Is our food dying?

Earlier this week, we had a longish debate at the lunch table. 

In the foreseeable future, will some foods / food preparations and items stop being made? Meaning, your regular home-made, catering cooked foods. Not factory manufactured biscuits and stuff. We are talking about vegetable, pulses, fruit preparations, breads, rice, accompaniments, domestic snacks, and more like that.

One argument is, everything is cyclical. Things make a comeback. Like bell-bottoms. Nothing really dies. Someone, somewhere will be producing, preparing, and consuming items that are perhaps not easily available. 

So, the item or preparation might actually be 'statistically' dead - but since someone is consuming it somewhere, there is a chance that it might make a comeback and become a rage all over the civilised world. 

I am in other school of thought. I think foods and food preparations are getting extinct. 

Two reasons. First being i have personally seen regular foods transitioning to exotic or once in a while affairs. Like the jowar / bajra / maize breads (locally called bhakari), which once were staple are now eaten perhaps twice a year, on occasions. 

Second is there is no makers, and no eaters left!! Just like the average vocabulary reduces 20% with each generation, i think the food items one is exposed to is reduced with every generation. My grandmother had far wider 'menu' so to speak, as compared to my mother. Perhaps, my mother only learnt and prepares what she likes / or what she is good at...
Similarly, with professional catering. The items on the menu are regular, similar everywhere... And the slightly more seasonal, complicated, expensive ones are discarded with each cook.


IMO, with changing tastes, choices, likes - there definitely will be food items that wont be available. No one will cook them. The recipes will die.

Instead, new items will keep getting invented. One day someone is going to try pizza with black dal topping, or pour egg inside a chapatti and make inside out omelette.  


What do you think? Are we eating the kind of food/s our parents ate? Will the next generation eat food identical to us? 

Marathi Movies - overview 2

Thank you for reading my April '13 post on Marathi Movies. 
This week, Marathi movies are again the spotlight - with a political proposal. There has been a clutter of reactions, over-reactions, hyper-reaction, Assembly reactions - but i think lot of them came from 'emotional' side more than economic side. And movies now are basically, economics. 


First things first. 
Competition is good. Be it Marathi v/s Hindi or Domestic v/s international releases. In theory, free market means survival of the fittest (in this case, ideally should be 'product'). But since the rules don't apply in real life with soft power like music popularity, or hard power like star pull or marketing budgets, the end result might not necessarily be survival of the best, but that of the strongest. 

Much accolades are sung for 'different' topics of Marathi movie and how it is different from 'mindless' Bollywood fare. But at the end of the day, the shallowness of our movies is a reflection of the superficiality of our lives. Good doesn't always do well commercially. What is commercially successful is not necessarily a good product. 

So, fact 1: Marathi movies are on a back foot where commercial success is concerned. 


With minimum government intervention and with pure capitalism, in the last two decades, Indian cinema is represented globally via Bollywood. Like it or not. That is a fact. The wave of alternate music in 90s finally died a petty death. Bollywood music is popular music. Bully-wood means business. It attracts the best talent, on and off screen. It has shown how to market movies. It has made BO collections a topic to be discussed on dinner tables. Bollywood has the muscle to put weekend collections on television news!!

Yet, a Rs 100cr superhit amounts to nothing in a country of 1.3 billion. 


Now coming to the debate of Marathi movies getting 6 to 9 pm "prime time" slot in multiplexes. 

Personally, i think 6 to 9pm is TV viewing time in most Marathi speaking households. Maybe till 10pm... From whatever little i know people, we would rather wait a few months for the movie to come on TV and watch it for free, instead of paying money to catch it at a multiplex. Any outing to a multiplex in the evening show will set the family of 4 back by Rs 1000 for tickets, and another Rs 1000 for travel and snacks. Think about 'masses' and not like those who have access to read a blog. 

Fact 2: For producers to earn money, audiences have to spend money.


