The Lessons from AAmir

The lessons from AAmir

AAmir was here in IIMB as part of his shooting for 3 idiots and he had a Q&A session with students

The most important lesson which I had no clue of but which I always wanted to learn as I knew instinctively knew that it was important. Before going into the substance of what aamir had to offer as true argumentation , let me phrase my question which has bothered me for quite some time. Why is profit making so important for everyone. The unstated part of this same question is why is profit making so important for even rich people. More specifically, why is it important for evry rich person to be concerned about making money with every project they embark on. More generally, it was about why money making such a crucial indicator of worth of a person.

Now what I got from AAmir. He started off saying that the role of producer in film making is more than what meets the eye. He is not just a financier of the movie though a producer can have a financier. The critical unobserved role of the producer is to ensure that the movie is made (completed) in a budget that ensures that the movie makes profit. This statement requires some ex-ante assumptions to make a coherent meaning. Assumptions no. 1 is that a movie has a potential revenue given the stars, the story, appeal, director, treatment, sons etc. Assumption No.2 is that the cost of making movie is independent of this potential revenue. Given these assumptions, the criticality and the complex nature of his job is very clear, that of controlling the expenditure schedule and ensuring that the film makes profit irrespective of all other factors..

Now that is a stunner. Irrespective of everything else, a manager has to make profit..or rather it is possible to make profit irrespective of all contingencies.

Now why is this role important in the first place, especially for other stakeholders in the project (film) at all? Here comes the answer for the larger questions regarding role of profit in business or importance of money making. The argument that aamir gave is that, if a film does not make profit ( despite collecting a lot of money), that project would be marked red against all the stakeholders name. This would act as a deterrent for other prospective partners in collaborating with you.

The second important lesson is regarding how he select films. Now the corresponding question in my mind is how can we make decision involving choice given limited information ( bounded rationality) and all uncertainties. He said he relied basically on three factors. One is the script as such. A script according to him, to be successful as a money spinner regardless of the quality of the story or intent, must set a goal in the beginning and the goal must be accomplished and only at the end of the movie. A contrary example he elaborated was that of ‘ Lakshya’. There the protagonist is a lazy teenager as shown in the start of the movie. He says the goal is set with that premise. The protagonist is lazy and the goal is to make him industrious and conscientious individual. The fault there came in terms of meeting the goal during the interval of the movie. The guy passes out from NDA in flying colors and the second half is about kargil war and all. He says the moment the protagonist completed the NDA trial, the movie has practically met with the goal of the movie. The rest was just waste of time. The second factor that he mentioned was the credibility of the creative as well as the production team. The director, producer etc must be credible in the sense that they should be able to complete the movie in right earnest and then be able to release the movie to a wider audience. The third factor was the most crucial one. He termed it thus, the director should have a story to tell. That sounded interesting for the complexity of the construct. What he meant was that the story must be something which has excited the director so much that he badly wanted to tell that story to others. Something like what sashi tharoor described as the motivation for writing books. He had said that for him writing books is like milb given out of a full mummary opf a cow. If you don’t write, it will create immense pain in you. Similarly, the director must feel the utmost need to communicate some story to others. Once the director has this felt need, the rest of the details like the technique of story telling etc will follow through. He also said that he used to gauge this in a director by asking the director to narrate the story and then trusting his own feelings when it gets narrated. Now, that is complex and subjective .


This sets me to another context. What is more important, improving skills in technologies given the quality of mind or improving the quality of mind at the cost of not learning the fad technologies. Learning technologies is more of a defender strategy while the other is more of a prospector strategy.