COMMERCIAL CINEMA

A commercial film is a movie created with the intent of making money.

Commercial films are therefore made for mass appeal and for all ages for
entertainment so that it has a wide appeal that can be successfully converted into
a large viewership thereby generating profit for the film. The films include
comedy, dance, songs and grand settings and are shot at different locations. In
these films the roles are played by popular actors and actresses. There may be
many lead artists or popular star cast in the film depending on the story line.
Commercial film making crew also includes singers, choreographers, musicians
etc. These films are produced with huge budgets and may take longer period for
the completion of the film. To add special visual effects, hi-tech sets are used and
large number of extra artists are cast in the films. Huge campaigns,
advertisements and star promotions of the films are held and publicized for the
release. These campaigns are conducted for the success of the film, popularity
and for the revenue.
Commercial cinema is also referred to as Mainstream cinema which
includes all popular culture, usually circulated by mass media. A Mainstream
film can best be defined as a commercial film bound to producer, and the film
depends on the income from the cinema. Mainstream is a term that usually means
the common current of thought held by the majority. It is most often applied in
the arts like music, literature, performances and cinema. This includes:
Something that is ordinary and usual;
Something that is familiar to most people;
Something that is available to the general public;
Something that has ties to corporate or commercial entities
Mainstream movies can be defined as movies that cost much to make and
are created for profit. To pay the cost and make the profit they are made so very
many people will want to pay to see them. They have a wide release to first run
theaters. Those are movie theaters that run mostly new mainstream movies from
the major movie companies. After their time in first-run theaters, mainstream
movies are sold at popular stores. Typical Hollywood and Bollywood movies are
considered mainstream and may also be blockbusters.
HISTORY

Movie technology has its roots in the early 1830s, when Joseph Plateau of
Belgium and Simon Stampfer of Austria simultaneously developed a device
called the phenakistoscope, which incorporated a spinning disc with slots through
which a series of drawings could be viewed, creating the effect of a single moving
image. The phenakistoscope, considered the precursor of modern motion
pictures, was followed by decades of advances and in 1890, Thomas Edison and
his assistant William Dickson developed the first motion-picture camera, called
the Kinetograph. The next year, 1891, Edison invented the Kinetoscope, a
machine with a peephole viewer that allowed one person to watch a strip of film
as it moved past a light. In 1894, Antoine Lumiere, the father of Auguste and
Louis, saw a demonstration of Edison’s Kinetoscope. He, along with his sons
created Cinematographe in 1895, which was a combination movie camera and
projector that could display moving images on a screen for an audience. The
Lumiere brothers unveiled their invention to the public in March 1895 with a brief
film showing workers leaving the Lumiere factory.
On December 28, 1895, the entrepreneurial Lumiere siblings screened a
series of short scenes from everyday French life and charged admission for the
first time. This was the world’s first commercial movie screening took place at
the Grand Cafe in Paris. The Lumieres opened theatres (known as cinemas) in
1896 to show their work and sent crews of cameramen around the world to screen
films and shoot new material. In America, the film industry quickly took off. In
1896, Vitascope Hall, believed to be the first theater in the U.S. devoted to
showing movies, opened in New Orleans. In 1911 the first Hollywood film studio
opened and in 1914, Charlie Chaplin made his big-screen debut.
There is not much point recounting the list of commercial movies made
from the beginning since from the very inception, the public display of motion
picture was done with the purpose of earning money. This pretty much coincides
the history of motion pictures with that of commercial cinema. However, since
motion picture later developed into separate categories like documentaries,
advertisement films, TV serials, web series, etc., which can each be driven by
profit motive, it becomes important to understand which motion picture enterprise
can qualify as commercial cinema so as distinguish it from others. Most movies
seen in the movie theatre are both feature films as well as commercial films. A
feature film is a film or movie that is the main event of the movie theatre and is
different from short films that are sometimes played before the start of the feature
film in the cinema. It is possible for a film to be a feature film but not a
commercial film (e.g., art film). Alternatively, it is possible for a film to be a
commercial film but not a feature film (e.g., advertisements).

