also: the typical Malayalam film's budget compared to other industries?

I think it’s a shame mostly. We have what an 8-10 average budget? up to 20 if the producers are feeling lucky. It’s sad to see the absolute trash that comes out of industries that have the convenience of a bigger budget, especially when you hear ambitious projects like Anti-Christ not being able to be made due to budget issues. The budget also means that these industries get the convenience of ‘promotional campaigns’ months ahead of release, which is not feasible in our industry, something I feel very jealous about considering the most I’ve seen of my favourite was during promotion for his Tamil movie/movies. This also means that actors and more particularly actresses want to act in Tamil/Telugu/eventually Hindi movies when the opportunity arises because of the average pay scale (which must be pretty pathetic for a woman if it’s not that great /in comparison to other industries/ for men)- something I despise of because once you leave for ‘greener pastures’ you don’t tend to come back (in terms of popularity and money I mean for the most part, because lol everyone would be doing Malayalam/Bengali/Marathi movies if they wanted good characters- Tamil more so nowadays). 

On the flip side however, a smaller budget is the only practical idea in our industry because the population isn’t that large scale to begin with, let alone the movie watching audience (in theatres especially). I mean our most successful movies can maximum make 50 crs in it’s lifetime, which is less than 3 day business for a successful movie in any other big industry. 50 crs literally means that people have watched that movie 3-4 times and the movie has ran 100+ day with at least 30+ days on houseful. That’s quite a small money giving movie audience. 

A smaller budget also (typically) means that directors and scriptwriters need to use their mind more than the people with the budgets do. Creativity is captured with a minimum amount of tools. A larger budget almost dictates that the hero will blow up a few things and punch up a few hundred villains to show his ‘heroism, or he’ll romance the scantly clad heroine (because heaven forbid we use that money to buy the girl some warmer clothes for the weather) in some foreign locale to show romance. A big budget means that the villain will have an expensive moustache, an expansive mansion, an army of gundas and phone that obviously has unlimited talk time given the amount of call threats and attack orders he’s making. In Malayalam we just don’t have the money to do that. So what do we have to show heroism; punch dialogues and mud fights in mundus that carry a certain amount of swag depending on how it’s done. What do we have to show romance; some poignant moments of silence, a tactful motorcycle ride, and a song ft. the lead pair in what seems to be a very real, date-like atmosphere. What do we have to show villainy; a smile filled with pathetic fallacy, a couple of mirrors, some spin chilling music, and if not anything else, the all too real reminders of the systems in our world. It’s quite brilliant to be honest, to see what we make of such little- the construction of the film (including every element from the acting and direction to the script and editing) has to compensate for the lack of CGI or grandeur that a bigger budget could provide. This also means that Malayalam movies have been typecast as ‘realistic’ and there happens to be a lack of fantasy movies in our industry- we simply can’t afford to be superhuman (that being said some of our fantasy movies are really brilliant- My Dear Kuttichattan- the first 3D film in India (we don’t shy away from new technology regardless of budget), Amen, and Phillips and the Monkey Pen- to name a few). 

As I said before, lack of budget in comparison means less promotion- which can be a good thing at times. It’s possible for a film to do okay with some well done promotion. In Malayalam promotion is limited to a social media and a few tv interviews if that. The real pull of a movie is word-of-mouth, and that’s what the industry sustains itself on (box office initials being an after effect of that over a few movies). And no PR bullshit. I mean Bangalore Days was promoted well through the facebook page and Premam’s ‘only releasing two songs and no trailer’ worked fine for it, Drishyam was a complete word of mouth success story. It’s nice to see cinema work like that.

And lastly, a smaller budget means that more movies are made in a smaller amount of time throughout the year. So an average actor/actress could be seen in an average 3-5 movies per year. Ahahaha, sucks being the actor who makes 1 movie an year that flops, and sucks being the fan that has to wait a whole year (if not more) for a decent movie by their favourite.

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