DC Comics have begun to sell its superheroes digitally along with simultaneous print run. Slave Labour Graphics would offer its periodicals only in digital format. The reach becomes wider. It makes sense financially saving print costs. iVerse Media and the Archie crew collaborated to bring Archie into digital world in 2008. Between comics available for free and those purchased, Archie is closing in on three million downloads.
Author: Shabbir Chunawalla
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Scriptwriting for Movies
Scriptwriting was not accorded too much importance in Mumbai film industry, and it was remarked in a lighter vein that anyone ‘ who can write a postcard, can write a script.’ However, script is the creative force behind a movie. The rest of the movie is derived from the script. We make 850-900 films each year, as compared to 180-200 films by Hollywood. It was only in 2004 that the first scriptwriting course was launched at FTII, Pune. It was of one-year duration. The students were trained by Anjum Rajabali who now teaches at Whistling Woods International, Mumbai which is started by Subhash Ghai as the media and film school. It has been experienced now that despite the good star cast and high production values, films do flop if they are not backed by a good script. Most of the films here have poor scripts. Mumbai industry puts a premium on dialogues and out-of-context story-line. Very few films can rise above the script. Scriptwriters were given a marginal role traditionally, and were hired after the shooting started.The films were made according to a set formula. The scriptwriting was considered superfluous. There was a tendency to adapt mythologicals interspesed with suitable dialogues. A screenplay is a precise craft and a narrative format. That was never followed. On the contrary, a short story was made into a film by inserting dialogues. India adopted the European school of thought that held the director the real author of the film, rather than the scriptwriter. The pioneering course on scriptwriting at FTTI, Pune was discontinued in 1972.
Abroad, scriptwriting was cultivated as a special craft with a narrative format. The script was put into the hands of the director. Leading scriptwriters of Hollywood can command a fee of at least $ 1 million (RS 4 crore) per script,compared with the Rs 15-25 lac per script in Mumbai film industry. It is just a fraction of what the leading man and woman get by way of their fees. In Hollywood scriptwriters are honoured by prestigious awards and are given due credit and publicity.
Regional cinema in India has accorded mere respects to the scriptwriting. TV scriptwriters also face similar challenges but have far larger choices for writing. That multiplies their income.
The Film Writers Assocition of India is being revitalised. It is a 60 year old body. Professionalisation is slowly creeping in. AtWhistling Woods, all students take classes in scriptwriting, regardless of their specialisation. They also plan to launch short-term courses on scriptwriting for writers.
Teaching scriptwriting does not require an elaborate infrastructure. It requires just pen, paper and a place to sit. It is very cost-effective.
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Marathi Cartooning
Marathi cartooning was started in Kirloskar magazine by S V Kirloskar in 1925.It thus has a history of 90 years. Marathi cartooning came of age in 1950. In the last six decades, many Marathi cartoonists have handled this medium. One name that contributed a lot to Marathi cartooning is that of Sarvottam Sarwate. His select cartoons have been published in the book form by Lokvangmay Griha Prakashan. The book was launched by senior cartoonist S D Phadnis. It has been edited by Awadhoot Paralkar. Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray worked as a cartoonist with the Free Press Journal. His cartoons were the main attraction of the Marmik magazine.His nephew Raj Thackeray is also a good cartoonist. In Maharashtra, we have cartoonists like S D Phadnis, Vasant Sarawate, Madhukar Dharmapurikar and Abhimanyu Kulkarni.
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Inside-out and Outside-in Approaches
Ranjay Gulati, HBS, has written Rorganize for Resilience — Putting Customers at the Centre of Your Business. There are two approaches –inside-out and outside-in . The inside-out perspective is fundamentally one where you say I know what the market wants. The job of the company is to produce, distribute and sell. There is some idea of what the customers want, but the organization is not sure. In the outside-in perspective, the business is not defined by products, but by the markets to be served. Apple’s iPhone is 90 per cent outsourced, and only 10 per cent made in. There are almost a lac of applications for iPhone, but not even a single one is made by Apple. Inside-out is closed architecture, where everything is made in. The outside-in model has mastered the ability to understand where the markets are moving. Customer-centricity does not mean blindly listening to the customer. The customers do not design the iPhone. Apple just understood the right trade offs between ease of use and other things. Everyone claims they are customer-centric. Either it is a matter of luck or some design. Progressively, companies get disengaged from customers. The myopic view and the arrogance of knowing better come in the way. The companies are not organized around customers. Outside-in starts the reverse way — the mission for which the company is established. A hospital can be managed with a crew of specialists. But it can serve the younger people with isolated problems, but not the ageing population with several inter-related problems. The configuration of delivery system could be inside-out and not out side in. Al Ries is of the opinion that customers do not know what they want till they are given a real world choice. The companies should do what they do best, and outsource the rest. The companies should not confuse between core and critical. Core things give a unique edge in the market place. Critical things are necessary to do business, but do not necessarily give an advantage. Power is needed to run an industry, but that does not mean that you need to own a power plant. The idea is shrink the core. Bharati considered coverage a core factor. Today it is a hygiene factor, taken for granted. At one point of time, owing towers was the differentiator. The tower must have electricity. The diesel to generate electricity was bought by Bharati. It was the second largest buyer of diesel after the Indian Railways. Bharati then hived off the towers into a separate company. It is not worried about diesel anymore.It now focuses its energy on marketing and new business development, and service innovation. The idea of shrinking the core means how I can do less and less myself.
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Tintin Movies
The Adventures of Tintin — The Secret of the Unicorn directed by Steven Spielberg hit the cinema halls in Delhi in 2011. It sparked off the renewed interest in the 24-book series created by Herge. Two movies have already been made on Tintin — Tintin and the Golden Fleece and Tintin and the Blue Oranges. The characters in Tintin series are Tintin, the pug-nosed reporter; Snowy, his constant companion dog; Captain Haddock, Tintin’s closest friend and Professor Calculus, the deaf absent-minded inventor and creator of pioneering moon-rocket.
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Publicity Budget for Films
Generally 10 per cent of a film’s total budget is kept aside for publicity. Poster designing accounts for barely two per cent.An average film’s posters may cost between Rs 5 lac to Rs 10 lac.
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Top Five Cartoons
Tom & Jerry This is never ending rivalry between a housecat and a mouse. It represents an eternal battle between the good and not so good.
The Simpsons Its a typical American family consisting of Homer, Bart, Marge, Lisa and Maggie.
The Jungle Book This is Disney’s 1967 animated film version of Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale.
He-man Most powerful man in the universe.
South Park These are the adventures of four boys and their friends in the small town of South Park in Colarado.
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Mani Kaul — New Cinema in India
Mani Kaul expired in 2011. He was from FTTI, Pune. Ritwik Ghatak in the 1960s was the vice-principal, FTII. Mani and Adoor were students then. Later Mani taught cinema at FTII. His initial film Uski Roti (1969) was a radical film, non-conventional. Along with Bhuwan Shome (Mrinal Sen) and Sara Akash ( Basu Chatterjee), it could be considered as a product of New Cinema in India. Mani, however, remained esoteric, his cinema being too difficult to comprehend.
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Sir Martin Sorrel — WPP Plc
He is a UK-born person in a Jewish family. He runs the world’s largest communication network WPP Plc, operating in 107 countries with a revenue of 9.3 billion pounds. His network has taken over JWT, O&M, Young and Rubicam and Grey Worldwide under its fold. He also owns media buying agencies such as Mindshare, Maxus, Mediaedge and Mediacom. He also owns several PR agencies, digital promotion companies and branding agencies. In India, WPP accounts for 40 per cent of the total revenue generated by the ad industry.
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Feluda
Satyajit Ray studied art at Visva Bharti, Shantiniketan. He started his professional life as a junior visualizer at the ad agency D.J. Keymer, Kolkata. Ray’s Feluda first appeared in children’s magazine Sandesh in 1965. It was a Bengali story. It made a comic debut in the Telegraph in 2005. Feluda is not a historical figure. He is supersleuth Pardosh C. Mitter a. k. a Feluda. Tapas Guha retold the Feluda’s stories in two comic books Beware in the Graveyard and Bagful of Mystery. Feluda’s original Ray illustrations were westernized, and they were approved by Sandip Ray, Satyajit Ray’s son. Guha was worried about smoking and lack of women in Ray’s stories. Smoking is an integral part of Feluda. A half-smoked cigarette lying on the grass was shown, as smoke fills up the air. Ray had no women in any Feluda comics. The outsiders — salesmen, diners — are now made women.
This post coincides with Satyajit Ray’s birthday today, May 2nd. Auspicious !