Telugu Film Industry has called for a shut down of the industry from March 1st, 2018. During this time all 24 crafts will be shut down. Film Chamber of Commerce has given a statement in this regard. The main reason for this is the issue with Digital Service Providers (DSPs) and producers. Though the statement has mentioned that these DSPs are not going in accordance with the decisions taken by producers council, it did not clearly reveal all the contentions.
Let us see actual issues:
Who are these Digital Service Providers: Do you remember the days when you are in movie theatre but movie not yet started as the “box” did not reach the theatre yet. Or, do you remember those days, when movie is released in more than one theatres in your town and the movie exhibition abruptly stops in the middle as the next “reel” from the other theatre will arrive in next 10 minutes. Thanks to digital revolution in Cinema, nowadays no more such issues. With the advent of these new players, the way movies are exhibited gone through complete change. Now, the films are relayed through data in a hard disk and a password to play the film should be entered online. This needed a whole new infrastructure and new players entered the industry. Major brands providing these digital services are Qube, UFO, PXD (Prasad Xtreme Digital Cinema Network). It seems, now producers have issues with all these DSPs which were not sorted out even after a few meetings. So industry called for a shut down. The Press statement did not mention the reasons explicitly but producer Suresh Babu mentioned couple of issues with DSPs.
First issue is their monopoly and they charging exorbitant VPF charges. Now, what is this VPF? When this new way of digital film exhibition replaced old way of film-based projection system, it required initial investment for the exhibitors/ theater owners to purchase equipment to enable digital film exhibition. To recover this initial investment, they charge some fee on each film they show (You can relate it to building fund charged by schools on every student for some years). This is VPF. This Virtual Print Fee (VPF) is the amount paid by a film distributor towards the purchase of digital cinema projection equipment for use by a film exhibitor in the presentation of movie. Now Suresh Babu says, this transformation happened in entire world across the industries. Everywhere (including Hollywood), VPF was charged only for first 5 years of installing such equipment. But in Telugu Film Industry (TFI), it is more than a decade and still DSPs charging such VPF. And, TFI could not do anything as these DSPs are only a few and they are like a syndicate. So Producers and distributors have no choice other than agreeing to their terms. Suresh Babu also questioned, it is the responsibility of theater owners to take care of projection, sound, chairs, toilets etc facilities. They can’t simply say they have outsourced projection system to these DSPs or 3rd parties and asking producers to pay for that. He questioned, will they later outsource sound system to one party, other facilities to other parties and ask producers to pay for those facilities too?
One more bone of contention between TFI and DSPs is related to showing trailers of upcoming movies in theaters during the break. Usually, it has to be done at free of cost. This is the norm followed in other industries like hollywood. But here, these DSPs, who are responsible for each and every frame exhibited on the silver screen, are showing other commercial ads during the break and earning money. Suresh Babu raised point that this is violation of norm and TFI will fight on this issue.
These are the two issues Suresh Babu raised in press meet. He added, there are several other issues that they would discuss internally. We have to wait and see whether this will be resolved amicably or will take any new turn in future!!!
