Experiencing cinema in a tech-driven world

With the advent of online entertainment platforms, the excitement of a full-fledged cinema-going experience seems to be dying down. Industry experts present their views.

For years, the excitement of watching movies in a cinema hall — whether alone, with the love of our life, with the entire family or with our BFFs — has been unmatched. Enter Netflix and Amazon, and things seem to have wobbled a tad bit. A quick look at the huge variety of shows and movies on these platforms reveals some hit, some mediocre and some flop entertainment options along with hundreds of movies which the audiences may never even have heard of.

The recently held Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) in Hyderabad widely discussed this connection of technology and entertainment, especially movies, in various sessions. Several questions about the replacement of cinema were also raised —  whether mobile phones, tablets, virtual reality and augmented reality combined with Amazon, Netflix and YouTube would someday oust cinema halls altogether.

The cinematic drill
While big-screen theatres are the right place for the audience to truly experience a director’s vision, the modern-day movie-going experience is quite demanding — what with the intense traffic, parking issues, innumerable ads, etc — and often burns a big hole in the pocket. “By the time you get to cinema hall, it becomes a procedure. One must understand that going to a cinema hall is like having a fine meal at a restaurant. People go for the overall experience,” states filmmaker Sajid Khan.

Teresa Nelson Carpenter of Reel Muzik Werks LLC, which has produced music for Hollywood movies such as Guardians of the Galaxy and The Conjuring 2 also believes that it is indeed the larger-than-life experience which draws people to movie halls. “You cannot get Dolby sound and Dolby vision on a 5.5-inch mobile phone or tablet,” she says.

However, in most cases, low-budget and average to flop films are impacted the most whenever going to the cinema feels like a tedious expedition. But what has worked in their favour is the advent of online platforms that are redefining the current entertainment ball game.

Content is king
Another issue is that even before the release of a film, audiences tend to pass a judgement based on its trailer. In such a scenario, filmmakers really need to gird up their loins and make their movies worthwhile. Says actor R. Madhavan, “What is it about my films that will compel the audience not to watch it on their smartphone but actually head to the theatre on a Friday with their entire family and spend `4,000? The key here is aspiration as it is going to determine the market and technology for my films.”

However, it’s not just that X factor or technological advancement that will pull the audience to theatres. The production house, the director and the cast matters too. Take for example Baahubali, which had the S.S. Rajamouli stamp and the creme de la cremeof Tollywood. But Sajid Khan believes that there is a big difference in the way technology works in Hollywood and Bollywood. “Hollywood is driven by technology and a striking example is Avatar. While technology is the greatest superstar in Hollywood, in Bollywood the superstar is the actor,” he says and adds that despite having the greatest superstars, many movies have failed at the box office because of the content.

On the other hand, “Don’t be trailer happy,” says Piyush Pandey of Ogilvy Mather which ran the ‘Ab ki baar Modi Sarkar’ campaign. He adds, “Change is inevitable in the movie-watching experience, but content will always be the king! Several times, radio was written off and even cinema halls were termed as dead. It is evident that there won’t be a black-and-white change in movie-goers. But from the audience’s point of view, to be able to sit through a film now, filmmakers have to focus on telling the best story possible.”

People’s attention span is very short and they have many options to explore. And so, movies need to be made in such a way that people will not browse Twitter or Facebook while watching the movie, or much worse, judge it solely by its trailer.