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Hindi Film and Television: Top Trends of 2010

December 29, 2010 By 1 Comment

Hindi Television Trends of 2010

Yash Raj and Sony tried, and failed, to bring in the future of Hindi television

For me, this was one of the most significant media events of the year. Over the last 5 years I have listened to thousands of people complain about Hindi television, and ask why shows similar to the better western content can’t be made in India. Finally someone tried to do just this, and, despite a huge marketing campaign, it didn’t work.

Maybe the marketing didn’t connect with viewers? Maybe the programming (keeping the timeslots to late nights or weekends) failed, and the shows should have gone head to head with the GEC primetime offerings? Maybe anyone who is interested in high production values and good scripts is already watching English channels. Maybe these shows were just way ahead of their time, and this is exactly what people will be watching 5 years from now?

For now at least, we are stuck with family serials and dancing reality TV

Music videos to promote TV shows

StarPlus and Colours created music videos to promote their shows Masterchef, and Bigg Boss. While such videos can be played on TV, they are most useful as a viral internet marketing tool. Nice to see TV channels looking at new ways to promote their content.

Reality shows kept branching out

StarPlus had Masterchef and Mahayatra – a religious travel show.

Imagine had Desi Girl, Rahul Dulhaniya Le Jayega, Raaz Pichhle Janam Ka.

Bindass had Emotional Atyachar

Sadly, the endless dance and singing shows still seem to rule, with compulsory celebrity hosts, no matter how pointless their presence.

StarPlus took back the number one GEC slot from Colors.

The competitive lead from Colors’ ‘disruptive programming’ approach faded away as the other channels raced to dump their K serials and launch stories set in regional districts or with unusual protagonists.

Bad luck for Colors, but great news for India. Hindi television is in a far better place today than it was two years ago. The old formula for hit TV is gone, and story and character are more important than ever.

Multi-lingual viewers are starting to transition from the Hindi GECs to regional content

Channels in regional languages are blossoming, especially Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, and the four southern languages. The quality of content is improving, which is drawing more advertising money. Ernst and Young estimates that ad spends on regional channels will grow by 25% this year, compared to 16% on Hindi channels.

Broadcasters are taking the view that if they are going to bleed viewers and revenue from their flagship channel, they might as well bleed into other channels that they own. Almost all the big Hindi TV players have either already started launching regional channels or have announced that they will be doing so in the near future.

More regional channels mean more competition to develop great content. This will accelerate the slippage of viewers and ad revenue further.

One potential upside of this that I can see is that as more melodramatic, emotional content shifts to regional channels, the Hindi GECs will start exploring newer formats and narratives.

As a side note – another reason that channels like regional offerings is that the content is cheap. Hindi drama costs 7-10 lakh per episode (on average) compared to 2 Lakh an episode more regional dramas. Reality shows are also cheaper as the local stars charge far less to host the content.

Prime time expanded

From channel to channel, primetime can now cover anything between 6:30pm and 11:30pm.

What does this mean? More people are watching TV, over a wider spread of time. Primetime is all original programming, not repeats, so more primetime means a wider range of content for viewers to choose from.

First web based show – Bol Niti Bol from Balaji

Balaji showed just how flexible its business model is by backflipping from a range of virtually identical K serials, to a variety of significantly different shows. On top of that they have released a couple of great films (including the awesome LSD), started an online community to search for talent, and have launched a film and acting school.

To top it off, in July they released India’s first web based serial. Bol Niti Bol, the life journal of an 18 year old girl making her way through life.

Bol Niti Bol was actually designed as a multi-site web experience. Videos are hosted on YouTube and news/lifestyle sites, plus a Facebook page and a twitter feed. Balaji claims that the 17 episodes received more than 650,000 views in the first month, and they had 10,000 followers across the social media sites.

Why is this important? When families earn more money in developed countries, they buy more TVs. In the US, more than 50% of households have 3 or more televisions. Everyone in the household gets to watch whatever they want, so there is space for a huge variety of channels and content.

In contrast, most Indian families don’t own a TV. Often TVs are shared between families, or within a large extended family. As Indian families become richer, they rarely buy more TVs. This is why the target audience for popular TV channels is SEC BCD women, even though we keep hearing about India’s enormous ‘youth’ population.

Indian families buy computers (for their children’s education), and fancy mobile phones. As the older family members usually control the TV set, there is a huge opportunity to deliver targeted content to the younger family members over the internet.

