Hindi
Ormax Media to support economy films with new tool
MUMBAI: The media research and consulting firm Ormax Media has launched a new product, Movie Genie, designed to support filmmakers working outside the studio system and without the top superstars.
The product will provide customised consumer knowledge and strategic inputs to “economy films”, defined as films that are made at modest budgets and don‘t have a big star to ensure a good opening at the box office, the company said.
Explaining the idea behind Movie Genie, Ormax Media CEO Shailesh Kapoor said, “Over the last few years, the gap between big budget and medium to small budget films has grown progressively wider. More than 55 per cent of films produced in the last three years were economy films. However, their contribution to the box office was only five per cent. We want such filmmakers to produce more films, but that is possible only if they can make profitable films. Movie Genie is a strategy and marketing solutions product designed to guide and support such filmmakers in their filmmaking journey.”
Movie Genie will involve four stages. In the first stage, Ormax Media will work with the filmmakers to define the marketing strategy of the film. In the second stage, relevant elements of the film‘s content and communication will be tested with the consumer.
In the third stage, the box office planning for the film will be done, to set the revenue targets for the film. In the final stage, the film‘s live campaign will be tracked to ensure that the targets are met. Ormax‘s film industry experience will be used across these four stages.
Kapoor added, “Movie Genie is designed to be a very efficient, high-ROI product. By spending only about one per cent of their film‘s total production and marketing budget on Movie Genie, economy filmmakers can get a revenue upside of up to 30 per cent. Every good film deserves to earn money, irrespective of its starcast or scale. Movie Genie is our initiative to make this happen in a way that‘s affordable to the makers of such films.”
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
