BEHINDWOODS CELEBRITY COLUMN

Once upon a time, there was a very popular electronic communication device that transmitted sound through shortwave bands and people heard music, film songs, news and sports update by sharing the gadget with their neighbors and family members. It was called the transistor radio. While this reads like a story of a different era since the transistor radio is now largely considered a piece of art or antique with more value in a museum than in our hands, this fundamental building block revolutionized and paved way for more modern electronic devices right up to the computer for spreading content. From there, we’ve come a long way and the road ahead extends further from where we are today. To reach an audience of 50 million, it took ‘Radio’ 38 years, ‘TV’ 13 years,  ‘Internet’ 4 years and ‘facebook’ 2 years.  And today with the ever-increasing influence of social media among our techno savvy audience, even the way we consume and share the content of cinema has changed.

I caught up with a movie this weekend at one of the city’s multiplexes and there were these two friends sitting in B row actively posting updates and comments on all possible social networks they had an ID for. Not that I was prying from behind sitting in A row, but in a dark cinema hall the eyes inevitably notice when things light up every now and then and besides they were loud enough for their hilarious running commentaries to be overheard. Here I was catching a film in its opening weekend and the duo was reviewing, rebuking and rejecting the plot and characters even before they could step out of the cinema hall to the outside world. The power to share information right from your mobile and post an opinion with just one status update to thousands of your known circle has the ability to have a spiraling effect on the movie’s survival in the exponential time we live in. And thereby, the way cinema socializes with its audience has also significantly changed in the last couple of years.

From individual websites created for a movie to interaction on exclusive facebook pages with ‘first look’ pictures to merchandising of the film’s characters on popular portals to tweeting day-to-day shooting updates within 140 characters, cinema has embraced the social media big time. Sony, for example, has created its own ticketing app for many of its films and lets you buy tickets via facebook with the option to invite your friends too. The Indian market of course has a lot of catching up to do as far as marketing of films through social media is concerned. But we cannot belittle the power of social media when it comes to promoting new releases, trailers and initiating the publicity trail. There’s a good chance that more people have seen the teasers and promos of the Tamizh movie ‘Biriyani’ on their social networks than at the theatres.

From the days when people used to stand for hours together outside production studios and film star’s houses to just get a glimpse of their favorite actor to knowing what Amitabh Bacchhan has to say about the Cannes film festival he’s attending by just following him on twitter, social media has changed the equation between the fans and the famous. While I’m writing this column, as a twitter follower of his regular posts, I’m aware that actor Siddharth is in his pre-production work for his most difficult film yet, to be directed by Vasanthabalan. So accessible that it almost seems like Farhan Akhtar sitting in Malaysia, whom I follow too, is personally telling me that he just filmed a commercial in KL with the constant thought of Don suddenly popping out from somewhere.  When actors become active tweeples, it’s almost like they have let you inside their heads to get a sneak peak of what they think, do and act.

A major reason for the social media to have become a bigger hit than a blockbuster movie is the fact that it understands our attention span so well that messages are delivered in shorts. Barring a few facebook enthusiasts who write rigmaroles on status updates and show off even when they bake a cake at home, the brevity of messages in posts, news feeds and character limits for tweets has worked hugely in its favor. So much that the latest Vine app on twitter gives the attention-deficit youngsters all of 6 seconds limit to a video upload. Social media can facilitate the sharing of apps that becomes a collector of all things related to a movie. Film promoters today can create apps that automatically pull in posts, videos and photos from various social networks like youtube, Flikr, MySpace and display it in an interactive grid and sort them by its geographical location and network. The possibilities to connect with the viewers and embrace the social mediaare endless but the key thing is to engage your audience where their attention already is within the timeframe you can effectively have them glued onto your message. And the latest limit being those six seconds to make your audience sway or stray.

P.S: Glad you gave more than your precious six seconds for this post.