 We're back, we're live on a Friday afternoon here on Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. We're doing Think Tech Global right now with India, with Varanasi India, with Kartiki Mishra. And we're talking about, gee, we're talking about Hollywood, Bollywood. What's it all about? Hi, Kartiki. How are you? Hi, I'm fine, dude. Good. So, how's it been for you in the past month? Is life going well for you? Yes, life's going well. Exhausted for years. Okay. I suppose there have been a lot of things happening in India. You know, I read the Indian newspapers, there's so many of them. We should only have so many newspapers in this country. The newspapers in the United States and in Hawaii are declining. There are fewer and fewer all the time. In India, there are so many newspapers, so many news stories. But we're going to skip that today. What we're going to talk about is Hollywood, Bollywood. That may not be news. Maybe there are certain elements of news in there. But it's Hollywood, Bollywood today. And it's what's it all about? So, can you tell us what Bollywood is? Basically, I can describe Bollywood. Bollywood nearly as old as Bollywood. Only two years back, I would say. And definitely Bollywood is the second-largest film industry in terms of producing films. In terms of earning, I would say, in revenue versus the Hollywood. We produce nearly 1,900 films each year and Hollywood produces around 800 films each year. And basically, Hollywood movies are in English. In Indian cinema, we have multiple languages. Well, I must say, the movies are always very colorful. At least in my experience, they're very romantic. The women, I have to say, the women are really beautiful. The men are really handsome. And they're, what do you want to call it? They're soupy in their plots. And I'm remembering, for example, Slumdog Millionaire. I'm sure you've seen that. That was really a fabulous movie. Basically, Slumdog Millionaire was a movie directed by a Hollywood person. So, I can't say it's a totally Bollywood film. It can be called as a joint venture. Bollywood actress and Bollywood director working together as many of them. But Slumdog Millionaire got a lot of criticism in India just because of the reason. It showed a lot of solidarity. That's the basic reason that they didn't want that appeal in India. Though it shows the reality, but it is the partial reality of India, what it has been, and what it has been doing. Well, you know, Slumdog Millionaire, let's dwell on that for just a minute, strikes me that there's a certain amount of reality that Slumdog Millionaire is covering as a lot of these romantic movies in India. But how true are they? Are they a real test of reality? Are we getting the real story? Or is it a darker, sadder story than all the happiness that we saw in Slumdog Millionaire? Okay, I can say that not all the movies are like romantic in nature. Many of the Bollywood movies are realistic in nature. The movie standard was based on sports persons. And many movies, historical movies are also produced in India. So those movies are also realistic in nature. So I can say that movies are realistic, but it is a movie, so it should be partial reality. You can imagine that. Yeah. Well, the other thing is, you know, there are many, many movies in India. I mean, way many more movies than we, and we are producing more movies these days because the price of entry is lower because the equipment is cheaper and more people are interested and more young people coming into the field of videography. I mean, Think Tech is kind of an example of that. It's easier to make a movie. On the other hand, I think India still has us beat out by many, many fold because so many movies are being made. Am I right? Yes, yes. You're right. There are 1,300 movies, not an easy job. Each and every state of India is working in producing a movie in response to initial language. If Tamil Nadu is making a movie, 200 movies or 100 movies would be produced with Tamil. If Bollywood is making a movie or Bombay cinema is making a movie, 300 movies would be in Hindi. So it's divided. Indian cinema is divided into segments. You can't call Bollywood just as a simple word. Bollywood is only specific for Bombay industry, not for the Indian cinema. If you calculate the movies of Indian cinema, it's around 1,900 a year in the North. So how much of the Indian movie production is in English and how much is in Indian or some local dialect of India? I think English movies are far produced less in India because people do not know much of English. Basically if a person is wishing to see a movie for entertainment, he or she would go for the native dialect in which they talk. English movies are frequently less produced in India compared to other languages. Interesting. I've also seen some movies, and you see this in other ways too, depicting ordinary people living ordinary lives and is a middle class kind of thing. Sometimes it's comedy, it's situation comedy, sitcom. And what's interesting to me is that these people and their lives, their homes, their jobs, the cars they drive, the clothing they wear, the way their households are organized and the way their kids are educated and so forth, it looks just like middle class America. It looks just like America. It's incredible. Now, is this the way life has really lived or is this the producer in India trying to make a movie that will appeal to people outside of India? I can say both. First, the appeal to people from outside world, it's also agreed to appeal to people that India is not more a developing nation, it is a developed nation on a way to make itself a nation of global power and effect. And secondly, I would say that this is far from reality. India is not that much developed, only some negativities, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Galbata, these cities are developed. So you can get the image of United States in these cities. What about, we really need to talk about documentaries because documentaries at least in this country are more and more important. There are essentially news