As a dip stick for 'movie going nature' of the people let us look at English movies dubbed in regional languages as an indicator. I am talking of a regular, parallel industry. English movies are regularly dubbed into Tamil and Telugu. There also are niche televisions channels in regional languages. Was "Amazing Spiderman" dubbed in Marathi for commercial release? No... 
Someone told me that in India, "Dark Knight Rises" had highest BO collections... wait for it... in Pune! Was it a Marathi dubbed version? No!

Again, this is no way is a challenge to the Maharashtra Govt to dub all English movies to Marathi. (The Censor board does enough damage on their own!!) 
Or to those whose logic is "Regional movies are stronger than Bollywoood in South". 

The fact is people in south LOVE their movies. We dont. Not like the way they do. Annually, Tamil and Telugu each release more movies than Hindi. So Marathi is not even a comparison. Similarly, I dont remember any self-immolation case in Maharashtra when Dada Kondke died. We are not crazy movie lovers. We dont have idol worship star culture. 

Fact 3: Don't compare Marathi movie market to Southern movie market, because Marathi audiences are not like Southern audiences.  


So, what kind of audiences do we have up here? There are two kinds of people who watch movies - masses and classes. Or simply put those who come in cars, and those who come on motorcycles. 

There was a discussion about 'quality' cinema when this whole multiplex debate was raging on. If we make quality movies, people will come to watch. For Marathi industry, why does quality equal to arty stuff? Why do we carry the cross of 'meaningful' cinema and then cry hoarse when it is not profitable? Isn't it too much to expect support for arty cinema from our audiences when they are conditioned (and bombarded) with run-of-the-mill Bollywood fare? 

Lets do a small mental exercise. Just list down top 5 grossing Marathi movies, in random order. 
My list is: Lai Bhari, Time Pass, Duniyadari, Natarang, Zapatlela-2 (in no particular order). 

Dont you agree that all movies in your list and mine are "massy" films? They are in NO WAY what one can call 'art' cinema. They are all GOOD movies, hence they are COMMERCIAL successes. I agree that all good movies dont become commercial successes. But i think we are looking at it in the wrong direction. 

Improve the quality of script, story telling, production values, music, acting, background score... 

Revival of Marathi movies since 2004 is a media creation. There is no new wave or anything. Majority of the movies in the last 5-6 years are more of the same old fare... We have moved from making slapstick comedy movies in 80s-90s to "national award winning" movies. Well unfortunately, National Award does not guarantee box office success. 

Dont trust me? 
Wait for 17 April and see what happens to "Court". 

The multiplex crowd isnt going to give you commercial success. We need a different delivery mechanism. 

Fact 4: Make movies for those who go to watch movies.

There was some talk about additional FSI granted to multiplexes against a promise that they will screen 124 Marathi shows in a year. The State promoting regional movies by ensuring screens is noble. And dropping ET is partial, but hey, its largely loss making industry... 

Making screens available is solving only a little part of the larger problem. Where is the money for exhibition!?? 

Here is the economics. Lets say an average Marathi movie gets produced in 1.3cr. Add another 70L for promotion and marketing. So thats 2cr down. 
Now comes distribution / exhibition, with the 2 revenue sharing models - Single screen and Multiplex. 

In single screen tie ups, the producer has to rent the screen for one show for one week. Usually, the rent is anything between 50k to 95k per week, depending on the location, quality of the cinema hall, quality of projection, and most important, seating capacity. Meaning, the producer can rent say, a 3-6pm show every day for all 7 days and the entire box office collections of all 7 shows in that time slot for the week go to producer. Some single screens charge local taxes and nominal maintenance cost (3 to 5 bucks per seat occupied). 

For ex: The rent at decent single screen is say, 75,000 for one show one week (7 shows) + house full maintenance of say 600 people for 7 shows @ 5/-, then the producer gives the single screen owner 75k + 21k for one show, one week (96k). If the producer is feeling confident about the movie, and he rents 3 shows for one week, at 100 cinemas he pays rent of 96k x 3 x 100 = Rs 2,88,00,000 for single screen cinema. 