MAIN CHARACTERISTICS:
● They are also known as Mainstream or Popular Cinema
● It works within the framework of certain specified genres like romance,
comedy, tragedy, action, mystery, thriller, gangster or western, period
drama, etc.
● They typical storyline formula based stereotypical story
● The main concern is entertainment of the masses
● It is regulated by censor agencies and are certified according to their
contents into age-appropriate categories
● It is this medium which helps in escaping reality by taking a person to the
world of fantasy
● It is melodramatic in nature
● Commercial returns from such movies are expected to be good. They are
oriented towards and focus on profit
● According to Christine Vachon, a producer, “What makes a movie
commercial is really, very, specific, it’s if it makes its money back, it
returns to its investors. So you can make a movie that’s out there, and crazy
and for a very tiny audience, but if you make it for the right amount of
money, it’s a commercial film.” Therefore, there is a marked increase in
production of carefully calculated films which are made on reasonable
budget, but the return on such movies is so good that even though they may
not be blockbusters, but will still fall in the genre of commercial cinema.
● The main aim is not to present a story in reality or reality in story. But to
present such a storyline which will be easy to get financed i.e., find
investors for whom the money can make good profit on their investment
● They usually try to engage in a big and or well-known star-cast. Swanberg
said about his movie Drinking Buddies, that it was “…entirely career
changing, and life changing, and what was interesting about it was that I
didn’t do anything different than what I had been doing on all these other
movies. Just that there were famous people in it.”
● The sets, costumes, etc. are elaborate
● There is a large use of technology. Sometimes the background set or
characters are not even real for example, Bahubali
 ● Given that the cast, crew, costume, technicians hired and cutting-edge
technology used are expensive, they are usually big-budget movies
● With special reference to Bollywood, or Hollywood Musicals, there are
song and dance routines, elaborate action scenes, etc. which helps provide
people an escape from the everyday dreariness.

CINEMA AS A COMPOSITE FORM OF ART

Although art is an abstract subject and has a very vague description, the
Oxford dictionary has defined art as “The expression or application of human
creative skill and imagination, in a visual form such as painting and sculpture,
typically producing works in order to be appreciated.” With regard to this
definition and many others we find, it is evident that cinema is an art form.
Cinema and films have been existing for a long time now and have become an
ever growing and important form of art. “Cinema is a composite form of art into
which you can include all the convincible art or entertainment forms. In films I
can work with novelistic elements, comedy, drama, music and other forms of
entertainment. Film is a versatile expression combining all elements into one art
form”, says Takeshi Kitano, a Japanese comedian, TV presenter, actor, filmmaker
and author.
Cinema has its expansion progressing since the 1800s and the first image
of motion created was in 1873 by an English photographer who used a series of
cameras placed along the race track to capture the movements of a galloping
horse. Now cinema has become one of the most important and highest of art
forms, influencing the way we live, behave and act. There is no other art form to
which so many people can relate all at once. Cinema as an art form has undergone
enormous development which corresponds with modernist movements in fiction
and poetry such as multiple perspective and stream of consciousness, symbolism
and imagism. Only in cinema they are known by various other terms, terms
sometimes borrowed from painting or photography, such as collage, montage,
flashback, top shot, close up, long shot, deep focus etc. The most recent of all art
forms to develop, cinema has taken the world by storm, captivating the minds of
the sophisticated and gross, literate and illiterate alike.
Cinema includes various genres like drama, comedy, literature, history, etc.
It also caters to all age groups, religion, countries around the world. Cinema is
the most variegated of all artistic forms, an art form in which the hardware is the
product of science and the software that of individual and collective sensibilities.
Cinema is a composite art form because all the other conceivable art or
entertainment forms can be found included in it. Cinema is a versatile expression,
combining all elements into one art form.
Art is the language that stimulates our thoughts. Similarly, cinema is a
universal language that appeals not only to our thoughts but to other senses as
well. Stories are what influence us. We are all products and by-products of
different stories. The skills required by an actor to say the dialogues and depict
the emotions, the script writer, who makes the story of the movie, the makeup
artist, the producers and directors who put their heart and soul, the backstage
production who actually managed the whole chaos etc. Cinema is multi-
dimensional, it has elements associated to all our sense organs, Hence, it caters
to all of them as a composite art form. Even after the film is done, the final product
of movies is composite because we have sense organs and cinema touches all
these for us. For example,
● See/ watch/ eyes - The cinematography, the actors, the locations, editing
are all elements of a movie that we can see
● Read/ speak/ ears - We can read the scripts and stories of the film which
helps us form the base and connect
● Listen/ hear/ eyes - Songs and dialogues of cinema are what we listen and
help us understand and feel better
● Experience/ feel/touch - The characters, the plot, the acting, touches our
lives and we experience things we know or even those we never knew.
In fact, with the development in technology, the cinemas which first developed 3
D movies have now reached to 7 D movies, trying to engage with all of our senses.
Often one artform touches only one sense for example books - read, songs - listen.
However, cinema can touch them all, making it the most composite of all
artforms. We react to picture in motion more deeply than to static images. Cinema
is the highest form of art as it is a merge of different disciplines. Different fields
of study along with various crafts generate a strong emotion with the audience.
Cinema gives a powerful experience which no other art form can generate.
Reasons Why Cinema is A Composite Form of Art
1. It takes several years to make a good movie.
With an average runtime of 125 minutes, it is truly remarkable that
something that is fairly enjoyed for a small time takes so long to make.
Now granted, the length of the project doesn’t always determine the quality
of the result, but the amount of dedication to put together everything proves
my point.
 2. It takes multiple people to make a movie
Most art forms require just the artists’ skill and what they can accomplish.
Movies are not one-man-band, they require a team of people with high
artistic abilities to create it.