With 3G just around the corner, and smart phones with big colour screens selling for under Rs.5000, we will shortly see a deluge of short-form web-based content aimed at the 15-25yr old market.

Hindi Film Trends of 2010

For Serious Films, Story Ruled.

Big budget serious films that lacked story, or lacked Indian context struggled at the boxoffice, often flopping. Kites, Ravaan, Veer, Teen Patti, Aisha and Guzaarish for example. Despite beautiful production values, each of these were either poorly written or lacked a connection with Indian life and values.

Big budget serious films with good stories or strong Indian context did well (as long as they were properly marketed). Rajneeti, My Name is Khan, Once Upon A Time In Mumbai.

Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se was possibly the worst marketed film of the year. Someone stuck up a few posters, and the next day it was in cinemas. Although, since Lamhaa and Red Alert also struggled at the box office, despite strong marketing, maybe people just don’t like films about conflict zones this year?

Big-budget, madcap, plotless comedies continued to make as much money as ever. There were some unexplainable flops, but overall this category did well despite atrocious reviews with films such as Golmaal 3, Housefull, and Tees Maar Khan.

Small-Town Stories

Mirroring the trend in TV, stories set in smaller towns were generally successful. Dabaang, Tees Maar Khan, Peepli [Live], Udaan, Aakrosh, Ishqiya, Phas Gaye Re Obama, even featuring small-town attitudes or innocence (Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge, Tere Bin Laden)helped.

Other than in the big-budget comedies, there seemed to be far fewer international locations than in previous years. Possibly this is a hangover from the cash crunch that saw lots of producers slashing their film budgets.

‘Multiplex’ Films

The young, ‘non hero’, multiplex-driven genre continued to grow, generally through the efforts of Ranbir, Imran and Farhaan. I Hate Luv Storys, Karthik Calling Karthik, Anaaja Anjaani, Break Ke Baad.

Lots of 3D films

Indian multiplexes (at least in major cities) have rushed to upgrade their projection technology. Many Hollywood films, which in the US are shown in both 2 and 3D, in India were shown only in 3D

Lots of ‘New’

Lots of debuts. By some estimates there were over 150 new entrants to the industry in either significant acting roles or as writers or directors.

There were some great attempts at doing something different content-wise:

  • First film with gay protagonists – Dunno Y… Na Jaane Kyon
  • First TV show adaptation – Khichdi – The Movie
  • And my favourite risk-taking film of 2010 – Love, Sex and Dhoka
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The First Big-Name Transmedia Company?

December 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

This was a very exciting piece of news that i picked up from the NY Times.

“Guillermo del Toro Opening a Boutique ‘Transmedia’ Studio

Transmedia storytelling, according to Wikipedia is “a technique of telling stories across multiple platforms and formats”. From a media and content perspective this can include film, television, online, print, radio etc.

Examples include:

  • the TV series Heroes. It is based on television, but on top of that is a bunch of other stuff such as comics, website and books that cover the same characters and are set in the same universe. Same again for Lost.
  • Almost anything Disney has done lately
  • Isa TKM. This Venezuelan TV serial is about a schoolgirl in love with a musician. the show launched with websites, Facebook and MySpace pages, phone ringtones and downloads, and a music album,

The magic of great transmedia is that a casual fan can enjoy the basic offering (such as the TV show) while a more passionate fan can ‘drill-down’ into the universe and satisfy their desire for more detail.

In the past, these sort of expansions happened organically. A show was successful, so producers started looking for spin-off options. A more modern view, is to plan for these expansions right from the start.

This is the role of Transmedia agencies. They are not necessarily experts at any one media channel, but rather try to coordinate between the different channels, knowing what bits of the story will work best on different platforms.

Personally, I love this stuff and have been reading about it for a while. I don’t write about it much, primarily because it is still a heavily ‘academic’ subject which means that the people who do write about it sound much smarter than me :-)

The reason the article caught my eye was the involvement of Guillermo del Toro the writer, producer, or director of many great films, including Pan’s Labyrinth, Blade 2, and Hellboy.  The company he has partnered in, Mirada, “will house all of the tools that filmmakers need to create entertainment that lives partly on the Web, partly in movie theaters, partly in video games under one roof.”

Awesome!

Filed Under: Film, Marketing, Television, Transmedia Tagged With: , , , , ,

Most Pirated Films 2009-2010: A Deeper Look

December 26, 2010 By 2 Comments

Torrentfreak publishes the list of its most downloaded films each year. I wanted to look further into this, in terms of genres and box office revenues.

An important note: being from Torrentfreak, this data is entirely based on viewers who are computer literate, and have reasonably fast internet connections. Obviously this excludes most of India, and most other developing countries where film piracy is based around hard copies of DVDs or VCDs

First, the number of downloads

Year No. of downloads % growth
2009 86,670,000
2010 92,480,000 107%

Not much growth, I would have expected more. Possible explanations are:

  • Success in anti-piracy activities (and greater access to legal online sources) in the developed world are offsetting the growth in developing countries
  • A more fragmented market – a wider range of films and TV content is available for download

Next, we look at the top ten films for the last two years. I have listed the number of downloads, the worldwide box office gross, the percentage of that revenue coming from US ticket sales. Finally, I have listed the worldwide box office revenue divided by download numbers

Year Film No of downloads Worldwide Gross % of worldwide box office revenue from US Worldwide Box office $ per download
2010 Avatar 16,580,000 $2,779,551,867 27% $167.64
2010 Kick-Ass 11,400,000 $96,130,432 50% $8.43
2009 Star Trek 10,960,000 $385,494,555 67% $35.17
2009 Transformers: ROTF 10,600,000 $836,297,228 48% $78.90
2010 Inception 9,720,000 $825,448,067 35% $84.92
2010 Shutter Island 9,490,000 $294,803,014 43% $31.06
2009 RocknRolla 9,430,000 $25,739,015 22% $2.73
2009 The Hangover 9,180,000 $467,483,912 59% $50.92
2010 Iron Man 2 8,810,000 $621,751,988 50% $70.57
2009 Twilight 8,720,000 $392,616,625 49% $45.02
2009 District 9 8,280,000 $210,819,611 55% $25.46
2010 Clash of the Titans 8,040,000 $493,214,993 33% $61.35
2009 Harry Potter and the HBP 7,930,000 $933,959,197 32% $117.78
2010 Green Zone 7,730,000 $94,875,650 37% $12.27
2009 State of Play 7,440,000 $87,812,371 42% $11.80
2009 X-Men Origins: Wolverine 7,200,000 $373,062,864 48% $51.81
2010 Sherlock Holmes 7,160,000 $523,029,864 40% $73.05
2009 Knowing 6,930,000 $183,593,586 44% $26.49
2010 The Hurt Locker 6,850,000 $48,612,915 34% $7.10
2010 Salt 6,700,000 $293,502,218 40% $43.81

The film that really jumps out is RocknRolla. I loved the film, but it had a very limited release (and never released here in India, to my memory). The film was heavily pirated, making less than $2.75 worldwide for each person who downloaded it.

What does this tell us?

  • The release was botched, and there was far greater demand than was catered for?
  • The film was more popular in countries that are more prone to download (the film also had the lowest % of US revenues on this list)?
  • The target audience was so small that they all saw the film, and then downloaded it as well?

I don’t know :-)

Somewhat predictably, the genres of these films are mostly stacked in favour of the younger guys that are most likely to download films.

Film Genre Worldwide Box office $ per download Average for genre
Avatar Sci Fi / fantasy $167.64 $69.56
Star Trek Sci Fi / fantasy $35.17
Transformers: ROTF Sci Fi / fantasy $78.90
Inception Sci Fi / fantasy $84.92
Iron Man 2 Sci Fi / fantasy $70.57
Twilight Sci Fi / fantasy $45.02
District 9 Sci Fi / fantasy $25.46
Clash of the Titans Sci Fi / fantasy $61.35
Harry Potter and the HBP Sci Fi / fantasy $117.78
X-Men Origins: Wolverine Sci Fi / fantasy $51.81
Knowing Sci Fi / fantasy $26.49
Shutter Island thriller $31.06 $29.66
RocknRolla thriller $2.73
State of Play thriller $11.80
Sherlock Holmes thriller $73.05
Green Zone war $12.27 $9.69
The Hurt Locker war $7.10
Salt action $43.81
The Hangover comedy $50.92
Kick-Ass geek $8.43

Possibly the film most effected by piracy was Kick-Ass. This film had HUGE buzz coming out of ComicCon and then flopped at the box office. An argument at the time was that the link between ‘geek buzz’ and sales was broken. In reality, the film’s target audience was also the people who are most likely to download films.

Roughly half of these films were in the top 10 box office grossing films of the year as well, on worldwide sales.

So which films did well at the box office, but weren’t pirated as heavily?

Year Film Genre
2010 Toy Story 3 Animation
2010 Alice in Wonderland Animation
2009 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs Animation
2009 2012 Sci Fi / fantasy
2010 Shrek Forever After Animation
2009 Up Animation
2009 The Twilight Saga: New Moon Sci Fi / fantasy
2010 The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Sci Fi / fantasy
2010 Despicable Me Animation
2010 How to Train Your Dragon Animation
2009 Angels & Demons thriller

Pretty clear trends there. Animation films are fairly ‘safe’. The first twilight was pirated, but once everyone figured out that the films are for teenage girls, the downloadable factor wore off. Not sure why Angels & Demons and 2012 didn’t work out online. They were both bad films, but that doesn’t necessarily matter :-)

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Guzaarish: Marketing Campaign

November 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Guzaarish movie posterI saw Guzaarish on the weekend. I don’t really know what all the fuss is about. I found it to be incredibly self indulgent and a confused mess of a story.

So why did I go at all? Bhansali’s films can be good, and the reviews were shining. As much as everyone hates the film critics when their film gets panned, I tend to trust them, at least at a consensus level.

After I saw the film I went back to the reviews to try to understand what they had like so much about it. The answers were pretty random. One critic thought the film was special because Ash and Hrithik were starring together. Most of the other critics were wowed by the production design, or the costumes. Someone said the film deserved ‘its own category’.

Good point actually, and that is what confused me. What was this film? It’s not a love story because he doesn’t love her. Its not a magic related film, its not a legal drama. Maybe a character study?

If you simplify the film to the core story – a quadriplegic fights for the right to euthanasia – then it is quite simple.

But the film morphs into – a (now) quadriplegic ex-greatest-magician-in-the-world fights for theposter guz right to euthanasia because his money is running out, while being fussed over by a stern nurse who is secretly in love with him who also secretly flamenco dances and gets beaten by her estranged husband on their wedding anniversary.

How do you go about marketing something like that?

What struck me with this film was that the marketing of Guzaarish seemed out of control from the start. It all went something like this (the order is a bit jumbled):

  • the film is announced
  • it is rumoured to be a remake of Prestige
  • they announce that the director visited Ajmer Dargh to seek blessings
  • they announce that the director visited Lata Mangeshkar to seek blessings
  • An Indian writer claims the plot is plagiarised from his unpublished novel
  • The plot is announced but for some reason they keep calling the character a paraplegic, rather than quadriplegic, which make the request for euthanasia a bit excessive.
  • the trailer was to be released with We Are Family, but gets pushed to later.
  • they talk about Hrithik learning the difficult dance moves (yup, of course the now-crippled ex-magician has to be able to dance)
  • Hrithik says that he can identify with the quadriplegic character, because he has a knee injury
  • They wanted to promote the film on Bigg Boss but were turned down (very publicly)
  • They talk about Hrithik’s fitness routine to go from fat to fit for different scenes.
  • They release a poster of Aishwarya smoking. This is probably the lowest and most desperate point of the campaign. The poster is visually completely out of sync with the rest of the promotional materials, conveys nothing about the film. The entire point seems to be to stir up controversy about the actor smoking. This works, and doctors call for a ban on the film.
  • Ultimately, the film turns out to be a half remake of The Sea Inside, with bits of Prestige thrown in for good measure (because apparently in India you can’t make films about simple characters)

By ‘out of control’ I mean that much of the publicity was stirred up by people other than the poster guz 3marketing team, which meant they were not controlling the campaign. The story was so convoluted that is was difficult to market on that basis, with much of India not understanding terms such as euthanasia or quadriplegic anyway. Hence, the Guzaarish PR focused on the actors and their experiences rather than the film.

The posters were beautiful, and captured the feel of the film perfectly, however I think they focused too much of the love story angle, which was really a non-event. I know people feel that this attracts lots of viewers, but then why deceive them?

And here is the ‘smoking’ poster. See the difference?

smoking

My personal wish from this film was that Bhansali had dived a little further down the rabbit hole. This was a film in half English about mercy killing. Obviously it would have little appeal beyond the multiplex audience anyway. He could have really explored the world of a character whose life was all about illusion and can now only live that world in his mind. Reality and memory can blur. Anyway, maybe for the sequel…

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Legendary Pictures Starts Comics Division

November 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Legendary Pictures is a US film producer and financer. They specialise in funnelling money from hedge funds/private investors into the film industry, and have been pretty successful, with lots of great films. Hits include Inception, The 300, Dark Knight, The Hangover.

The reason that I am writing about them is that they are starting a comic division, with the aim of releasing 4-6 graphic novels each year. I love this, because i love Transmedia.

The books will serve as translations from the producer’s film and TV properties. I’m looking forward to these ventures appearing in India. I think that both UTV and Reliance have the capacity for this in-house already, perhaps its just a matter of finding film or TV content with enough fandom-power to warrant a comic book.

Once again we are back to the question – where are the Indian Superheroes?

Krrrish doesn’t count.

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Analysis of Top Independent Films

November 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

 

The following are the highest US grossing independent films, released in the US between 2000-2009. The people who made this list, IndieWire, are the first ones to admit that it is almost impossible to define ‘independent films’ since so many of the big studios have opened small specialty divisions, and the old independent film company started working like studios. Anyway, this is their attempt at a ranking:

1. The Passion of the Christ, 2004 (Newmarket)  $370,274,604
2. My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 2003 (IFC Films)  $241,438,208
3. Juno, 2007 (Fox Searchlight)  $143,395,265
4. Slumdog Millionaire, 2008 (Fox Searchlight)  $141,319,928
5. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000 (Sony Pictures Classics) $128,078,872
6. Traffic, 2000 (USA) $124,115,725
7. Fahrenheit 9/11, 2004 (Lionsgate) $119,194,771
8. Paranormal Activity, 2009 (Paramount)  $107,753,000
9. Brokeback Mountain, 2005 (Focus Features)  $83,043,761
10. March of the Penguins, 2005 (Warner Independent) $77,437,223
11. Coraline, 2009 (Focus Features)  $75,286,229
12. Sideways, 2004 (Fox Searchlight)  $71,503,593
13. Burn After Reading, 2008 (Focus Features)  $60,355,347
14. Little Miss Sunshine, 2006 (Fox Searchlight)  $59,891,098
15. Hero, 2004 (Miramax) $53,710,019
16. Atonement, 2007 (Focus Features) $50,927,067
17. 28 Days Later, 2003 (Fox Searchlight)  $45,064,915
18. Lost In Translation, 2003 (Focus Features)  $44,585,453
19. Napoleon Dynamite, 2004 (Fox Searchlight)  $44,540,956
20. Precious: Based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire, 2009 (Lionsgate)  $42,004,270

 

I took a look into sorting these films, to try to find patterns. The first chart shows the setting of the film. The second chart shows the genre.

period_of_films

genre_of_films

The only thing that jumps out is that most films are comedies or dramas, set in the present time, which is pretty much what you would expect from successful, lower-budget films.

Beyond that, the variety of films is spread wide – 2 Chinese epics, 2 documentaries, a gay romance, a fantasy cartoon.

What would be much more interesting, would be seeing the marketing budgets of these films, and being able to take that into consideration as well.

Maybe next time…… Smile

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Sell Your Farmland… Make Gujarati Films!

November 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I pulled these numbers out of a story about rich Gujarati farmers who were spending their new-found earnings on film production. Often on films written by, or starring them, or their family members.

In the last year around 45 Gujarati films have been released, about half of which are farmer funded.

 

Item Cost Income
Average film production cost

Rs.20 – 25 Lakh

  
     
Theatrical ticket Sales on an average one week run in single screen theatres.  

Rs.2 – 3 lakh
Music, TV, DVD rights  

Rs.5 Lakh
Govt. Subsidy for making local language films  

Rs.5 Lakh
     
Average Loss Rs.7 – 13 Lakh  

*Lakh = 100,000

So why do they keep plugging money into films if most of them are losing money? Mostly so they can wear western clothes and gold-rimmed sunglasses and tell people that they are “Flim Produjhers”.

Also, because with the jump in land prices, this loss represents less than an eighth of an acre of farm land, For that, they get to star in their very own film, or tell the story that they always wanted to tell, and walk around in gold-rimmed sunglasses for the rest of their lives.

Original (and more journalistic) story here.

This farmer in the picture probably has nothing to do with film production. I apologise in advance if he reads this and is offended. He should actually be happy that he was the most cheerful farmer in Google image search.

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Film Previews for Fans as Promotional Strategy

October 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The film Paranormal Activity was one of the biggest low budget hits of the last couple of years. Made for under $15,000, the film had a long journey stuck in distribution hell, and almost got a big budget remake, before being released and making over $100 million worldwide.

One of the promotional tools that they used to hype the film were preview screening. Why do people see a film like this? Because they want to be scared. If lots of people are saying that your film is scary, then it’s pretty attractive to the target audience, so the previews worked well.

For the upcoming sequel, the producers are taking this one step further. Using a website application, fans can “demand” that the film is released in their city. The cities that generate the most requests will get midnight previews the day before the film releases across the country. 250,000 fans have won free tickets to these screenings.

This is a great strategy. A quarter million people, who are already fans, will come out of their free and exclusive screening and rave about the film online and in person. This should give a huge word-of-mouth boost to the ticket sales the next day, which should then flow on to a bigger international release.

That’s the plan anyway. If everyone walks out and says the film sucks, however, it could be a very different story :-)

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Aakrosh – Honour Killing Inspired Clothing Line

October 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

 

I love cool film-related merchandise. The problem is that as you get older, there is less and less that is relevant for you.

Kids get everything…. So many films come with toys, costumes, games, pencil cases, backpacks etc etc etc, and these are an important part of the film’s marketing campaign. A criticism of Pixar releases by trade analysts is that the films sometimes have limited ‘merchandising opportunities’ (think about Old Man dolls for Up). As a reference point – Spielberg earned around US$1 billion from “E.T.”’s merchandise.

There is generally nothing along these lines for older viewers, however. Either for film or TV. I was watching The West Wing, and noticed how awesome the president’s neckties were. If I could buy a set of West Wing ties, I would :-)

A few films have experimented with clothing lines previously, both in India and abroad. Cinderella Man and Om Shanti Om are two examples.

Now Aakrosh is releasing a line of clothing designed by Riyaz Gangji. In a cool marketing twist, the clothing will be sold only over E Bay, with the profits going to victims of honour killings.

I’m not sure exactly who will get the money though… if the victim is dead and their family were the ones who killed them…..

Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing the line of clothing inspired by an film on honour killing. At least it’s an original idea.

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Great Writing Advice from David Mamet

March 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment


David Mamet, the great screenwriter of films such as Glengarry Glen Ross, Wag the Dog, Ronin, Hanibal and lots of other stuff, was also the EP for a US tv series called The Unit. He wrote a memo to his writers that sums up most of his key tenants of screenwriting, and the memo recently made its way online.

I’ve put the whole thing below, but the bit i really love, and that he is obviously passionate about, is this:

“HERE ARE THE DANGER SIGNALS.

ANY TIME TWO CHARACTERS ARE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

ANY TIME ANY CHARACTER IS SAYING TO ANOTHER “AS YOU KNOW”, THAT IS, TELLING ANOTHER CHARACTER WHAT YOU, THE WRITER, NEED THE AUDIENCE TO KNOW, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.”

The reason that this jumped out at me, is that i HATE unnessessary exposition in screenwriting. It really annoys me. And so so many hindi films go straight down that path.

The scene opens. Two guys are walking though a college campus. One says to the other, “you know how we have been best friends for the three years that we have been in this college, and how we hang out everyday, and now our final exams are approaching?”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Such lazy writing. Such lack of realism. Such a complete lack of respect for the audience.

Anyway, here is the memo. (blue suited penguins are, to him, the production people that give notes to the writers). Awesome advice:

TO THE WRITERS OF THE UNIT

GREETINGS.

AS WE LEARN HOW TO WRITE THIS SHOW, A RECURRING PROBLEM BECOMES CLEAR.

THE PROBLEM IS THIS: TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN DRAMA AND NON-DRAMA. LET ME BREAK-IT-DOWN-NOW.

EVERYONE IN CREATION IS SCREAMING AT US TO MAKE THE SHOW CLEAR. WE ARE TASKED WITH, IT SEEMS, CRAMMING A SHITLOAD OF INFORMATION INTO A LITTLE BIT OF TIME.

OUR FRIENDS. THE PENGUINS, THINK THAT WE, THEREFORE, ARE EMPLOYED TO COMMUNICATE INFORMATION — AND, SO, AT TIMES, IT SEEMS TO US.

