Percept believes in making films for the right reason
Apr 3, 2007 Arpana"Our philosophy at PPC is that if you've got a big idea make a movie. If you don't have a big idea then don't make movies. We strongly feel that one shouldn't make movies for wrong reasons - we shouldn't make a movie because we know the stars well or to be in the entertainment business," said Shailendra Singh, joint managing director of PPC.
After "Traffic Signal", the production house is gearing up to bombard the audience with variety cinema.
"We made a lot of movies last year. This year almost nine negatives are ready. We have 21 films on floor that encompasses directors like David Dhawan, Priyadarshan, Nagesh Kukunoor.... It's a long list of intelligent directors. The idea is to cater to all genres of audiences.
"We don't make movies for everybody. For instance 'Traffic Signal' was for a very niche intelligent audience. It must have appealed to someone looking for out of the box entertainment. Our intention is to create a niche through our products in the entertainment market, which is quite huge," added Singh.
Singh says that audiences' perception is changing.
"The concept of typical buffet entertainment - everything for everybody - is changing now. Audiences want to be challenged with the entertainment and such products are finding larger audiences."
And the script surely gets priority.
"Since the star phenomenon is changing, audiences want to watch a good story well told. We don't follow the star line because if you have noticed ... recently we had four big releases and all bombed. I don't want to name them but they had the biggest stars India could produce. So if you make a movie and it has a good story people are going to watch it. Stars, music are frills and they don't carry a movie too far."
Singh takes pride in offering a platform to enthusiastic newcomers.
"I think PPC is the only brand that has been supporting newcomers in all fields of filmmaking. We are making a movie with Shoojit Sircar, who made 'Yahan', for the second time. We are also making a movie with Robby Grewal who did 'Samay'. His second film is called 'MP3 - Mera Pehla Pehla Pyaar' and it targets youth.
" 'MP3' is very simple and entertaining. It is about the first kiss, first love and I think everybody is going to relate to it because all of us at some point of time have experienced a first kiss or a first love. It's a simple universal subject."
Bringing freshness on screen is important, Singh stressed.
"If you survey the international market, you have practically four films a month targeted to this age group (youth). We don't make cinema for this age group at all. That's why, instead of Shah Rukh Khan carrying a backpack in a university we have actually allowed an actor to play his age in 'MP3'. His name is Ruslan Khan and he was actually 17-years-old when he did it."
According to Singh, survey plays an important role in the making of a film at PPC.
"We are not putting pressures on ourselves ... we are focusing on our consumers. We do full on survey. Every year you will have films for children. We plan to build the PPC brand so that after two years people would say it's a PPC film not a Bhandarkar film."
Apart from "MP3", the production house's forthcoming releases are "Ru-ba-ru", "Kabootar" and "Dhol".
"We have spotted a formula. We have built an in-house marketing team called P9. It is doing a great job. We have in-house distribution capability. Then we have a very smart balance of Kukunoor and Bhandarkar. We are able to experiment because we have A+ filmmakers. In case I have a flop with a newcomer, I can back it up with these A+ directors."
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