stories, a lot of them, and they educate people because frankly it's easier to watch a movie than read a paper or a book. And so we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of quality documentaries that are available to the public, either online or on broadcast television like PBS. So the question is, are people interested in documentaries in India? And are people, producers, interested in making them? And if so, what kind of documentaries do they make? Documentaries are produced in India. Many of them are there. It's difficult to say that documentaries get a mainstream in India. Documentaries have yet to achieve a lot. But people watch documentaries for educational purposes, for increasing power, because it's different from a movie, presenting reality and educating people. So I think documentary, the trait of documentary is increasing day by day. Even myself, I watch previous documentaries. Well, you're a student, and I imagine, I mean, I think we're all students of life and try to learn all the time. And I know that India is into education. So do documentaries play a role in your education, Karthike, do you watch them as part of your weekly schedule? What kind of documentaries do you like? I watch documentaries. Definitely I love them. And most of the sources of documentaries are from YouTube. And channels like Vice is there on YouTube. BW documentary is on YouTube, BBC documentary is on YouTube. And channels are very much informative and providing knowledge. Not only in terms of, I would say entertainment, but information at the same time. And I have seen many documentaries. I personally like to study documentaries. It's funny you should say that because, you know, think tech is on YouTube. And my life, I look at YouTube every day and a lot of people I know look at YouTube. And we learn a lot. For example, if I want to learn a program like Adobe Premiere, which we use to edit, I go on YouTube and I can see an unlimited number of movies, instructional movies on how to use Adobe Premiere. And I'm getting the idea that the YouTube that you look at is the same YouTube that I look at. And therefore, we both have access to the same content on YouTube. Is that right? Yes, that's right. What an American watch and what an Indian can watch is the same today. The only difference is in the terms of frequency. Americans can watch in terms of much more greater frequency due to the use of that documentary. But in India, people are not increasing their budget to watch documentaries because documentaries solve a lot of problems in India. Sometimes, if I have some problem I watch a documentary or watch instructional videos to solve that problem. For example, I didn't know how to make a tie. So I learned to make a tie to YouTube. For documentaries. Of course, you know, it's funny because our Executive Vice President Karamali and I went to a special meeting of YouTube producers here a couple of years ago. They were telling us, you know, if you cover fundamental things that people need in their lives like how to make a tie, how to cook a certain dish, how to sew, how to handle those household chores, you will be so popular. And it's true, they came down to this meeting and people do that and they make really fundamental type instruction movies and they get millions and millions of hits. How to make a tie, of course. Well, does this make you want to get into it? I mean, I'm so happy that we know you and part of that is you're interested in the US, you're interested in video, you're interested in joining us on a live internet experience like this. That's really fabulous and I'm happy that we connected. But does it also reflect, Carnegie, that you like to be in the movies? Is everybody dream to act in a movie? And I think if I get a film, I would act. But I don't think I'm not an actor. I'm not a screenwriter, I think. Maybe you want to be a producer. And that takes me to the next question I want to ask you. So who in India are the producers? Who are the ones who think up the movies? You've got to have choreographers and one of those song and dance movies. You have to have a lot of talent. In fact, sometimes I think that the quality of those movies in terms of the song and the dance and the way it's presented, the quality the production values in the movies they're just as good as Hollywood. I mean the real Hollywood. I mean not Bollywood Hollywood, Hollywood Hollywood. So who goes into that? Are those people who people have gone through school? Have they gone to film school? Have they worked in the industry? Have they been to Hollywood in the south in order to learn those production values? Who are they? Who's making the movies? Who's conceiving of the movies? Who's writing the scripts? Who's doing the production? If I could describe that in a sense of words I would say there are production houses in India like Hollywood. Like you have Paramount Production and Universal Production. We also do have production houses. Yes, that production is there and Chilli Productions is there. There are many studios in India which produce movies or which invest movies. Generally these production houses have actors which have earned money and are ready to re-invest that money into the movie in which they are putting money. So there are many directors or actors in India who gain revenue to acting and then they use the same money to produce any other movie. There are many movies and there are a lot of films that you will earn a lot from it. So that's a cycle I think. Production houses are something I would say depending upon the actor, how large the actor or how tired he or she is has. And I think people go to Hollywood for learning acting or direction. Okay, we're going to take a short break. Karateke Mizra, at college studying business among other things in Varanasi, India which is in the northeast part of the country. He joins us today by Zoom as he does every few weeks. Today we're talking about Hollywood, Bollywood trying to understand and get a handle on life in India, business in India, entertainment in India. We're going to take a one minute break. We're going to come back and we're going to ask him who's investing in these movies in India and how do you get to be an actor in these movies in India and who are the popular actors and how well are they paid? We'll be right back. So I hope to join me for likeable science. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea comes on every other Monday at 11am. Please join us. I like to bring in guests that talk about all types of things that come across the sea to Hawaii. Not just law. Love, people, ideas, history. Please join us for Law Across the Sea. Aloha. Okay, we're back. We're live with Karki Mishra in Varanasi, India. We're talking about Hollywood, Bollywood and we're trying to get a handle on what goes on in the movie industry in Hollywood. So I guess the first question I want to ask just to look at the business side of this is who is investing in the Bollywood movies? So local Indians? Is it global? What's going on here is the relationship of Bollywood and Hollywood and all the movie makers around the world. Who's investing in the Indian movies? Which clearly require a substantial amount of investment these days. Basically, businessmen who are ready to invest in movies and secondly the actors to gain a lot of money from the movies they have acted in. So they try to reinvest the money into production houses. So the production houses are generally made by the actors themselves. Many of the production houses are made by actors, for example Raj Kapoor's production house. He was an actor in 1950s. He made his own production house and it is still same as our studios and production house. So there are many actors who reinvest in the movies. Yeah. Are the production houses centered in one city in Calcutta or Mumbai or they spread around the country? They spread around the country. The last production house in the world is Ramaji Film Studio in India. Interesting. So if I'm an actor and I've made it big and that certainly happens in this country too do I have a chance of being so popular that I can go into politics and run for office and be a big political figure in the country? Does that happen? Yes. It happens in India. I know Arnolish was an actor. He acted in movies like Terminator, Conan the Bar, and he went into politics. He became the governor of California. In the very same manner actors start acting and one of the two three famous people are there who started as an actor and they ended up as a politician. One very good example of me dead as it is. She was an actor. She started her career as an actor then she changed her career into politics and she became chief minister of the middle class. Okay, that works well. And these production houses the top production houses I guess pay more to the actors. How much does an actor make? Do you have any sense of that actress? How much do they make in American money for say a big film? It would be a difficult question to come or change that into dollars. But certainly I can say that depending upon the actor how famous he or she is the production houses stay there. For example, if you are casting you would pay a lot of happy amount of money to me to cast him in a movie. Who are you casting into a movie? Generally, there are kind of partialities in there between actresses and actors. Actors sometimes pay more money after. So kind of an effort to do this in Hollywood. Yeah. And I would take it that the most popular actors and actresses are in the most popular films and that the most popular films are the films that are very Indian in culture and costume the films that are romantic, glamorous the films like Slumdog Millionaire or films like that that have romantic plot lines and so forth. I would imagine that those films, call them song and dance films, romance films are the most popular in the Bollywood offering. Am I right? Yes, they are most popular in Bollywood. Currently the trend is changing. People are moving from romantic movies to realistic movies and these movies, realistic movies are earning money also. The movie, which I talked about in Bangalore. Bangalore was quite hate in India. It was about two sisters who took part in Commonwealth Games and Bone Gold. It was based on a real story. I think it earned around $144 million in overall currency. It did a very great business in China. It did a very great business in India. Bollywood movies are now changing to a global currency. In terms of certain tickets also I would say Hollywood I think pressed around 2.6 billion tickets overall in the world and Bollywood pressed around 3.6 billion tickets overall in China. I knew it, I knew it. Of course. In the global audience Bollywood is much more impactful I think. That's impressive. What's the price of a ticket? If I go to a movie theater I suppose there are many many movie theaters I suppose a lot of people go to the movie theater. What's the price of a ticket at the movie theater? Here it's oh gee it's getting pretty expensive it's $10, $12, $15 already for a first run movie. What is the cost in India to go to the movies? The cost of a movie depends upon the factors of the state in which that movie is released. Sometimes the movies are factory for example two great movies are released in the states of India factory the government does not include factors on those movies so they are much cheaper. I would say a ticket in India is around 300 movies that would be around something $10 or $20. Oh it's around the same ballpark then. So what about action movies? You know in the US it seems like to me in the movie houses and on the internet or rather on cable television you know has a lot of movies so many action movies in fact violent action movies action movies that involve you know gunshots and explosions and all kinds of violence they're very popular in fact I would say there in general seems to me more popular and more ubiquitous than movies involving romance and happy stories. Is that trend playing out the same way in India? Yes that's playing the same way in India. The violence team which Bollywood learned from Hollywood is