks and hypes. They are made with a pretty low budget and become super hit merely because of storyline supported by good performances by lead actors. Once such movie was No one killed Jessica. They made it in plain Rs. 9 Crore, but this movie grabbed about Rs.47 crore in box office and then went on get another Rs. 45 crores in Satellite rights! Really good gambling!

Having said that, there is no master formula for making a super hit movie. Every movie is kind of a lottery for both producer and the audience. But understanding the taste and expectation of the audience is a biggest challenge for every producer.  He has to constantly keep playing between ‘trying too hard’ or ‘not trying at all’.

Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose!