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After decades of using outdated techniques, Hindi filmmakers turn techno savvy to make slick features, even though the continues to be ho-hum, says film maker Ravi Deshpande. 

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Look at the way you go to the movies in any of the metros today-  

You've logged in & checked the reviews, you've zapped into the slickly made promos, which in turn, have been made out of slickly shot songs somewhere out there - on the prairies, the mountains, the clean & nice streets - but almost always `phoren' , & at other times with lavish sets, costumes & at very ethnic-Indian locales ; you have heard the new music that is familiarly a rehash from a groove sampled from a CD- again from `phoren'; you've found time, you've called amidst stressed city travel & connected cellularly to other stressed but `wanting-to-check-out-the-film' friends, you have found the money for that Dolby/DTS experience with non carbon arc `xenon lamp' projection, you have left the sweat-n-smell land & entered the cool-n-clean theatre. The lights dim & you settle to view a crisp positive on the new `Vision'(Kodak stock-stunning skin tones & cinematography).  

After all this, it is difficult to `maro' a walkout & spew forth about the intro being shoddy or the establishment of the characters & the premise being flimsy. All that you can do is squirm in your seat & watch. Its preferable to snooze & wait for the sequence that was reportedly shot with 5 cameras or for the song shot atop a train with the only computerized crane in India. So, you are now reduced to see & marvel technology samples. As an avid filmgoer, you & me will always crib, complain, and compare Indian films with Foreign Films. 

But how did this process occur? How did Indian filmmakers become techno-savvy? How did the chalta hai mono turn to mangta hai Dolby/DTS? 
One sunny morning in the good old analogue days-U-mat times, I walk into the edit room & find a lanky gentleman waiting. 
“May I watch you work?” he asks, almost apologetically.  
“Yes, of course!” & I go into an hour of 3 sec preroll-preview-insert drill quite oblivious of his presence. In the first cigarette break, I ask him his name. 
“Jethu Mondal” he replies with that gentle smile that is still his amiable trademark. My ears burned with embarrassment. Jethu, I was aware, was my senior from the FTII. As RK’s editor, he was cutting Randhir Kapoor’s ‘Henna’. 
 
A few years later, I bump into Jethu in the `Lightworks' room at Mirage studios where he is editing `Sarfarosh'.  

Today, it is not Jethu alone who has smoothly transited to the digitised world. Often at Samudra Videotech, I see Rahul Rawail's expansive & effusive girth spread over the sofa day & night. Most Hindi filmmakers have got the taste of technology which tries to match the breathless pace of the mind in contrast to the sluggish, tortuous, mechanical & analogue times. It is not uncommon to see a just-out-of-teens-TV Producer/Director, punching a script/dialogues/schedule/budget into a PC/laptop.  

It is interesting to see how technological advances have affected all aspects of filmmaking, whether it be audio, stock, equipment, merchandising & marketing upto the final projection. It is interesting to see how in a decade, we have made the paradigm shift from an obsessive pride about `Made in India' to assuming & embracing `Globalness'. In the Corporate world, new mantras revolve around the theme `Think locally, act Globally'. The Indian film industry too has gone global, notwithstanding dialogues about soft drinks & such like products cropping into romantic & denser situations due to corporate funding! Bollywood, Tollygunge, cinema is recognised as an industry & is getting `corporatised'.  

Over a decade ago, we witnessed how Telvision & Advertising Films opened up the digital domain to a horde of young producers who adapted to the latest platforms from the Silicon Valley for Post. From a simple Avid/Media100/DVision for offline edits to compositing unlimited layers on the Fire/Flame/Inferno/Smoke/HAL/Henries became a second nature for twenty-somethings-talent in the Post studios/suites of Mumbai, Delhi & Chennai. Feature Filmmakers were exposed to these techniques through the promo intensive marketing that became the norm due to the popularity of television.  

Advertising filmmakers such as the late Mukul Anand, Rajiv Menon & the recent crop, who have turned to Features-John Mathan, Mahesh Mathai, Shantanu Sheorey, Jeet-Kailash, Rakesh Mehra & others have been habituated to using good stock & processing their negatives abroad. Their insistence on doing the same with their feature ventures threw open the better labs of the world to the Indian Film Industry. Incidentally, as advertising filmmakers, we still prefer to travel to Singapore, London, or Sydney for processing & Telecine  although we have the same machines here; the Ursa Gold in Mumbai, the Ursa Diamond in Hyderabad, the Reality in Chennai, etc. 

Cinematographers began demanding for good stock options. However, it was not until Kodak phased out all other stocks that the cinematographers could avail of the brilliant ‘Vision Series’. The granularity, sharpness & latitude of the stock helped them create better work. From the Arri3s & BLs, cinematographers got hold of the 435s & now the 535 for 35mm. & a range of anamorphic lenses for scope. Sekonic meters were rapidly replaced by digital photometers. Rigs & computerized cranes, dollies were deployed to imitate/copy the chase & other sequences ‘borrowed’ & ‘inspired’ from abroad. Sajid Khan’s (‘Kehne mein kya harz hai’) popularity zoomed in proportion to the ‘lifts’ that the industry churned out. He & his show have not spared a single situation or sequence or technique that has been plagiarised in the Industry. 

