Film Piracy

Everybody knows that the biggest evil haunting any "creative" industry is piracy. We had seen some innovations come up, to counter this. In this post, I would like to explore this interesting topic. This comes from a person, who used to download hell lot of movies himself.

Three important reasons are currently favoring film piracy.

1. Black Marketing by Theatres themselves
2. Getting 3 movies at Rs30 itself
3. Convenience of watching the movie at home

However, I feel it is more to do with a better revenue model than any of these innovations the producers have come up with. Setting aside the customer point of view for a moment, let us see the picture from a producer's perspective.

The producer makes a movie with a budget ranging from Rs80 lakhs(Ee Rojullo) to Rs40crore(Telugu movies). It is a well known fact that high budget films usually make a return ratio of 20-25% and low budget films have made 200-300%(Source: Allu Sirish blog). These huge numbers can come only if theatres are granted exclusive access to the film and piracy doesnt help in this regard.The fact is that people would like to watch the film.

In order to counter points 2 and 3, the makers of Golconda High School had offered the film online. But that actually messes up the revenue model completely. You are taking the risk of a good quality "piracy print" hitting the market very soon. There are those who talk about Cryptography, but that just doesn't work. If you can see it, you can steal it. But, of late makers of Julayi,Eega,LIB had partnered with an anti-piracy organization specializing in hacking. Dynamic monitoring can definitely curb pirated prints from spreading on the internet.

There are some who suggest advertising with in the films. But, I guess that's already goin on. However, it doesn't seem to be fetching significant numbers. Sekhar Kammula always had tieups with corporates to reduce production costs. Right from Anand, he had tieup with Kala Niketan for costumes. He had partnered with Audi for "rich" look in Life Is Beautiful.Satellite Rights fetch a lot of revenue for films(Rs1.5 crore to 8crores i guess) and I am not sure if the television channels would be happy with in-built advertising already done. Another issue is that advertising can be enhanced if pre-planned, the ads can be embedded within the script. Any advertiser would have a tough time in deciding whether to invest in a film, prior to the production of the film.

Another important reason which gives the "Robin hood" feel to the pirates is "Black Marketing by theatres". Every body would like to watch the movie in the first week itself and very few turn up in the second week. The theatres try to cash in on that and they undertake selling in black. That's because the price of tickets is always fixed. Another reason could be high spending in production of films, makers like Ram Gopal Varma had been saying that the budgets can be reduced further. There are many who suffered through distribution, but are quite a lot of people who made fortunes too. A sweeping statement from a "pro-piracy" guy was "If you are singing in the bathroom and someone says its good, will you charge them?". They are calling for a model where the revenue is based on performance. Quite a few mediocre films made good money through opening collections alone, due to star cast involved.

For those who are not aware of the initiatives by producers. There is a unique number allotted to each theatre and it is displayed along with the movie. So, the theatre from which the "piracy print" comes out is sealed. Thus, it offers a credible threat to the managements of theatres and makes them monitor piracy. After all, no body can sneak a decent camera so easily. It is usually done in small villages. Most of the initiatives are also taken by fans. They report the prints to producers and block links online. Fans along with the "anti-piracy hackers" can curb torrent also as well. Fake Torrents are another strategy.

I don't seem to have made any point through this post. But, what I actually wanted to convey is that this issue is a lot more complicated than what we are all imagining. These strategies may be saving a little revenue, but it is like a tom and jerry fight. The innovations should give a complete edge to the producers. See my next post on that for more.