Music launches hit a high note

Friday evening saw a rather extravagant music release of Players. With stunts, naach gaana, and the works…taking music releases to a completely new level, onlookers say it was nothing less than a mini-movie. Insiders say that the budget for the event was nothing less than what it takes to make a small-budget film.

Producers and event organisers peg the figure to be a crore plus, probably the highest budgets allocated to a particular pre-film release event.

But it’s not the first time that Bollywood’s witnessed burgeoning budgets when it comes to making promotional events bigger and better. More recently, the music launch of Ra.One was held at an equally large scale at Film City, where actors Shah Rukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Arjun Rampal had performed in a concert-like live show and  aired it on TV as a special event. Even

The Dirty Picture’s live performances were like  a mini movie.
Says event organiser Bunty Walia, “Calling the cast and crew on stage, cutting the ribbon is the most done thing. Now filmmakers want newer concepts and the event done for Players is one of the biggest done till date. With all this, the budgets shoot up tremendously, but at a time when marketing is everything, we can’t tighten purses. And going by the response, the money is well-spent too,” he says.

Director duo, Abbas-Mustan agree. “The whole event was devised in a way to introduce each character with a certain flair. When the movie has been made on a such a large scale, it’s only understandable that the pre-release events too be on a huge scale and we have had an event befitting the film and the flavour,” says Abbas.

Director Milan Luthria (The Dirty Picture) also feels that such events are a must to establish that direct connect with the audience. “Like it or not, but marketing is as important as the film today. And as filmmakers, we do what it takes to help the film,” says Milan.

Trade analyst Taran Adarsh agrees that the money being allocated to marketing and to promotion related activities is getting ridiculously bigger film by film and in this kind of a budget a small-budget film can be funded easily. “If the filmmaking costs are 60 per cent of the total budget, then marketing is almost 40 per cent. But it shouldn’t be surprising to see that very soon it may just be 50-50!” he adds.

Though filmmakers and industrywallahs refuse to say whether it’s a positive trend or not, they do agree that it’s here to stay.