On production, filmmakers increasingly started using better effects for the fights & action-the ambi blast, the jeep explos, the glass crash, the matka & fake brick explos. In Mumbai, the talented ‘Inferno’ duo of Rajiv & Tarun of ‘Rajtaru’ exposed them to the way a bullet can be chased on post through an environ that they shoot live, a la John Woo. Woo, in the meantime, went several eons ahead. 

Technology also meant that the latest films from abroad could be watched by the writers, fightmasters, cinematographers & directors on LD & DVD in order to get ‘inspired’ by them. We had a horde of ‘Ghost’films, then we laughed through the ‘double’ & ‘triple’ inspired films. In ‘Hindustan Ki Kasam’ Amitabh Bachchan meets Subhash Chandra Bose. Why can it not match the finesse of Tom Hanks shaking hands with JFK in ‘Forrest Gump’? In ‘Kartoos’ , Sanjay Gupta (song directed by Ken Ghosh) tries to composit dancers on post at Prime Focus. He manages to get a semblance of believability with the compositing in ‘Hamesha’ with Kajol in the cliff sequence. Shanker does a laughable job in Muquabala with Prabhu Deva’s limbs painted off. 

From the directors I have watched, Kamal Haasan has consistently used technology & ‘phoren-inspiration’ with aptness. The makeup techniques he has used in ‘Chachi 420’, ‘Indian’, & still to release ‘Hey Ram’ are a feat. The Chachi promo morph is effective to 
communicate the two faces of the character. Less said about the use & abuse of the morph technique by other filmmakers, the better. Besides compositing artists who have created the above, there is a generation of graphic artists (CG artists) in India with talent & experience, who could create a body of world class work given the opportunity & resources. In the meantime, we shall only graduate from using 30 horses to 5 horses & composit the rest. The chase sequence will remain the same as also the content. Filmmakers will use the common refrain that the front bencher who churns the cash register wants to see something that they alone know all about. On the other hand, the same filmmakers, writers, lyricists would prefer to view World Cinema, classics of masters such as Fellini, Tarkowsky or Kieslowsky in the digital realm of DVD with THX surround sound. Alongside, talent such as Ram Gopal Verma, Nagesh Kukunoor, Deepa Mehta, Mira Nair, Mani Ratnam, Priyadarshan, Shekhar Kapur will continue to prove them wrong.  

A commonality in the new work has been the quality of sound. While theatres were being revamped with Dolby & DTS, Mega audio studios such as `Empire' in Mumbai switched to the latest Digital platforms & workstations. Music Directors such as A.R. Rahman, Vishal Bharadwaj, Ranjit Barrot, Ehsan, etc. insisted on working with the latest equipment. Although music directors prefer to record voices with analogue & instruments with digital, audio in India has become digitised. Hard Disk based recorders, Systems & Softwares such as the protools/Sonic solutions, etc. have improved signal processing-equalisation, delays, compression, & limiting. With digital duplication, we have better audio at user end CDs & audiocassettes. The lament is that the concept of premastering is still resisted by the music directors & the producers. The level at which a background score is played is also still a cause for concern. Even the biggest of producers cry at the fag end of the production about availability of funds & the background score suffers. Nay, it is the audience which suffers!  

The Barjatya's are different with their diabetic products. They have not only raised the quality of the marriage video to great honorable heights, but also extended the music video genre to a story telling one. Rajshri has reportedly released 600 DTS prints of their recent film `Hum Saath Saath Hain'. They have forced theatre owners all over the country to switch to DTS. 

Another technological & corporate phenomenon to occur was merchandising & marketing. While film stars have routinely been used to endorse & sell soap & a humungous range of products, films have been endorsed with products. You have the current ‘Hum Saath Saath Hain’-Coke tie up, you have a series of examples of events, schemes, gifts & games with small cafes, pubs, restaurants being tied up to promote the film. Kaizaad Gustad made music videos with his ‘Bombay Boys’ songs as a marketing strategy. While he did not seek sponsorship actively, other filmmakers ask their writers’ pool to create situations revolving around the product which sponsors them. A routine contract between the MNC/Product & the producer reads like a joke; there are dictats for the way the product will be seen in close up/Mid Shot/ Long Shot, dictats about how many times the product’s name will be mentioned by the artists. 

And then, we have the posters; a larger than life Urmila or Rani is bewitchingly distracting when you drive past, isn’t it? The Film Industry has actually deemed it worth to ask artists such as Rahul & Himanshu Nanda to design the publicity material. This is a long haul from Bunny Reuben’s efforts to uplift the publicity of Indian Films. 

Should one ask inanely whether all this techno infusion has helped the industry? Well, cinema is a technology driven medium, so we had to upgrade sometime. Why is it that you & me would prefer to see a French or a well made Hollywood film in any of the nice theatres rather than a Hindi film given the choice? I would prefer to watch ‘Elizabeth’ rather than the redo ‘inspired’ mythological -matched release. I would prefer to watch ‘Bandit Queen’ rather than a ‘Indianised-inspired’ version of a western. When you tackle a genre, there has to be an understanding of its sources, it’s derivatives & a passion to either maul it or mould it to another level. Despite the availability of funds, proximity to the latest technology, we cannot produce quality entertainment. At the end of the day, for me as for any Indian audience, a good plot & storyline with good melodious music is all that matters. Technology & gizmos can’t overpower a good story. It is no wonder that Hollywood mush sold better than ‘The Phantom Menace’ in India. 

After all, ek achchi story dekhnese kuch kuch hota hai…