BUT NOTE:THE AUDIENCE WILL NOT TUNE IN TO WATCH INFORMATION. YOU WOULDN’T, I WOULDN’T. NO ONE WOULD OR WILL. THE AUDIENCE WILL ONLY TUNE IN AND STAY TUNED TO WATCH DRAMA.

QUESTION:WHAT IS DRAMA? DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TO OVERCOME THOSE THINGS WHICH PREVENT HIM FROM ACHIEVING A SPECIFIC, ACUTE GOAL.

SO: WE, THE WRITERS, MUST ASK OURSELVES OF EVERY SCENE THESE THREE QUESTIONS.

1) WHO WANTS WHAT?
2) WHAT HAPPENS IF HER DON’T GET IT?
3) WHY NOW?

THE ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS ARE LITMUS PAPER. APPLY THEM, AND THEIR ANSWER WILL TELL YOU IF THE SCENE IS DRAMATIC OR NOT.

IF THE SCENE IS NOT DRAMATICALLY WRITTEN, IT WILL NOT BE DRAMATICALLY ACTED.

THERE IS NO MAGIC FAIRY DUST WHICH WILL MAKE A BORING, USELESS, REDUNDANT, OR MERELY INFORMATIVE SCENE AFTER IT LEAVES YOUR TYPEWRITER. YOU THE WRITERS, ARE IN CHARGE OF MAKING SURE EVERY SCENE IS DRAMATIC.

THIS MEANS ALL THE “LITTLE” EXPOSITIONAL SCENES OF TWO PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD. THIS BUSHWAH (AND WE ALL TEND TO WRITE IT ON THE FIRST DRAFT) IS LESS THAN USELESS, SHOULD IT FINALLY, GOD FORBID, GET FILMED.

IF THE SCENE BORES YOU WHEN YOU READ IT, REST ASSURED IT WILL BORE THE ACTORS, AND WILL, THEN, BORE THE AUDIENCE, AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO BE BACK IN THE BREADLINE.

SOMEONE HAS TO MAKE THE SCENE DRAMATIC. IT IS NOT THE ACTORS JOB (THE ACTORS JOB IS TO BE TRUTHFUL). IT IS NOT THE DIRECTORS JOB. HIS OR HER JOB IS TO FILM IT STRAIGHTFORWARDLY AND REMIND THE ACTORS TO TALK FAST. IT IS YOUR JOB.

EVERY SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC. THAT MEANS: THE MAIN CHARACTER MUST HAVE A SIMPLE, STRAIGHTFORWARD, PRESSING NEED WHICH IMPELS HIM OR HER TO SHOW UP IN THE SCENE.

THIS NEED IS WHY THEY CAME. IT IS WHAT THE SCENE IS ABOUT. THEIR ATTEMPT TO GET THIS NEED MET WILL LEAD, AT THE END OF THE SCENE,TO FAILURE – THIS IS HOW THE SCENE IS OVER. IT, THIS FAILURE, WILL, THEN, OF NECESSITY, PROPEL US INTO THE NEXT SCENE.

ALL THESE ATTEMPTS, TAKEN TOGETHER, WILL, OVER THE COURSE OF THE EPISODE, CONSTITUTE THE PLOT.

ANY SCENE, THUS, WHICH DOES NOT BOTH ADVANCE THE PLOT, AND STANDALONE (THAT IS, DRAMATICALLY, BY ITSELF, ON ITS OWN MERITS) IS EITHER SUPERFLUOUS, OR INCORRECTLY WRITTEN.

YES BUT YES BUT YES BUT, YOU SAY: WHAT ABOUT THE NECESSITY OF WRITING IN ALL THAT “INFORMATION?”

AND I RESPOND “FIGURE IT OUT” ANY DICKHEAD WITH A BLUESUIT CAN BE (AND IS) TAUGHT TO SAY “MAKE IT CLEARER”, AND “I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT HIM”.

WHEN YOU’VE MADE IT SO CLEAR THAT EVEN THIS BLUESUITED PENGUIN IS HAPPY, BOTH YOU AND HE OR SHE WILL BE OUT OF A JOB.

