Lockdown has forced Indian cinema to script a new sequel to filmmaking

For now, everyone is shooting at home, going OTT, creating... and waiting

Karan Johar wants to go back to work. Back to the studios, to his creative collaborators, back to making movies: “It’s oxygen for our souls. [But] right now I feel like I am breathless.” Johar would have started shooting his new multi-starrer historical, Takht, in April had the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown not played villain and made him stop mid-set construction. “It’s [Takht] a massive film and I am definitely going to make it,” he says. What he doesn’t know is when.

Under normal circumstances, filmmaker-producer Zoya Akhtar and her team would have been in full prep mode for the second season of Made In Heaven. And a new series that she is producing with Reema Kagti, with Sonakshi Sinha in the lead, would have been wrapped up with shooting completed in Rajasthan in May. But her team had to pack up a quarter of the way into shooting. When they will get back is anyone’s guess, so Akhtar’s been using this time to catch up on life’s little things, to read and write and “recharge the batteries and replenish” before moving on to the new era of Indian Cinema 2.0.

As with so many other sectors, the lockdown has dealt a crippling blow to the Indian film industry. According to Shailesh Kapoor, founder and CEO of Ormax Media, a Mumbai-based media consulting firm, the gross losses from all-India box-office revenues alone are estimated to be around ₹2,500 crore in the last 2.5 months, of which the Hindi film industry accounts for 45-50%. Losses can mount to about ₹5,000 crore gross, if theatres remain shut for the next two-three months.

Then there are cancelled shoots, dismantled sets, films stuck in the middle of production, professionals without jobs, daily wage workers trying to make ends meet, tentpole films left without theatres and audiences, and many middling to big films ready for release and trying to find homes on OTT platforms.

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Considered non-essential

So what does life ahead look like for the industry when the lockdown lifts? How will cinema be consumed in the future? Will streaming take over theatres?

For the moment, everyone is busy framing guidelines for the expected comeback. An ‘Enhanced Safety and Precautions Plan’, drafted by the Multiplex Association of India, under the aegis of FICCI, was submitted to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting last week. The Producers Guild of India has released its guidelines too. The hectic lobbying with the ministry happens for a reason. The situation is trickier for cinema than any other industry. Although films and shows might be keeping people entertained at home, and stars are harnessed for messaging or charity drives, in the economic pecking order, the industry, despite being celebrated as a soft-power, is low in priority when it comes to ‘revival’ packages. Arts, literature, culture and entertainment are invariably bracketed as non-essentials. “There is this thinking that ‘yeh to ameer log hain, inka kya hai,’ (these are rich people, they needn’t worry),” says filmmaker Sudhir Mishra, who was in the middle of post-production work for his Netflix show based on Manu Joseph’s book Serious Men when the lockdown was announced. Ajit Andhare, COO, Viacom18 Studios, agrees: “We are the backbenchers, perhaps rightly so, because right now we are dealing with a nation that’s struggling to feed its citizens.”

Ironically, the debate on the future has started at the last mile — with the focus on how cinema will be consumed. Movies releasing on streaming platforms have caused exhibitors and theatre owners much heartburn. “The battle is unnecessary. It’s not a ‘versus’ situation,” says Johar. “Producers can’t afford to hold back completed films, and if they don’t get oxygen, they will die and there won’t be enough content even for cinema halls.”

Sanitised sets

Clearly, what the industry needs now is not just new ways of seeing, but new ways of thinking — how content is imagined and created has to see a substantial shift. Rationalisation — in budgets, workforce, equipment — is bound to happen. Containment and sanitisation costs for production houses, studios, makeup rooms, vans and theatres will go up exponentially. The 12-hour shifts might be reduced to eight hours. “The entire system will be upended,” says Bhaskar Hazarika, writer-director of critically acclaimed films like Aamis and Kothanodi. It was evident in Akshay Kumar’s recent shoot for a public service film directed by R. Balki at Kamalistan Studio. The limited crew looked like astronauts, and temperature checks, distancing and hygiene norms were strictly followed.

