Cinema industry must embrace digital format to survive, writes G Dhananjayan

They are offered free for 30 days on trial basis to subscribers. Same day, Hotstar digital TV also came out with a double spread advertisement offering A to Z of entertainment with films like Life of Pi, Game of Thrones, M.S. Dhoni Untold Story, Pink, Kabali (Hindi) and many other films for subscribers. Netflix, the world’s leading digital cinema player is not far behind. They have tied up with Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment for his past and future films to offer them on the digital platform. Clearly, the game of entertainment is witnessing a sea change in India. 

Cinema has seen rapid movement from films to digital in filmmaking. In distribution, almost the entire country has moved from analogue to digital cinema projection. The concept of film negatives and positives is history now. 

Everything is digital in cinema today including editing, dubbing, music composition, re-recording and VFX. Along with these, India is now witnessing rapid changes in exploitation of films too. 

For Tamil cinema, already TentKotta and Hero Talkies are offering digital cinema and competition has increased with the entry of Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar and Netflix. This is good for Tamil cinema as the price offered for digital rights would go up and may soon compensate for reduction in revenues due to satellite channels not buying the telecast rights for films. 

The need of the hour is, producers not selling digital rights lock stock, comprising all current and future rights for perpetuity to any buyer. The future is digital and hence producers must segregate rights and sell only limited rights as required for offering the film digitally and for a limited period so that when technology advances, the rights can be exploited further to earn more from their films. Both Hollywood and Bollywood producers survive by their catalogue (old) films by exploiting rights every time a new technology brings in that opportunity. Unfortunately, most Tamil film producers did not see such a future and sold all their rights in the past. 

That must stop and the rights must be sold in a limited manner for a limited period to take advantage of advancing digital technology so that future generation benefits. 

With demonetisation, there is huge cash crunch in the country. The time has come for all transactions of cinema including ticket and canteen sales to go digital. Already, 80 to 90 per cent of multiplex ticket sales is done online since demonetisation. However, this shift has not taken place in most single screens. They must see writing on the wall and move quickly copying the multiplex ticket sales model by tying up with online ticket sales companies like JustTickets. Along with ticket sales, sale of canteen items must also move online so that sales do not diminish. Time is not far off when we will witness this change too. 

Film industry transacted large amount of cash for production and distribution of films. Post demonetisation, the industry started moving slowly towards online payment for workers associated with film production. However, the progress is not adequate. It is time for fixed production teams working on a film so that all worker’s bank account details are obtained and payments are made online when they work for a film. Similarly, any cash payment for distribution rights sold should not be accepted and only online transactions must be allowed so that there is proper accounting of revenues and costs. With Central Government moving the economy relentlessly towards cashless transactions, film industry should wake up and start working in the same direction immediately. 

The digital world is bringing in many challenges in short term and at the same time offering several opportunities to maximize revenues from a film. 

The change happening now in the country is dramatic and film industry cannot be behind and must embrace it to survive and succeed.