"Why are our films so bad?"

What does it take to make a film! In simple words, it’s a three part process:

Pre-production - where you write a script and plan the shoot.Production - where you shoot.Post-production - where you edit the film and release it. But this is a chronological process, if there is no script, what will you shoot, if there is no shoot, what will you edit, if there is no edit, what will you release!

It all begins with the SCRIPT.

Ask yourself - What is your favourite Hindi movie of all time? 3 Idiots? Munna bhai? Deewar? Lagaan? Kal Ho Naa Ho? Less commercial? Udaan? Piku? Lagaan?

English? Shawshank? 12 Angry men? Citizen Kane?

Artsy? 400 blows? Mirror?

Think what do you love about the movie? The story, the direction or the actor? Without the story, what will the director direct, what will the actor act?

It is important to repeat something so rudimentary because no one seems to remember it! The script is the nucleus of a film, it is the foundation upon which your building is built!

Now here’s the snapshot of the average writer in Bombay - Generally a migrant who has come to pursue her or his dreams, you find it tough to get a home because besides the usual - Muslims, singles and unmarried couples - the other people landlords don’t like are film people - because they ‘don’t pay rent on time’ and ‘party’. If you find a home, you are quoted a rent which terrifies you!

Then after slogging for months, often years inside isolated dark caves, expensive cafes and circles of existential self-doubt, you come up with a script, one that you think is the best film ever written.

Then you find out there is no way to reach out to a producer for a new person. Many don’t even have websites, forget LinkedIn, if they do, they’ll have a token ‘submission’ procedure and when you do submit, you get a contract that basically says - 'they can copy anything' and you can’t lift a finger, then you send it and 9/10 never even respond, with the 10th response coming 6 months later saying it ‘doesn’t fit with their vision’.

If by chance, you stick at it and manage to connect with one Producer and ask them to read your 120 page script written over 1 year about say 'a migrant mother’s struggle through poverty and sexism against all odds', you’ll be told with a straight face in 1 line: “Yeh sab aaj kal nahi chalta”.

Interesting! Producer sahab, kahaan hain aap ka crystal ball jahaan likha hain ke kya chalta hain? Because things are down precisely because the choices you made do not work anymore! One would have hoped that after such a crisis, a producer would introspect on what’s going wrong, and realized that a star alone is not enough to make a film work. A star helps, sure but today’s audiences also want a good story. The time we spent at home all through the pandemic gave us access to content from all over the world and we realized that we were being taken for a ride.

Hence, at a time when one would’ve expected producers rushing to move the heavens and the earth to find or create good scripts, you have them saying things like 60%, 40%, 10% payments for a finished script, linking installments to greenlighting (a script being approved by a studio), shooting, even release! Imagine an interior designer being told that she’ll be paid linked to the success of the business.

They say 'industry thuki padi hain', 'paise nahi hain' - industry kyun thuki bhai? Kyun ke aap ke fainsle galat thhe. Par iski saza hum writers kyun bhugat rahein hain? Aur aap ne toh industry chhodi nahi hain, aap ab bhi nayi cheeze bana rahein ho, par loss humara ho raha hain. Agar sachmuch industry thuki hain, toh chaliye saath risk lete hain, main paisa nahi lunga, ya bohot kum lunga aur agar film banein toh aap ka bohot faayda aur mujhe bhi equity dijiye.

When I was in the startup world and couldn’t afford a high technical skill hire, I would offer a base salary and equity, because someone else is taking a risk for my dream, they should be rewarded as I am - with crazy upside! But no, here, they recruit us saying welcome to 50k salary down from 2 lakhs and that 1.5 lakh difference will be paid if the film is made, no upside. And all rights belong to them. Plus, you need to give them respect, stroke their ego. Which basically means, you are never going to get that money, because they can’t get their films made anymore! All you’re left with are signing amounts, first few installments - 20%, 30% - for doing 100% of your work.

So your own film will be dismissed because it ‘doesn't work’ and on the work you are hired for, you will be exploited as illustrated above! Add to it their understanding of time taken - asking for a script in a month, a story in 10 days! You came here enamoured by the magic of storytelling but to them - it is merely a means to make money and nothing else! And that too, they aren't good at!

That is why, an average writer today signs 3 films, gives a month to each because all s/he can expect to get are signing amounts, with which s/he can barely pay rents. Every meeting with filmmakers has become torturous, most are sad, unhappy, poor, frustrated, depressed, tense! There are stories of people moving back home, looking for jobs as guards and delivery people, while still dreaming of telling stories!

For a sector that is so glamourous and has so much money, it is a shame how disorganized it is. Our lives are as unpredictable as the tea vendors outside our homes, we don’t know when our stall will be broken…that is why nepo-babies are hated, even though they aren't at fault. All that is expected of them is acknowledge that an accident of birth gave you what it didn't give us!

You may ask, why do Producers behave such? Because an average producer's modus operandi thus far was based solely on building relationships with stars and now when the audience has proved that a Star isn't enough, they are at sea. It’s like our dads and grandparents at home who are fighting redundancy in a world where they feel they aren’t needed anymore…

Who is a builder? One who finds what needs to be build, where it needs to be built, who slogs to build and then sells to a buyer. Who is a broker? One who waits for a builder to sell and a buyer to buy, then injects himself in the transaction. A producer ought to be a builder but in reality, they are merely brokers.

Also, Producers get away with this because they know they can - 'chhoti industry hain', 'writer jayega kahaan', 'usko nikalva denge'. Enough is enough!

So is it all bleak? No. The night is darkest before dawn, and "the first guy through the wall always gets bloody". When we zoom out, this might go down as the best change that happened in filmmaking. When films massy ho ya classy, audience kehne chahiye - Original chahiye! We - the new breed of filmmakers are waiting, we are simmering, when the old guard dies out, we shall take over and do things the right way, never succumb, always endure!

We shall remember that at the end of the day, the reason we came here was that as children - we saw the magic of the movies and wanted to replicate it for others!