“Unlike manufacturing, shooting is not a controlled and organised sector,” explains Andhare. “To try and mount protocols on what is fundamentally a creative process will pose challenges.” The first to change, thus, will probably be smaller ventures and TV units, where there’s less at stake. The last to make over will be the big projects with huge scales and stars. Not just because they need more human, financial and technical investment but also because they are the ones who can afford to wait it out.

With travel and hotels badly hit, a big question mark hangs over settings and locales as well. Will a story set in Uttarakhand mutate into one with Kolhapur or Goa as backdrop? How will such changes reflect in the characterisation, cultural context, and dialogues?

Meanwhile, films are being shot at home. Nandita Das made Listen To Her, a short on domestic abuse, at home, using audio bytes, with herself and her son in key roles. And Prasoon Pandey’s Family, on social distancing and COVID-19, was also shot in the actors’ homes.

Another trend is emerging — that of making movies entirely with local talent. Hazarika is stuck in Assam where he had gone to oversee Assam’s first iPhone film, a road trip comedy. What would have been his first Hindi film as director-writer has been pushed back, but some unanticipated projects are emerging. “I am likely to stay on in Assam for the foreseeable future,” he says, where he figures he can shoot at least two Hindi web series with local crew and actors. “We have enough technicians here to mount a Bollywood-level film,” he says. “The opportunity is there; it’s about who gets to exploit it and how... It’s not about being reactive but looking five years ahead and making a move now.”

The worst hit are the people involved in production work, but does that mean writers, editors and those in post-production jobs and music composition are working in splendid isolation? Alas, no. Editor Namrata Rao is grappling with “editing in a vacuum.” She misses the luxury of sharing first cuts with others or taking the director’s inputs. “The eyes [that look at a film’s rushes] are mine only. There is no one to soundboard; no counsel... The fun of collaboration is gone,” she says.

Unprecedented creative blocks and anxieties are affecting all. “Anyone in content creation will tell you writers are having a tough time,” says Johar. The ambiguity, he believes, is the worst dampener for the creative community. “Angst and inner peace can both give you enough material to write. But how do you create while in limbo?”

Wait and watch

Actor-director Konkona Sen Sharma prefers to wait and engage with the new reality as it emerges. She anticipates an interesting time, with creativity and innovation coming to the fore. Filmmaker Anjali Menon is busy completing her new script, but isn’t sure what comes next. Like Sharma, she wants to see where things are headed. “It’s a time of great change and we have to be sensitive to it,” she says.

Johar grapples with other questions: for instance, will masks, gloves, shields, PPEs become part of the costumes of contemporary films? “If it’s not incorporated in a 2020 film, it would run the risk of being disconnected,” he says. Not just props, the economic, social, political, medical, and emotional impact of the lockdown is bound to reflect in the stories we tell. Says Johar: “We are all combating a massive world war. We can’t go back to normal films and pretend that all we went through didn’t happen. Cinema has always been a grand reflection of its times and these are our times.” Akhtar agrees: “Be it disastrous or cathartic, it has been a massive, globally resonating experience that is going to find a way into all kinds of narratives.”

Earlier this month, Gautham Menon released a 12-minute short, Karthik Dial Seytha Yenn, on YouTube, and he set it in the lockdown. A continuation of his 2010 superhit love story, Vinnaithandi Varuvaya, it has Trisha and Simbu as leads and was shot in their homes by their families. Its music and post-production work was also done remotely. It has had more than six million views on YouTube so far.

Filmmaker Vetrimaaran says it best: “There are boys who walked from Mumbai to Tiruchi during the first few days of the lockdown. Are we going to tell their stories? Or ignore them? Are we going to question the system for not planning this properly? Or forget this happened and move on? Are we going to question the people who are making it region-specific, religion-specific, caste-specific? These are serious questions we need to ask ourselves.”

He then adds, “But whatever the situation might be, the hardships we may have to go through, art should happen... Art is the conscience of man.”