Golden Ratio Films (GRF) is a part of Vistas Media Capital, a Singapore based, fully integrated, content, media and entertainment investment holding company. GRF has released THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF FAKIR starring Dhanush in six countries. The Indo-west Belgium co-produced film marked the international debut of the south superstar Dhanush.
The critically acclaimed “NAKKASH starring Inamulhaq, Sharib Hashmi and Kumud Mishra will remain their proud moment for ever. From the Hindi web-series CYBER SQUAD with Alt Balaji to Manoj Vajpayee starrer BHOSLE set to release in few months, followed by Abhay Deol & Pankaj Kapoor starrer JL50 and Pankaj Kapoor starrer SEHAR, GRF has also launched a block chain based crowd funding equity for the Indians living outside India. ALBERT PINTO KO GUSSA KYON ATA HAI starring Manav Kaul was the first crowd funded film of GRF.
Taking time out from their busy schedule, Abhayanand Singh and Piiyush Singh – the founders of Golden Ratio Films (GRF), speak about their vision, their future plans and other innovative initiatives like crowd funding, CCFA and CCSFA (Critics Choice Film Awards and Critics Choice Short Film awards), the annually held Singapore South Asian International Film Festival (SAIFF) as they are on the verge of diversifying into the Tamil cinema industry with 5 Tamil films and more…
Over to Abhayanand Singh and Piiyush Singh
What is the driving force behind Golden Ratio Films?
It is our passion for meaningful cinema.
What is the vision behind Golden Ratio Films?
To create a media studio covering all the aspects of filmmaking.
What lies in the future of Movie industry according to you?
It is the best time to make movies as the scope of monetization has increased significantly.
What are the challenges you came across from Tandav to THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF FAKIR ?
Primarily was the fact that we were from a different industry and therefore had to spend a lot of time in the learning the curve of film making craft.
Is the current digital revolution just a phase or its going to stay? The reasons behind your observation/analysis?
It will surely stay but new models will evolve. The primary reason is devices because from a time wherein a family of 4 would choose to watch one movie in a week in the theatre, now each family member is watching one each over a weekend and an episode of a web series during the weekday, if not more. So the demand for content is only going to increase and that too for all kinds as it is becoming a very personal medium in addition to it historically being a community medium.
Kindly throw some light on crowd funding?
We are looking to launch an equity crowd funding platform which is a very common phenomenon in the west. It gives everybody an opportunity to be part of a film that they think will do well. It is a minimized version of what public fund raising is in the financial world.
From where does Golden Ratio Films gets its funds for projects?
Primarily through its own captive funds and co investments from studios or other individual or institutional investors
Are you a corporate or an independent production house?
We are a corporate production house with strict corporate governance and guidelines for effectively filmmaking process.
Does the not so profitable response in India to a great movie like NAKKASH and an international project like THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF FAKIR gave any learning lessons?
They are both profitable movies for us. We often wrongly judge a film’s profitability by merely the theatrical box office but a film IP has multiple ways to monetize over a period of time. We are happy with both the films on a return on investment basis and we will continue to make such films due to this.
Before Critics’ Choice Awards already there is a BFJA ( Bollywood Film Journalist Award) happening every year, what is the difference?
CCFA is unique in a way in a way that it is pan India and not just Bollywood. Also, our whole judging criteria and process which is also audited is different from other awards.
What is SAIFF and any possibility of SAIFF in India?
SAIFF is Singapore South Asian International Film Festival and we have no plans currently to bring it to India. However, we may choose to launch South Asian Film Market (SAFM) in India which is a satellite event bridging the gap between creativity and finance.
We have Korean cinema, Iranian cinema why Bollywood, kollywood, Tollywood etc and not Indian Cinema?
We completely agree with this. But these things are not driven by individual regional industry but more by government and public organizations which position our cinema globally. We do understand that India is unique in that respect because unlike Korea wherein people speak primarily Korean, or Iran wherein they speak one language, our country has multiple languages and therefore multiple language cinemas. So it is not an exact comparison. But we are sure there can be a way to manage this diversity effectively.
What is Indian cinema and why it has still not been able to make a label of its own like Korean, Iranian, Italian, French etc
Very difficult to define Indian cinema because it is so diversified not only in terms of languages but also in terms of the kind of content we make. We have had everyone from Satyajit Ray to Manmohan Desai, Anurag Kashyap to Sanjay Leela Bhansali and this diversity is our strength. Like I said earlier, the whole industry has to come together and this campaign has to be driven by the government and public institutions. We will have to make concentrated effort to take our films globally.
And we have a unique advantage since we have a huge captive Diasporas audience already. It will take a few years but can be done as I don’t think there is a dearth of talent.
