Institution and Fraternity Research

INSTITUTIONS IN AND THE FILM FRATERNITY

In easy words, one could describe the word media institution as those people, organisations and bodies who have certain role in the production of a media text. Big or small, this process is not as simple as the words make it sound. Institutions basically comprise of many kinds, these mainly include companies, producers, distributers, financiers and promotion and marketing organisations for starters. You see, a media product consists of many steps that lead it to become what we, the audience can see.

What part does each sort of institution plays and why? A  scriptwriter sells out his or her story. A directer makes a film and the editor edits (considering the main processes of the process). Now what? A director wouldn't really release the film now would he? This is where institutional companies and organisations step in. Big producers will examine the ideology and the target audience for a particular product. If they feel everything has been collected together and created well and that the product s strong enough t meet its target audience then these producers wight agree to finance the product. Once enough money is generated then marketing and promoting the product is done by other marketing departments. Eventually the product needs to be distributed around whether on DVDs, on celluloid or other ways for example via iphone applications. Taking television for an example, products will be be of two types, commissioned (asked for) or non-commisioned (just written by a hopeful scriptwriter). The easiest way of understanding this is that basically a product has to be sold at all levels in this process. Everything in the media world of institutions depends on money. What does this mean? Well, you cant possibly sell your story out just because the director is your friend. In reality, every stage in the process should be economically viable in order to reach the next stage. Foe example, if the product does not make enough finance in a process than its costs, it will be very difficult for the next buyers to purchase the product. On the other hand, finance is very hard to generate. This is mainly because the audience's feedback is always uncertain. This is one reason why institutions feel that the connection between the product's ideology and story with its target audience is very important. This is because if a film does not have all the genre elements that are needed to attract its audience, an institution would resist putting its money into the process.

Now coming to Film Fraternities, what does this word mean? The word 'fraternity' simply means a group or body of people joined by similar backgrounds, occupations, interests and tastes. Hence, a film fraternity is created by each and every existence of people in it. In other words, a film fraternity is known as the Film Industry  The two most popular film industries of the world are HOLLYWOOD and BOLLYWOOD, however, that does not mean these are the only industries. Countries and different occupations comprise of their own film industries that cater to their culture, interests and languages. Every film industry comprises of its own film institutions. This is mainly because different film fraternities follow their own set of codes and conventions in terms of which their films are made. For example, the codes and conventions of a Hollywood romantic film will differ from that of a Bollywood romantic film. This will be explained in detail later. Hence, their institutions cater to their own types o films. A Hollywood institution that caters most to romantic films would not exactly want to finance a Bollywood romantic film because of the diffence in representation genre. Further more, film fraternities and their institutions have a better relationship in terms of its audience and the occupational culture. A Bollywood romantic film might be loved by people in India but to foreigners in lets say, England might still find their own Hollywood romantic films more interesting and attractive. Bollywood is the name given to the film industry of Mumbai and is known for making huge box office hits. A romantic film here would be very glamorous with very good looking actors and a very sterio typical ending and conflict. Heavy clothes and make up, exaggerated use of sound and music, romantic setting in a beautiful place with heavy wind blowing and the heroin stares at the hero as he fights of a bunch of men who were teasing his love. Actually, no matter how many times repeated, the audience loves it. This is because the film makers know the mentality and areas of interests their audience upholds. Hollywood on the other hand does more simple and close to reality story lines. Film are very less repetitive and less dramatized. That is the way the audience likes it here.

So basically, whatever a film industry comprises of, comes from its own self. Coming to film institutions of different industries, lets come to Hollywood first. Hollywood comprises of some of the world's biggest institutions. These consist of Walt Disney Pictures, Warner Brothers, Collumbia Pictures, Universal Pictures, BBC, Twentieth Century Fox, Sony etc. These are a few very popular institutions. Most popular out of all is Walt Disney. which is also one of the oldest, along with its oldest competitions  Warner Brothers. Many popular films have been catered under Disney itself like the old classics Cinderella, Snowwhite, Beauty and the Beast to the new feature films like Tangled and Pirates of the Carabian. Disney and Warner bros cater to real life feature films as well as animated feature films. Unlike the usual institutions, such like Disney, not omly produces, but creates, finances, promotes and distributes itself too. Sometimes more than one instiutions tend to work together as a merger like Warner bros and dreamworks, that is another institution. At times an instituion also tends to buy another like Disney bought Pixar, which means now every feature film produced by Pixar is owned by Disney. On the other hand, we have institutions like Twentieth Century fox and Paramount that mostly cater to horror, comedy and romantic films.