3. Movies tell stories

Every artist is trying to tell a story with the art form. Human beings
communicate by stories, and movies are able to speak to the emotions of
audience and connect to viewers. Like a painting or photograph, movies
mean different to each.
4. It utilises skills you need to craft
For as long as movies are in existence, film makers try to improve
technology. Much like inventing paint brush, filmmaker's employ
scientists, artists and technicians from all sorts of background to create
necessary tools.
5. They incorporate every form of art
Movies are the highest form of art because it takes writing, story,
photography, drawing, painting, concept art, animation, visual effects,
music, acting and a whole host of other talents, skills and abilities from
talented individuals.
Different Arts/Departments involved in the mainstream films
● Literary art – story, script, dialogue, poetry lyrics adaptations
● Performing art – dance, song, drama, theatrics
● Plastic art - photography and camera technology
● Visual art – painting, sculpture, setting up of the set, etc.
● Pure art – direction, acting
● Applied art - editing. cinematography, lighting
● Craft - set, makeup, costume
● Others - choreography, dialect coach, backstage management, etc.
The amount of art that goes into creating a finished motion picture elevates it to
the King of art because it leaves nothing out. To understand cinema as an art form,
let's take a look at one of the greatest films of all times – Casablanca. The
elements that make this film great include:
 1. Costumes - The costumes that actors were are a treat to viewers’ eyes. They
are a work of creativity, making an art worth noticing.
2. Music – ‘As time goes by’ has become a universal classic.
3. Acting - All the actors were at the top of their game.
4. Writing - Each line could have been etched in marble.
5. Direction - Michael Curtiz was an inconsistent director. He made some
excellent films and some lousy films, but he was in control here. To see
how in control he was, at the beginning of the movie, the camera shows a
couple discussing exit visas. Cut to another couple discussing exit visas,
and again. Cut to Peter Lorre who has those exit visas, a very exciting scene
showing exactly what the whole film is about. He was the auteur of the
film.
Among all the arts, film is an exception, in that it occasionally mediates
between high and low culture in a way that it reaches a wide audience. The style
of the film is paradigmatic noir. The most common approach by far to film
industry is aesthetic - the history of the film as an art form. It is quite common for
works of film history to describe themselves in this way. Terry Ramsaye, for
example, begins his book A Million and One Nights with the statement that it
endeavours to cover the birth of a new art. Mark Cousins writing nearly 80 years
later, similarly avers that his book The Story of Film: An Odyssey, tells the story
of the art of cinema. The reasons why cinema as a medium is able to engage with
such a large audience and have the outreach that it does, are because it is:
1. Representative
No matter how art is done, it always represents something or someone. Cinema
is composite because it is representative of the past the future or even the present.
Scriptures and paintings about history, songs like folk tunes, folklores,
architecture, all these art forms individually represent something whereas cinema
is inclusive of all these and he else it can represent to us about the past present or
future.
2. Realistic
The most realistic art forms which can very closely relate to us. For it to be
composite, it is very important to be universal and realistic. Cinema is a fusion of
various art forms like songs photography dance etc. Hence it is very easily
connected to a vast audience it is unique for its lifelike qualities. People on screen
are real an act on real issues making it very realistic and believable.
3. Incorporates Movement
What separates cinema from different art forms is its movement. On the screen
people, vehicles, nature, etc., are all seen in movement just like it happens in our
lives. The movement that cinema creates includes all art forms, all genre, all
things that we experience in daily life under one single platform.
4. Inclusive of all art forms
Lastly, it is very obvious for it to be composite because it includes all art forms.
Books are now being written to be made into movies, songs are written to be for
films, artists display their paintings in movies. Hence cinema has now become so
powerful that all other art forms depend on it for their popularity.
To describe film as an art form - or an individual film as a work of art
assumes that a degree of culture or aesthetic value is being attached to it. We
should acknowledge from the outset that not all commentators would necessarily
accept the assertion that film is an art form. Marxist critics have argued that film
cannot be described as an art because first and foremost, it is a commercial
product. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer for example, in their influential
Dialectic of Enlightenment- a sustained polemic against what they term ‘the
culture industry’ - claimed that “all mass culture is identical.” They asserted that
“Movies can no longer pretend to be art. The truth is that they’re just businesses
made into an ideology in order to justify rubbish they deliberately produce.” A
less polemical and more common position is to accept that some films might be
deemed works of art whereas others are not, while many critics distinguish
between an art cinema on the one hand and a commercial cinema on the other.
Cinema today is the highest composite art form because of its ability to
incorporate almost any and everything we can imagine. Cinema has now
expanded all over the world and the audience all around, of all age groups. It is
now an industry with high commercial value and demand. Cinema is also
important and composite because of the amount of time and effort it takes. All
other forms can be done by one individual where is cinema takes up hundreds of
people, their time effort and money. With translations and subtitles cinema has
now become even more composite because it can reach anywhere. Sound, editing,
acting, script, cinematography, dance, locations, etc. are all parts of cinema and
make it a beautiful and entertaining composite art form.

