Riya Sen to do an item song?
When any film director in any part of the world thinks about making a film, the first thing that he has to decide on the movie's budget.
Directors in Ollywood are no exception to this rule. As the nation awaits the Union budget today, BT checks out that things are kept in mind while deciding on the budget of an Ollywood movie. The general budget of a commercial Odia film is around 60 lakh to 85 lakh. It can go upto 1 crore to 2 crore, but then the risk factor of recovering the cost increases with that.
But if the budget is less than 55 lakh to 60 lakh, the ingredients needed for a commercial movie becomes hard to get. For the Odisha audience, that is not acceptable.
The cast and crew of an Odia movie face many constraints while deciding on a budget and also keeping the film within the budget later on. Some directors feel, there is a lack of proper planning while doing an Odia film. Often, the schedules get haywire while shooting and the number of days increase. This creates a huge monetary problem.
But do the lead actors share any profit percentage? Director Barada Prasanna Tripathy answers in the negative. "We don't have the rule of lead actors sharing the profit percentage as of now. In today's time, some male superstars are asking for more money. So the producers are rethinking about the budget of the film accordingly," adds the director.
Like any other Indian movie, songs are one of the most important factors that decide the success or failure of a film. Ollywood also gives extreme importance to the making of songs so that the final products are attractive enough to lure the audience to see the movies.
Is there any chance of small budget movies getting monetary success in Ollywood? Actor Bobby Mishra feels it's all a gamble. "Odisha is not a market for small budget films as no good quality movie can be made with it. It can't pull the crowds to the theatres," says Mishra.
Mani explores another angle of this phenomena, "We are not thinking out of the box. It's just the same old song-and-dance commercial movies that are being made in Odisha year after year. This is discouraging the educated people from coming forward with different concepts which can be made with a smaller budget also. This is our responsibility to change this scenario and I'm trying my level best to do that." Patnaik also feels the same.
It seems that Ollywood has a long way to go before it reaches to the level of South Indian film industries or even, Tollywood in terms of budget. But the scenario is slowly changing in Ollywood. Now it is upto the movie-lovers to accept this and usher in changes for the better.