Bollywood has some other famous institutions too. Some of the most popular are Eros International, Dharma Productions, UTV etc.Starting with Eros Entertainment, this is well known to be one of India’s biggest leading media and entertainment institution and has been under business since almost three decades. It has a core trade in production, acquisition and distribution of filmed text under several distribution ways like theatres, television and other technical media applications. It has a vast level of distribution considering genres of films. It distributes all kinds of film, including art, drama, comedy, adventure, horror, action and romance. This is one of the reasons why it is so big. It also works as a jewelry business otherwise, and this is rare since institutions, especially in Hollywood, don’t have this concept of having other side businesses as well. The company has started from being a distributor and now is known to be an aggregator. It has offices nearly all around the world. A few names of movies it has distributed are Desi Boys, Rock star, Ra. One, Zindagi Na Mile Gi Dobara etc.

Next we can take a look at UTV, which is another huge institute. It also has a vast distribution of films and has the honor of being one of the oldest institutions of Bollywood. It also gives importance to a number of films with completely different genres whether, art or drama or romance or whatever. It is a privilege to directors and producers to have such institutions buying and distributing their films. It caters to major art films, like Rang De Basabti, that has been one of Bollywood’s big success. So, films of mixed genres are likely to be distributed and financed by such institutions.

Coming to Dharma Productions, again, a very huge institution formed by Shri  Yash Johar in 1976. It has always been able to achieve its goals by producing high quality cinema that is accepted and appreciated all around the world. It has produced movies like ‘Dostana’ , ‘Dunya’, ‘Muqqdar ka Fiasla’ etc. But these are still towards the side, it has produced india’s biggest blog busters that have broken box-office records without a fail. It had produced the famous ‘ Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’ which did not just break records but also gathered a number of national and international awards. And this kept going on till movies like ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum’ and ‘My Name Is Khan’ were produced and once again broke records to a great amount. This production house is famous for distributing and financing drama and romance related movies and has the reputation of being a very honest and clean institution and had been able to prove it over the years. Eros International and Dharma productions usually cater to romantic and comedy films. UTV on the other hand is more into action, drama, thrill and art. Eros International and UTV are probably the most popular and have the highest number of produced films in the Indian film library. They also have a great number of box office hits and the Indian directors feel very lucky to be financed by such big institutions. They generate enough money to finance Bollywood's glamorous a long films with very highly paid actors. Here generating money is more important because the India has a higher number of poor and middle class people who like drama and exaggeration as well as a bit of a 'flash' in the films. So directors feel it is important to have all these elements in their films so that people enjoy and generate money. No one would rather have ordinary actors in a romantic film over the great Bollywood actors 'Shahrukh Khan' and 'Kareena Kapoor'. Obviously such big actors wouldn't compromise on the amount they are paid.

Moreover, the basic idea to sell out films step by step finally to institutions is because it is on them to decide the possible result due to which mostly before the release, there are premier shows arranged. These shows basically give an idea about the audience reaction to the producers. If the reaction is good, they decide to make a cinema release, but if not, they go with just a video release. Summarizing everything, Every media text needs its institution and every institution comes from its fraternity that is its occupation.

My film will belong to Bollywood as the film fraternity. I chose Bollywood because its a very true film representing the culture of our 3rd world countries. The faces, location, language and music, nothing is relevant to the Western world since it is not part of their culture, norms, traditions and the over all Western Personality. Poverty and the trend of keeping maids and servants so much is something you don't get to see abroad, but is very common here in Pakistan or places like India.

Within Bollywood, I have chosen UTV Motion Pictures, for two reasons. UTV tends to represent very cultural films. Its main film genre being catered is mainly romance and action, but being the vast institution that it is, it also caters to other genres, including art films. 

Since I am making an art film i planned on choosing UTV, however, the other reason is that not many institutions in Bollywood tend to finance and distribute short films. There are different small institutions that are solely operating to finance short films, but are very few and very unknown. Since branding is such a wide part of production, specially for art films that need branding to promote themselves due to a small level of attraction to audience otherwise, I considered UTV as a better idea than choosing one of the unknown institutions. Hence it is understood, when a film does not consist of super stars or well known directors or stories, media houses can be of great help, no director, not even an art director would mind making money, infact, we all love to make money, and we rely on our audience for this purpose.

SOME EXAMPLES OF FILMS FINANCED BY UTV

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