now starting to show effects in India movies are now growing much more raw in terms of violence than in action. For example people are starting now to invest in action movies because they pay off that money I think. Yeah yeah Okay and I want to ask you one question sort of off the side it strikes me that people don't really explore this and maybe they should is that you know the dark side of every movie industry is the pornography and pornography is worldwide and pornography is a huge industry involving billions of dollars of gross revenue however they distribute those movies. Is there a pornography industry in India? No that's not as great or big as America it's not that it's not like that. Okay that's a short answer let me ask you let me ask you now whether we'll have to have another show on that yeah we'll have to you know the short answer is what about American movies I mean you have access to YouTube you have access to the internet and I'm sure there's a demand in India people in India love movies anyway that's always been the case as long as I know how popular are American movies and how accessible are they and would you prefer to watch an American movie or an Indian movie these days? I think I have no words to describe the popularity of Hollywood in India I can't describe it in words. The heights of an Indian infinity war releasing on 20th people are going crazy over that news that they would watch Avengers infinity war on the very first day first show and Hollywood selects a lot of revenue from Hollywood cinema because of the competition it is giving than to the Indian industry and TV series Game of Thrones are quite popular in India every person in college going to knows about Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad one of my friends one of my friends knows I think he has watched Game of Thrones 4 or 5 times and he knows each and every dialogue of Game of Thrones so he knows how popular Hollywood is My last area of inquiry for you Karnaki is the globalization of the whole industry it became obvious a few years ago that the Chinese were investing in a lot of American movies in fact they bought movie houses in Hawaii in the United States and so did the Japanese so you have a sort of global investment process and then you have a global production process and then you notice that the producers on a lot of these popular American movies are in fact Chinese so there's a sort of integration across fertilization of the cultures and of the storylines and the actors and so forth and the industry becomes globalized so you're just as likely to see a movie produced by an American house with American talent as you are with Chinese investment and Chinese producers and videographers and what have you and so you cannot assume that any movie that's popular will be made in only one country a really big movie is going to involve an international effort and I guess my question to you is that happening in India are these are there cross invested movies and cross produced movies in India and do you see also that this is a global trend I see it that way is a global trend and in 5 or 10 or 20 years we will see movies produced anywhere showing anywhere and popular anywhere do you see that yes I see that I have two brilliant examples to answer your question the first movie was produced in or was produced by Indian Reliance Company the name of Hollywood movie was Ghost in the Shell it was Bale Dolan Anime which was Japanese the story was from Japan the production was from India and the actors were from Hollywood so you can say that the things are now changing into global phenomena and the second movie which I have example is of China Chinese production house and Viacon 18 Indian production house invested in that movie and both Chinese and Indian actors worked in that movie so you can see that trend that things are now becoming much more global these days so that being the case let's assume that we agree that in 5, 10, 20 years the movie business is going to be global it's going to be cross culture you might as well see movie from one country one continent or another and it will be very good very interesting so where does that leave the Indian movie genre do you think the Indian movie genre has a future will it always be popular or will it be assimilated into the global process and be less popular including in India I think about industry is quite old in terms of we are 100 years old so in terms of popularity after Hollywood, Bollywood is the only thing so it will become integrated into a world connection I would say Hollywood actors working in Bollywood movies Bollywood actors working in Hollywood movies so it is becoming global trend so there would be not one particular cinema but we will say global cinema of actors and characters from all over the world working together as one film industry or film industry one last question you chose this topic and it is very interesting and important and I hope we can discuss it again in various aspects but my question to you is there a reason why you chose it are you specifically interested in this do you think this could be a career aspiration for you because a lot of people in India watch Bollywood movies and Hollywood movies and I can say the same for American people both are lovely in terms of making movies and seeing movies not only in terms of watching but as a career also there is a lot of chance that an average American person can get a job in Bollywood movies as a writer, as a dancer or as a director it could be a possibility in future we can see that in next 20-20 years and management as an student of business there is an increasing threat of movie management or business management in terms of movies so it is a lot of I would say industry profit is there about both the film industry okay great thank you Karnaki, been a great discussion a great topic I look forward so much to seeing you again in a few weeks for another look at India another examination of life in India where India is going, what it is doing and what you are doing Karanasi India Aloha as they say