A Film Maker's Dilemma

The enjoyment of the experience of watching a movie has to do with the audiences suspension of disbelief of whatever is being presented on the screen and accepting the audiovisual imagery as real for the time they are engrossed in its content. Different people have different thresholds for this suspension. This threshold is determined by their demographics (age, gender, education, income, location, marital status, parenthood etc.) and their psycho graphics (religious beliefs, cultural upbringing, family values, life experiences, worldview etc.). Not all factors are weighted equal and since many of the factors as well as the weights assigned to them change with time for each individual member of the audience, it becomes a real challenge for a film maker to try to identify with some degree of accuracy the target audience for his or her film.

There is another factor which is unique to consumption of this form of entertainment by the audience. And that factor is called" Word Of Mouth". Since most people in the world are "Other-directed" instead of being "Inner-directed", they are not only afraid to express their individual opinion if it is contrary to the majority, but are also willing to change it to conform to the majority, resulting in a "Snowball Effect". Therefore, outspoken opinion leaders, (read film critics, mostly by virtue of the public platforms they control to disseminate their opinion), can make or break the opening of a film. In this day and age of saturation releases, the opening weekend collections account for almost 60-70% of the film's total revenue potential. Weekend grosses are reported by each and everyone in the print , broadcast and cyber media. They have somehow become barometers of Quality and the "snowball effect" their reporting creates mostly results in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So the film maker's dilemma is whether to make a film which audience wants ( trying to figure that out as explained earlier is almost as difficult as figuring out the existence of God), or make a film which appeals to him/her, and hope that there is a large enough audience in sync with him/her, for it to recoup its investment..