Film Industry In Bollywood

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The kaleidoscopic world of Indian cinema, with the Hindi film industry (Bollywood) at its cynosure, has continued to enthral its audiences across the globe for more than a hundred years and can undoubtedly be counted as the only bona fide passion sans cricket which binds every section of the Indian society ranging from the hinterlands to the urban/semi-urban centres. In these hundred years, the film ecosystem has followed a deep learning curve to mutate into its current form (Figure 1) of a gigantic industry with ever-increasing revenues (Figure 2), churning out close to a thousand movies every year. Being recognized as an ‘industry’ ushered in one of the most critical revolutions in Bollywood: ‘corporatisation’, i.e. the involvement of corporate…show more content…
Thus, the studio system, which was characterized by actors being on the studio’s payroll, completely collapsed and the ‘stars’ could literally dictate the terms in any movie that they would appear in starting from the fees they would charge to the script of the movie. This shift also engendered the rise of independent producers and thereby, several malfeasant practices pertaining to the financing of movies including the involvement of the underworld. Furthermore, all the work was done primarily based on word-of-mouth with very minimal contractual framework to monitor operations. This lax attitude led to several instances involving non-payment of fees and several performers taking steps to circumvent these risks, for ex. Kishore Kumar would reportedly not sing even a single line before receiving his full payment. There have also been many cases wherein movies would get shelved after a considerable amount of shooting had been done just due to a paucity of funds. Furthermore, as many leading actors like Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor would use their personal funds to fund their projects, they were exposed to an ocean of uncertainty and had to even face severe financial crunches when their magnum opuses did not perform well. Thus, the conditions were…show more content…
A significant reduction in the risks associated with film financing, due to the pre-selling of movies before release, has resulted in actors drawing fatter pay-cheques as well. In fact, the compensation structure of an actor has become very flexible as several stars have even decided to forego any fees and agree to a profit sharing of the movie’s revenues; a trend started by Aamir Khan. Thus, a better pay structure ensures that actors need not work on several movies simultaneously unlike in the past whereby they may concentrate on a quality rather than quantity. The script, definitely the lynchpin of any movie, is now fixed as per legal contracts even before shooting commences due to which shooting has been significantly streamlined. All these factors have greatly abetted in an intensive mitigation of the roadblocks associated with making movies due to which the average time needed to complete a movie has been appreciably reduced. In addition to all these points, formalized capital institutional investments have put a halt on the inflow of “black money” into movies, many instances of which

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