Translator: Parvathi Pappu
Reviewer: Queenie Lee So before I begin, I'll give you a little disclaimer
of how I actually grew up and what the movies mean to me. When I was a young kid,
I thought Mahatma Gandhi was someone who looked like Ben Kingsley, and I thought Adolf Hitler
was a look-alike of Charlie Chaplin. So, from here on you decide
if you want to take me seriously or not, because that's how I grew up. You can either think this guy
loves the movies, and he's here, and he's continuing to work here, or you could think that I was a dumb kid
in school who just went to the movies. So let me tell you how it all started,
not for me but for the world itself. We all know the times of kings,
where kings governed everything, but the kings had something
very very special. They wanted to showcase culture
to the world, to the neighboring kingdoms. So who is showcasing culture? Artists were showcasing culture. Dancers, musicians, poets,
people with great literary works, and then what happened? The kings disappeared, and we lived in the world of democracy. I'm sure life is better but not so good
for the artists at that point because all of you guys
weren't paying money to the artists. And it all started in about 1894, when these two fine gentlemen,
the Lumiere brothers, discovered something called cinema, where you projected a moving image
from film onto a big screen, and there was a lot of public gathering. That's when the artists
found their space again. And as technology kept evolving, when silent cinema became
[film] which had sound in it: musicians came in;
sound engineers came in. When it moved into color: artists came in; painters came in;
and so on and so forth. So by somewhere in the early 1900s, about 1914, 1915 was where cinema really
was the keeper of the arts, where a bunch of different artists
from different spaces came together to tell this beautiful world
in their format of storytelling, which was cinema. And that's where it
all started for everyone. And India came in exactly that time. 1913 was when Raja Harishchandra, the first Indian silent
feature film, was made. I don't know if you guys know this image, but this was the first ever film screening
in France in the late 1800s. So, when India came in,
we started with Raja Harishchandra, which was a silent film. We obviously took this to the same era
of technology coming into the movies. Now, that's where -
that's about 100 years ago, and for about 50 years after that
is when we began, we came into the movies. My grandfather was a farmer
in a little village in Andhra, said, "I want to tell stories," and he moved to Madras
and started making movies. That's a poster of our first
ever feature film. And when we came on,
we were a film production house. What is a film production house? It's a house that makes movies and then eventually gives it
to a studio to distribute it, to exhibit it, and so on and so forth. And then we moved to a city
called Hyderabad, and it was an ever-evolving space,
where we were given land and said, "Let's make cinema an industry." So, then there we go; we came,
started production; we moved in, from there to distributing our own content
to exhibitors, to different people. We went into exhibition, which was actually directly
working with the theaters or owning, leasing those theaters,
or building theaters to see to that the story
that we are telling transcends perfectly
to each and every one of you. And then what did we know? We needed infrastructure
to make better and better movies. We built the film laboratory,
we built sound stages, we built sound design spaces, enhancing digital
theater sound, visual effects, all of those to tell better
and better stories. But what happened then? It all changed. It all changed how? It changed with the medium
of the digital world. We had something called a film laboratory,
where film used to be short processed and then ultimately made ready
with multiple copies of prints for all of you to watch in the cinemas. With the rise of digital that went away, so the infrastructure
was not the same anymore. What we realized was we were storytellers who were trying to make
a formatted business out of this. Now, while cinema is evolving like this, the other part of the world
was really fast evolving, where television came in, and that's when people decided
to sit at the luxury of their own homes with their family members,
with their loved ones and start watching cinema there. Then came on the giants of
the Amazon's and the Netflix' were there, and your smartphone,
which is now part of all of us. And you started watching stories there. So, what did we have to do? We have to tell stories
in every single platform that's available. Now, this thing called the new ecosystem
was something that we didn't understand, something that nobody even now still
understands where it's heading. So, what did we need? I mean, we were talking about movies; we all bought tickets,
went to the movie theater; we all sat at home watch TV,
maybe made popcorn at home also. Now we watch it on cell phones, we have our fancy laptops that have high-speed internet
and all of those. We watch stories there. But today, technology has changed so much. We have moved into something
called augmented reality, virtual reality. What's augmented reality? Reality where an actor or an artist is actually on your phone
performing for you personally. You can take videos with him;
you can take pictures with him. Virtual reality, where all of you