With initial investment of 2cr towards production and marketing cost and rental cost of 3 screens for one week across 100 cinemas, the final investment is: 4,88,00,000 (Four crore Eighty eight lakh).   

Whereas, the earnings at average ticket cost @ 75 for 21 house full shows for 600 people at 100 cinemas is: 75 bucks x 600 people x 21 shows x 100 cinemas = 9,45,00,000/-, which translates to revenue of Rs 4,57,00,000 (Four crore fifty seven lakh) odd.

So you can see, theoretically single screen cinemas are far more profitable for solid movies. 


Now with most multiplexes box office revenue sharing tie ups are structured as follows: 

• Week 1: 45% to producer + 55% to multiplex 
• Week 2: 40% to producer + 60 to multiplex
• Week 3: 35% to producer + 65% to multiplex
• Week 4: 30% to producer + 70% to multiplex
• Week 5 onwards: 25% to producer + 75% to multiplex

Hence focus on collections in the release week. That's when the producer stands to gain maximum. We should learn a thing or two from Bollywood. 

Since not many Marathi movies stay longer than 4 weeks, i will do the math for first week for one show per day for one week at a multiplex. With full occupancy at 250 seats @ 100 per ticket for 7 shows, the total revenue is 175,000 of which the producers share is Rs 78,750. If the movie is released at same number of multiplex screens as single screen (ie 2100 shows in one week), the producer can earn 78,750 x 2100 = 16,53,75,000/-


Fact 5: Marathi producers dont have money to buy 2100 shows in one week across multiplexes. 

The distribution / exhibition part of the movie business which seems to be getting more and more expensive...  

First the movie needs to be converted to the DCP (digital cinema print) format. Conversion for each centre is Rs 2000 + taxes. So if you want to screen you film at 100 screens across Maharashtra, you have to first shell out Rs 200,000 for conversion. This is one time cost... 

Then the cost for 2K projection is Rs 1000 per show. So if you have say, 100 screens playing 2 shows per day, the producer needs to pay Scrabble / INOX2K / K Sera Sera etc close to 1000 x 100 screens x 2 shows = Rs 200,000 + taxes. For one week, this runs to Rs 14,00,000 plus taxes. 
Let me give you a ball park on scale. In 2014, Happy New Year released at 5000 screens in India. The biggest grossing Marathi movie Lai Bhari released at 400 screens. 

It will be wrong to ask the government to reduce the price of tickets. But clearly, the digital projection has not helped the costs at all... 

Fact 6: Making money at the BO needs solid investment. We should look at other sources to screen the films. 



There are so many things that are just wrong with the industry itself. Why blame the government policies or the domination of Hindi? 
We rely too much on word of mouth. We have seen in the past few years what solid marketing can do to the fortunes of the movie. 
Songs are lifeblood of promotion. Adequate promotion of music is necessary. Proper music promotion can really help in creating awareness. 
I think Marathi industry has maximum one-time-producers. Why cant we make money for our producers, so they keep making movies?



I just hope the powers-that-be look at all aspects of production and distribution before bringing out any regulation about exhibition. I think that fighting for screens in multiplexes is a wrong approach. Yes, the maximum revenues come from Mumbai-Pune... But that doesnt mean that people from interior Maharashtra don't want to watch Marathi movies. We need to spruce up a different delivery mechanism for our movies. Forget the existing models. Make telefilms, premiere them on television, use youtube paid channel, make 4-5 movie compilation official DVDs...  

Fact 7: There has to be a way to reach 120 million people... 


And everyone, go watch Court.



PS: Thank you Mayur Ranade for the BO and digital cost info. 

PPS: By the time i published this post, the Maharashtra govt has relaxed the prime time to 12 noon to 9pm.