THE JOB OF THE DRAMATIST IS TO MAKE THE AUDIENCE WONDER WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. NOT TO EXPLAIN TO THEM WHAT JUST HAPPENED, OR TO*SUGGEST* TO THEM WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

ANY DICKHEAD, AS ABOVE, CAN WRITE, “BUT, JIM, IF WE DON’T ASSASSINATE THE PRIME MINISTER IN THE NEXT SCENE, ALL EUROPE WILL BE ENGULFED IN FLAME”

WE ARE NOT GETTING PAID TO REALIZE THAT THE AUDIENCE NEEDS THIS INFORMATION TO UNDERSTAND THE NEXT SCENE, BUT TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO WRITE THE SCENE BEFORE US SUCH THAT THE AUDIENCE WILL BE INTERESTED IN WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

YES BUT, YES BUT YES BUT YOU REITERATE.

AND I RESPOND FIGURE IT OUT.

HOW DOES ONE STRIKE THE BALANCE BETWEEN WITHHOLDING AND VOUCHSAFING INFORMATION? THAT IS THE ESSENTIAL TASK OF THE DRAMATIST. AND THE ABILITY TO DO THAT IS WHAT SEPARATES YOU FROM THE LESSER SPECIES IN THEIR BLUE SUITS.

FIGURE IT OUT.

START, EVERY TIME, WITH THIS INVIOLABLE RULE: THE SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC. it must start because the hero HAS A PROBLEM, AND IT MUST CULMINATE WITH THE HERO FINDING HIM OR HERSELF EITHER THWARTED OR EDUCATED THAT ANOTHER WAY EXISTS.

LOOK AT YOUR LOG LINES. ANY LOGLINE READING “BOB AND SUE DISCUSS…” IS NOT DESCRIBING A DRAMATIC SCENE.

PLEASE NOTE THAT OUR OUTLINES ARE, GENERALLY, SPECTACULAR. THE DRAMA FLOWS OUT BETWEEN THE OUTLINE AND THE FIRST DRAFT.

THINK LIKE A FILMMAKER RATHER THAN A FUNCTIONARY, BECAUSE, IN TRUTH, YOU ARE MAKING THE FILM. WHAT YOU WRITE, THEY WILL SHOOT.

HERE ARE THE DANGER SIGNALS. ANY TIME TWO CHARACTERS ARE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

ANY TIME ANY CHARACTER IS SAYING TO ANOTHER “AS YOU KNOW”, THAT IS, TELLING ANOTHER CHARACTER WHAT YOU, THE WRITER, NEED THE AUDIENCE TO KNOW, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

DO NOT WRITE A CROCK OF SHIT. WRITE A RIPPING THREE, FOUR, SEVEN MINUTE SCENE WHICH MOVES THE STORY ALONG, AND YOU CAN, VERY SOON, BUY A HOUSE IN BEL AIR AND HIRE SOMEONE TO LIVE THERE FOR YOU.

REMEMBER YOU ARE WRITING FOR A VISUAL MEDIUM. MOST TELEVISION WRITING, OURS INCLUDED, SOUNDS LIKE RADIO. THE CAMERA CAN DO THE EXPLAINING FOR YOU. LET IT. WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERS DOING -*LITERALLY*. WHAT ARE THEY HANDLING, WHAT ARE THEY READING. WHAT ARE THEY WATCHING ON TELEVISION, WHAT ARE THEY SEEING.

IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA.

IF YOU DEPRIVE YOURSELF OF THE CRUTCH OF NARRATION, EXPOSITION,INDEED, OF SPEECH. YOU WILL BE FORGED TO WORK IN A NEW MEDIUM - TELLING THE STORY IN PICTURES (ALSO KNOWN AS SCREENWRITING)

THIS IS A NEW SKILL. NO ONE DOES IT NATURALLY. YOU CAN TRAIN YOURSELVES TO DO IT, BUT YOU NEED TO START.

I CLOSE WITH THE ONE THOUGHT: LOOK AT THE SCENE AND ASK YOURSELF “IS IT DRAMATIC? IS IT ESSENTIAL? DOES IT ADVANCE THE PLOT?

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY.

IF THE ANSWER IS “NO” WRITE IT AGAIN OR THROW IT OUT. IF YOU’VE GOT ANY QUESTIONS, CALL ME UP.

LOVE, DAVE MAMET
SANTA MONICA 19 OCTO 05

(IT IS NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO KNOW THE ANSWERS, BUT IT IS YOUR, AND MY, RESPONSIBILITY TO KNOW AND TO ASK THE RIGHT Questions OVER AND OVER. UNTIL IT BECOMES SECOND NATURE. I BELIEVE THEY ARE LISTED ABOVE.)”

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