CINEMA AND INDIA

 Movies have always been the most popular mode of entertainment in India.
Every Friday there is buzz around cinema halls on a new release. Cinema in India
is in itself a diverse strand of expression incorporating mainstream cinema which
holds popular appeal, art or parallel cinema that engages with social issues,
middle cinema and regional language cinema. Mainstream or popular Hindi
cinema is also better known as "Bollywood" because such cinema is seen to
exercise widespread influence over people and enjoys mass appeal. Popular
cinema and culture derive from each other. Films are believed to be the opium of
the Indian masses as people rely on this medium to help them escape to a world
of fantasy. In a bid to reach the masses, mainstream cinema has become
melodramatic and rhetorical. The presentation of extremes has been common.

Examples of Mainstream Cinema in India are - Sholay, Zanzeer, Don, Hum

Aapke Hain Kaun, Devdas, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Dil to Pagal hain,
Kuch Kuch Hota Hain, Kabhi Khusi Kabhi Gham, Doom series, Krrish series,
etc.

Examples of Parallel Cinema in India are - Do Bhiga Zamin, Pather Panchali,

Salam Bombay, Sati, Welcome to Sajjanpur, Chandni Baar, Lakshmi, Ishanou,
Leibaklei etc.

Although parallel cinema has the power to drive change in society,

throwing light on the harsh reality of society has been the main aim of this genre
but as mentioned above, the charm of drama, item numbers and fight cannot be
pulled out from Indian audiences and thus it gave birth to new form of cinema
which included social issues with Bollywood masala. Movies like Dor, Gulaal,
Udaan, Gangs of Wasseypur deal with some of the critical social issues but they
have also included the entertainment factor which audiences demand. Today there
is a vast difference between old and new parallel cinema. Directors Satyajt Ray,
Bimal Roy and Guru Dutt started together a wave in Indian Cinema marked as
the ‘Golden Period’. Now there are a few Indian directors trying to make impact.
The current off-beat films, unlike the old parallel cinema, are less political and
have little potential to create social impact. Due to more emphasis on business,
movies are getting dominated by the commercial factor leading to fading point of
parallel cinema.
While the Indian film industry has a powerful presence in alternative or art
cinema domain via parallel films and new wave films that have deep impact on
the minds of the elite audience, the hearts of the general public nevertheless has
been captured by the popular, mainstream or commercial cinema. The cult status
achieved by veteran actors like Amitabh Bachchan and demi god status granted
to popular idols shows that the public in India not just adores the stars but
venerates them as well. There are temples dedicates to actors in South India. Need
we say more about the relation between India and cinema?
CONCLUSION

Having once realised the outreach and impact of mainstream cinema on

society and people, neither the filmmakers nor the audience should turn away
from treating it as a medium which has the potential to make all the difference.
The relation between the product (cinema) and its consumers (audience) is a two-
sided one, where each feeds off the other. They create what we like and we like
what they create, and so goes on this vicious cycle. As responsible members of a
progressive society, we must acknowledge that this cycle needs to stop. We need
to recognize the regressive ideas being presented in cinema, or in any other
medium whatsoever, and shun them. As a society, we need to move towards more
wholesome entertainment. Mainstream cinema can be healthy and help develop
a positive mindset while entertaining.