The Downfall of Theatres: Death by Stealth?
Let’s talk about a journey that’s lasted over a hundred years. This is the journey of a religion, a religion that I’m an ardent follower of. This is a religion that I believe can bring people together across castes, creeds, sex, gender, age groups; make them cry together, make them laugh together, make them cheer for the gods of these religions together. I’m sure you’ve guessed it right by now. I’m talking about this religion in India that we call Cinema.
This journey, as any other, started with an idea, or rather an innovation that was made by the Lumiere brothers in France. This innovation involved capturing moving frames and moving images. And as any other technology, this technology evolved substantially over the years, to capture a few seconds, and then a few minutes, and then hours and hours of moving frames, till it came into the form that we see it as today where we can shoot hours and hours of footage and show it with absolute clarity. Change as they say is the only constant in life. And for the journey of cinema, it’s been no different, for the medium of cinema it’s been no different. Things change from black-and-white movies to color movies to movies that are made with a whole lot of visual effects. Today we are at a stage where a full-length feature film can be created with computer-generated images. Similarly, when it comes to sound, from silent movies, to movies that had mono-sound where you had two speakers behind the screen from where you could hear dialogues, to stereo sound where you had speakers on the sides creating some sound effects, to the cutting edge new technology called Dolby Atmos that we read outside the multiplexes that we go into today, where you have speakers behind you, in front of you, under you, around you and all over the place, make it a very immersive experience. Similar things happened to the places where we saw these movies. There were the good old single screen cinemas and, then came the swanky new multiplexes, till they changed further ahead into Miniplexes where you had 75 seats which were recliners, swanky, with great experience; to Megaplexes where you have multiple formats, all under one roof. Things kept changing in this journey like they do anywhere else.
Then for the kind of movies that were made, from the old-school cowboy movies which were replicated in India with the Bachchan era, to the present-day movies that you see which are as good as they get. Changes as I said kept happening. Along with this journey came a lot of offshoots that came to challenge this medium, Cinema, the Theatres. First things first, the television revolution came in, where, in India, you had Doordarshan which had a few hours of programming and then, in came a whole lot of other private channels which brought in a lot more entertainment, a lot more options for the viewers. Then came the era of the VCRs which enabled the convenience of watching the movie of your choice, at a time and a place of your choice. The technology got better with VCDs, then came DVDs and then came the Blu-Ray discs. Till we came into the era of the advent of broadband and digitization which gave way to platforms from the OTT zone, what we call Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Hotstar and a whole lot of others that exist today and have mushroomed all over the horizon today. Now this obviously created a degree of convenience for consumers of entertainment, which cinema could not. With Amazon or with Netflix or with any of these OTT platforms that you hear of, you can watch the movie that you want or the show that you want or the original that you want or the documentary that you want, where you want, when you want, on the medium that you want. And obviously cinema couldn’t catch up as a platform. Now as one of the gods of Indian cinema, Mr. Raj Kapoor said, “The show must go on”. So cinema as a medium obviously has to evolve to be able to challenge these platforms and survive with it. How do you do that?
Is telling a good tale enough? You can watch a movie with a good story on your mobile screen. You can watch it on a home theater. You can watch it on your TV screen. You can watch it wherever. Why would you go to a cinema hall? Unless the platform gives you something more than just a good tale, you may not want to spend that much money, you may not want to go through the inconvenience of driving to a cinema hall, buying an expensive ticket, probably facing the craving of buying that expensive popcorn. So, the only way to get people to the cinemas was to add onto the experience of being in a cinema hall. How do you do that? In my opinion, there are three ways that can really get people to the cinema halls by providing more than just a good tale to watch. One is the big screen spectacles. Why did people go to a cinema hall for Bahubali or Avengers? Because these are big screen spectacles. These are movies that you cannot enjoy in the optimum way on a screen that’s ‘five and a half inches’ or a screen that’s ‘52 inches’. These are big screen spectacles that call for a cinematic viewing. Then there’s the second option which are the immersive experiences. How many people enjoy horror movies? Probably, a lot! Paranormal Activity is a movie, not a big screen spectacle, made with a very low budget. But can you imagine you’re sitting in a cinema hall, silently as things are moving on the screen and suddenly a lady behind you shrieks! What happens is that you’re in that experience! Then there’s the third, Collective Viewing Experiences. Imagine you’re watching a Salman Khan masala movie, sitting at home, on your TV screen and things are happening in the movie and your life goes on. Or you go to a cinema hall like a Cinepolis or a PVR, you’re sitting there munching your popcorn and Salman Khan’s shirt comes off and the whole theatre erupts! This is something you cannot replicate in your home or on your mobile screen. So to bring people to the cinema halls, you need to give them more than what other platforms can. Now I truly believe that these are the ways that can get people to continue coming to the cinema halls. If you see, the change has already begun. In Hollywood, a lot of these big screen spectacles, the Mission Impossibles, the Marvels, the Avatars, their producers are marketing these films with the focus on calling viewers to the cinema halls. Because they want people to experience these movies in the best possible manner. Similarly even in India, a production company like Dharma Productions, which was known for these happy-go-lucky Rom-Coms shot abroad, they’re suddenly making movies like Kalank, Kesari, Shershaah, which were not their forte but they’re doing these because these films give that incentive to bring people to the cinema halls. So I truly believe that the time has come for the producers, directors, distributors and all other folks related to the process of movie-making; as custodians of this religion, to give more to the audience, to get enough applause and praises (and not just their money) from them and I hope that they can continue doing this. I hope, we as audiences can, by contributing to this journey, keep the journey going and keep flocking to the cinema halls. I’m certain that people have started giving more time to the OTT platforms, and to a whole lot of other mediums. I hope the film fraternity can do enough as an industry to bring us to the cinema halls, to make us relive our childhood, to make us relive those experiences that we’ll make great memories out of, to watch movies that we’ll enjoy going out with our families, with our friends; for the experience that can never ever be replicated elsewhere.
Mayank Saroha is a Business Consultant for Tata Consultancy Services in the India, Middle East & Africa region and a part of TCS’ Strategic Leadership Program. He graduated from IIM Bangalore (MBA — Cohort of ‘22).
