many western countries but can you find a theatre
that shows Tamil films that easily? The answer is,
as everyone knows, "NO".
4. When you think from the perspective of the people
involved in piracy, the risk-to-reward ratio is so
low which means that the reward they get by taking
the risk in doing this piracy is enormous in terms
of money. To put it in numeric terms, as an example,
a 25% increase in risk can fetch an additional 200%
revenue for them and they have so many means to reduce
risks and increase their reward.
5. The piracy industry, being such a profitable industry,
exploits the people in poverty to gather human resource
that is needed for their piracy industry.
Now lets ask "why" is this piracy
supported by the people which is obviously the reason
for the success of this piracy industry:
1. Majority of the theatres don't have a clean environment
and proper infrastructure that includes security and
a harassment-free environment for the families that
come to watch movies.
2. The pricing of the movie-tickets is very very high.
Well, the underlying reason for this is the enormous
production cost of movies and the major factor that
drives the production cost of Tamil-movies is the
out-of-the-normal salary of some top actors. There
are quite a lot of movies that surprise us when they
say that the total cost of the movie is "so many"
crores when more than half of that cost would have
actually been salary to the top actors in the movie.
3. The price-to-earnings ratio for the audience is
very high. Here since it is a movie, replace the word
"earnings" with "quality time".
Most of the Tamil movies are not worth from a monetary
perspective to the audience. These days, tickets are
sold at an average cost of Rs.60 and on an average
if there are 4 members in a family who go to watch
movies then obviously, the audience will expect Rs.240
worth of quality time which is not that easily available
in Tamil movies. Again, I am not complaining in a
harsh manner on the quality of the movie but when
seen from a cost perspective for the audience, it
is definitely high. And when seen from the perspective
of old-people and disabled-persons then this ratio
is very very high.
4. Any cinema industry survives on information spread
by people to people. So if there is talk that a movie
is very good, then more number of people would like
to watch the movie at least within 3 weeks from the
movie is released. But the supply to meet this demand
in terms of "number of seats per day per region"
available is inadequate.
So now lets ask some "how this piracy
is done?" questions:
1. The piracy is conducted most of the times by hidden
cameras in theatres. Going forward, easy availability
of high-tech miniature cameras is only going to make
it difficult to stop this practice. Also, sorry to
say, but it is a fact that many times this hidden-camera
activity is carried out with the help of some theatre
operators. The underlying reason for this - money,
poverty and lack of education.
2. There are international networks and resources
working in co-ordination with the local people involved
in piracy. The international network is responsible
for producing pirated movie CDs, DVDs and hosting
movie servers.
3. Some internal people who are part of the film fraternity
are sometimes responsible for the leakage of songs
and movies. Again the underlying reason for this is
money and income-inequality within the film fraternity.
Considering all the above mentioned points, here are
my suggestions (suggestions are purely mine):
A centralized Tamil cinema association is to be formed
and all the other associations like producers-council,
actors-association, directors-council, distributors-council,
theatre-owners council etc should come under this
parent-association. In this case, it is important
to have an equal representation of every interest
in this association. Every movie should report their
gross expenditure to the parent association. Now another
child association like Tamil cinema financial &
loan institution should be formed which will be directly
under the parent association and this child association
should be responsible for collecting a small internal-tax
(say for example 2%) calculated out of the gross expenditure
of the movie. We will have to work out solutions to
address some obvious problems that will arise out
of this - like wrong-reporting of gross expenditure
and the other major problem is what if a movie suffers
a huge loss in the market and in this situation it
will be a genuine concern of the producers to not
pay this internal tax. And I would suggest the producers
push this additional cost towards the actors by proportionately
taking a part of the actor's salary. Again another
problem that will arise here is that not every actor
is highly paid. So there should be some kind of salary-levels
and this additional cost should be pushed over according
to the levels. Now this money, under the discretion
of the financial & loan institution, should be
loaned out at subsidized interest rates to theatre
owners to improve their overall theatre environment
in terms of security and infrastructure. And there
should be a minimum "theatre condition"
that needs to be met and if this condition is not
met then there should be a rule that would prevent
the distributors to partner with these theatres in
terms of "first-release" to release the
movie. The number of seats can also be extended from
the cheap money that would be got from this loan-institution.
Also, on a consensus basis, the parent association
should be able to use this cheap money from the loan
institution to fund some technical organizations like
IITs and other tech-driven institutions to come out
with high-end technologies to prevent internal piracy,
that is, piracy caused and helped by people within
the film fraternity. Also, the DVDs of the movies
are to be released at some point in time. If the cinema-industry
doesn’t then someone else will. In today's computer
world, the industry needs to be modern and practical
as well. Some kind of studies and and deep analysis
has to be done by a team that should be formed to
study the introduction of movies from centralized
Tamil industry servers to the international markets.
And the sites/audience should then be able to download
from these servers by paying a acceptable rate.
I know that what I said might not be feasible in the
shorter term but I sincerely hope that this will really
be helpful to the cinema industry and to the audience
as well in terms of quality on a longer term. Again,
as I have said above, the broken linkage in terms
of income, between producers and middle-men (read
theatre owners) needs to be fixed to deliver the product
successfully to the consumers (read audience) and
there should also be ways for the producers to directly
reach the consumers after an acceptable time frame
(read official legal DVD release). What I said is
just an introduction, there are various other points
that need to studied, analyzed and even amended according
to practicality for the benefit of the Tamil-cinema
family which includes every single Tamilian.
Thanks,
Sudarsh
justsayhitos@gmail.com
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