Tsunami of small budget Tamil movies

Dangers of mucking around by trying to regulate the number of Tamil movies

A record number of 24 Tamil movies released in August, highest number of releases in Tamil since 1931, as claimed by Industry experts. Out of 24 movies, 22 failed not because of too much competition nor due to lack of screens, not due to piracy, not political reasons. But, because of abysmally poor content.  

Many film critics and experts were unnecessarily concerned that too much competition is bad for Tamil Cinema. Earlier this year, Producer council tried to regulate the number of movies by restricting the big movies to release only on festival days. We strongly believe all these producers and director associations should keep their hands away from tampering with the natural market forces. 

Reasons for sharp increase in small Tamil Movies

Many of these small movies released recently were made for unimaginably low budget (Rs. 10 to 50 Lakhs). Let us explore the reasons how it has been possible when inflation is moving up the cost of everything,

• The barrier of entry to make a Tamil movie drastically reduced with inexpensive Canon digital cameras (5D/7D), movie editing software, post processing, and sound mixing in home studios.

• Chennai is no more the hub for making movies. There is proliferation of movie-making to small cities/towns using local artists in second tier cities in Tamil Nadu, such as Madurai, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli, etc, where movie makers have sprung up like mushrooms.

• Huge influx of 'black' and 'white' money flowing with rich businessmen becoming producers to promote their pampered kids and turning them into heroes 

• Most screens across the cities in Tamil Nadu have been converted to digital projections, thereby reducing the need for prints distribution and physical shipment costs.

• Also, wide adoption of social media channels such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter have resulted in many college kids and young professionals getting smitten by movie-making as words of appreciation from friends and families for amateur short videos (mostly expressed as goodwill or courtesy). Director Balaji Mohan should be credited for starting this revolution in Tamil with KSY.

All the above factors and a few more have resulted in many people taking the big plunge in to big screen before getting fully prepared or equipped with right level of training and field experience.

Many small movies deserved to FAIL

Let us analyze the recent small budget movies and how many of them have fell through the cracks while going through the production stages along the way,

• Roughly 150 straight Tamil movies release in a year, out of which 100 of them are small budget movies made under Rs.50 Lakhs with no recognizable cast or crew member associated with the movie.

• 20 out of these 100 movies even get faintly registered in people's minds due to catchy posters or social media pre-release promotions (e.g., Madhubaana kadai)

• 10 out of the 20 movies have watch-worthy trailers that make movie buffs and critics sit up (e.g., Pizza, Naduvule Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom)

• 5 out of 10 have good songs and visuals (e.g., Maalai Pozhudhin Mayakathiley) 

• Out of the 5, only a selected few of them are bought by distributors who believe there is a potential. These movies also get good pre-release marketing leading up to a wide release. 

• Out of this minuscule number of movies that did everything right to even deserve an audience, one or two actually succeed with the people for the quality of content and professional making. These movies do well and rightfully so.

So far, Attakathi is the only movie in 2012 that has crossed all these hurdles working their way against all the odds, successfully turning profitable for makers and distributors. Rest 99% of the small movies have failed along the way. Until this ~1% success ratio of small movies improve to double-digits, it is not necessary to worry about the tsunami of Tamil movies attacking the public week after week.

Let the fittest Survive

One cannot blame the Tamil fans, who are the most knowledgeable audience in India. These fans have been giving the small movies a fair chance by building healthy pre-release buzz. They have not let-down a deservingly good movie during the last few years. It is actually the small movies that are to be blamed for failing us miserably with poor script/content. As we said earlier, Tamil movies are just getting democratized just like every single creative and non-creative field in this world during the last decade. We need to get used to this trend of swarm of small movies every week. 

What Darwin observed about natural evolution applies to Tamil cinema as well -- let the fittest survive allowing the weaker ones to fail.