The evolution of Indian films and other entertainment
Hi friends,
After finishing my routine chores, I sat listening to the songs played in radio by Alexa. As I grew up during 80s, Ilayaraja songs were among my top favourites. The song ' Manjum peyyum raavil ' from old Malayalam hit movie 🎬 Pappayude swantham appoos took me to nostalgic ♥️ 90s. I never watched the movie but I like the song 🎵 very much to listen again and again and hum a little bit of it. I went through the Wikipedia of this film and was surprised to find that it ran for 250 days in theatres!! Unthinkable for movies of today!
Leave the black & white era; from my growing up years upto now, one will realise that so much has changed with film industry in India. It maybe similar across different countries of the world. We had blockbusters like Sholey, Dilwaale dulhania le jayenge or DDLJ, qayamat se qayamat take or QSQT running for years in theatres across India before making appearance in television sets! Of course, we didn't have various channels those days. But even after the appearance of multiple cable channels, watching much anticipated favourite movies was a pain with so many ads in between and trimming of some scenes for the ads. Uninterrupted movie watching was possible only with buying or renting DVDs.
Then came the onslaught of OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon prime video, Disney hotstar, Jio, Airtel and so on. It is not just movies but also viewing of tv serials have undergone a transformation. What started with viewing a serial once a week in our younger days, has transformed into binge watching of a series in OTT platforms. Coming back to movies, movie makers try to recover maximum profits in the first week of release by releasing in maximum number of theatres in and across the world. Within 2 months, the movie rights will be sold to different OTT platforms at a hefty sum depending on the popularity of the movie !! Thus we get to watch new movies at the comfort of our own homes. During COVID times, when movie industry was suffering heavy losses, some innovative movie makers as in Malayalam made realistic and quality movies with minimal production cost. Examples are that of Fahad Faazil movies. With the advent of smart TVs, parallel viewing has only increased thus reducing the viewership of main tv channels. During the election season in India, when news channels were seen to be peddling a one-sided narrative, the viewership of independent YouTubers increased manifold as they gave the alternate viewpoints. With all kinds of entertainment available in today's smartphones, people of all ages are glued to the same wherever we see which affects not only our eyes, but social contacts, but that topic is for another day.
The entertainment industry will constantly keep evolving in different ways to keep up with the upcoming generations!!
Deepa.
As usual written very well dear
ReplyDeleteThank you for your continued encouragement dear Akhila
ReplyDeleteWell presented article. Congratulations Deepumol.
ReplyDeleteThanks amma
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