In serach function i see a lot of topics posted about Bollywood. Who are those guys who post about them? promoters or investors?
Anway some Singapore and foreign companies have jumped into the Bollywood bandwagon
Singapore:
Singapore firm to upgrade Indian cinema halls
In a unique high-tech venture, a Singaporean technology firm has won a multi-million dollar deal to upgrade 400 Indian cinema halls with digital projectors by April 2004.
The first movie theatre, in Mumbai, will start operating under the new format - the first in India - by the end of this month, the Business Times newspaper published from Singapore reported today.
To do this, Singapore-based GDC technology has set up a joint venture with Adlabs Films, India's largest motion picture processing lab, to retrofit the cinema halls by digital film servers and digital projectors.
"Our target is to retrofit 1,500 e-cinemas in India by 2007," GDC Technology's marketing head Benjamin Ng was quoted as saying.
The company will also convert Indian-made feature films into a digital format that will save thousands of dollars per movie in distribution costs, it said.
"The feature film itself will be stored in a high-capacity disk drive double the size of a cigarette packet," Ng said, adding, "this will be couriered to the cinema. Once the movie's run has ended, another digital pack will be couriered and the old made obsolete. The entire movie will be digitally encrypted, so it will be impossible for pirates to copy it."
"E-cinema is the way to go in India because the movie industry in India itself is unique. We are planning to offer through various distributors one digital movie a week," Managing Director of Adlabs, Manmohan Shetty, was quoted as saying. (PTI)
Foreign:
Brand Bollywood
It's a win-win situation - advertisers looking to build brands and Bollywood producers looking for extra revenue. When the two meet, it spells big bucks. So there is Lintertainment (Lintas), Percept Picture Company (Percept), Brands & Films (WPP Mindshare), Publicis and Concept Communications that not only deal with film-making and in-film brand placements but all kinds of promotional activities that enhance the value of both films and brands. A major player in this segment, Leo Entertainment (Leo Burnett), was set up three years ago. Brand placement in films may be growing, but it's not a new concept. Perhaps, the first instance in Bollywood was that of a yellow Rajdoot bike in Bobby. Subsequently, brands were noticed occasionally in films, but now the trend has finally caught on. But 2003, was the big year with at least 25 films going for tie-ups with brands. The next five years will see nearly 100 per cent growth spanning not just in-film brand placements, but also cross promotions during the various stages of a film's release." The nascent industry is currently worth around Rs 50-60 crore. For film producers, the brands bring in revenue of anything between Rs 5 lakh to Rs 5 crore, depending on the film's budget and the star cast. There were five brands in Baghban, and four in Chalte Chalte and Koi Mil Gaya. The Castrol engine oil in Chalte Chalte increased sales after the film's release. For the advertising industry now, tinsel town is the new destination.
American Zeal for Indian Music
An American has taken unto himself the task of compiling Indian classical music with a missionary zeal. Sitting at the console, his bald pate with its rim of scruffy white hair a shining halo, Lyle Wachovsky is an unlikely missionary. But for over 15 years, with more than missionary zeal, this man from New York has worked to gather and release one of the world's largest collections of Indian classical music under his label 'India Archive Music'. So intense was his love for Indian classical music that for his 17th birthday his parents gifted him a record of Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. India Archive Music now has a tie-up with Virgin Records India to, as Wachovsky said, "bring Indian music to the Indians." For the last 10 years, the label has released some of India 's most legendary names in classical music, as it has strived to seek out new talent, the "best kept secrets" as Wachovsky calls them. He is in India to record two such people Shamsuddin Faridi Desai who plays the rudra veena and Syed Zafar Khan on the sitar. The example he gives is of the tabla. "In the tabla, there's a way, a method of just getting the right notes. It's a scientific form unlike the drums, which are basically hit and trial. "That's why two unknown Indian musicians can come together and within moments, create a perfect duet because as long as they are working on a method, the sound will be the same.
Silicon Valley Techies Target B'wood
Investing in Bollywood is the new rage for Silicon Valley techies. What started off as a trickle over the last couple of years with tech investors like Kanwal Rekhi putting money in Bollywood's dream factories, is now spreading to the next level where Indian and foreign techies are coming forward to finance their own movies, with help from families and friends. More than a dozen odd Indo-American techie-sponsored projects are in the pipeline, a trend that is now even attracting attention of hardcore venture capitalists from the Silicon Valley. Vivek Wadhwa, who co-founded two tech companies, is enjoying the media attention around his soon-to-be launched movie, My Bollywood Bride , along with Bollywood actress Kashmira Shah and her American banker husband. Wadhwa has already raised over half the funds required for his $1-million film project - to be shot in United States and India - through family and friends in the Indian technology diaspora. Krishna Pillai, a software executive, along with his wife Renuka, pooled in around $1 million - through their own money, friends, family members and a bank loan - to produce their first movie, Padma Shree Laloo Prasad Yadav, directed by Mahesh Manjrekar, and shot in India and South Africa. Buoyed with critical acclaim to two of their films - Flavors and Shaadi.com - US-based techies Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK are already working on their next ventures - two scripts, one based on an out-and-out mainstream Bollywood story, the other an Indo-American storyline. It is too early to tell whether Bollywood will be able to encash this new found interest at the box office.