can actually walk into this great world where the movie is being made. Yes, all this is happening today. Now, who makes all these things? Is it the artist? No. We are just tools to tell these stories. But, it is people with technology,
people who understand innovation. So, that really was the change. When I speak at events like these, the first thing that someone
asked me yesterday was, "Why are you speaking at TED? It's not a paid event. You are an actor." So, the only reason I am here is
to tell all of you guys that there is a space out here,
there is an opportunity, and why we would be able to do it? Because change comes
with a lot of hard decisions to make. When film moved away,
my mother used to run the film laboratory, and everything became digital,
nobody was shooting on film anymore, we had to shut the film laboratory,
an institution existed for many years. We had to let very,
very close personnel go away. And that is really
heartbreaking for all of us because all these years we thought this business is going to go on
in a certain format, and it all changed. So, you have to be ready
to pick that opportunity, and the good thing is with change
if you embrace it well, there is a great opportunity. I did a film called Bahubali. Have you guys seen it? It's a really cool movie. Yeah? Thank you. So, when I did that film, it was breaking norms
of every single storytelling pattern. It was a Telugu feature film
with a Telugu film director, Telugu film actors to do production
that was shot here. And we were trying to make something
which is far bigger than anything that's made in this country
or this part of the world. And how did we do this? A. There was a great storyteller
who was the director of that film, who believed that stories
will last forever and took inspiration, everything,
from the soil that he's grown up with, said we will propagate our culture, we'll put it up there on the silver screen
for the world to see, and it was not just him. It was the producers of that film, people who were smart,
who were educated, who moved in from different fields of business, from whether it was technology,
whether it is the dot.com, I mean, they were all over the place, and then they came to the movies. So, they finally made a method
to this madness; they made a method
to how great cinema can be told. And all of you saw the result. We made a film called Bahubali, which was made on this very soil
in Hyderabad city, and the world woke up to it. I was -
Thank you. (Applause) And why was that possible that way? For a simple reason
that they were artists, they were people of business, they were people from many,
many different fields, and I have many friends, I have people in society who still don't
choose entertainment as a career. Now, we are at TED. It's technology, entertainment
stands right in the center, Sir, and the design after that. So, we need people from business;
we need people from technology, people from design and every other field that can help us tell better
and better stories. And there is one thing
that I have to tell all of you guys is if you guys back
the filmmakers that are here, if you start innovating for them,
if you start giving them technology, empowering them with all
the business ideas that all of you have, Sir, we have made Bahubali once, and our filmmakers will
go over and over to do it again. Now, you can really think,
"How is this possible? How can we do this?" I mean, to do this,
we need a business format; we spoke about technology,
we spoke about infrastructure, we spoke about every single thing
that all the other businesses have, come look at this as a business. This is going to be definitely the largest
largest growth pattern in this country because we still have a big margin to hit, and that big margin is only possible
with all of you here helping us tell stories better. So, ladies and gentlemen, sir,
the artist is going to be there, the artist is going to be there
in television, in film, in your cell phone,
in every single place a story is told. It's just that he needs you
to empower him. The web, the web is suddenly
open now to telling stories. All of you could be storytellers. Every single person
is actually a storyteller because I have a story to tell,
you have a story to tell, so do you. And like that, the web has offered solutions
for every one to come and tell stories. So, let's come together on these platforms
and tell these things. Now, technology,
we spoke about augmented reality, we spoke about virtual reality,
and there is many more coming, and every single day I am at a new forum, there is a new technology and a new ever-evolving way
of telling stories. Now, how do we tell these things? This is not a storyteller's job,
to figure out these new ways. So, the first time I met somebody
who's doing augmented reality, they were actually doing it
for construction work and trying to make it look like,
OK, furniture is here; this is how it's going to look. We just picked that technology up,
plastered it on a film poster, and things changed. Things changed
because cinema has the power, stories have the power to communicate to every single person
living on this planet. And that's what a cinema can really do. And there you go. Sir. So, all I have to ask you guys
by the end of all of this is if you can empower us with innovation, if you can create better ways
for us to tell stories, if you can help us
with your great business practices that you have from across various
business platforms, come in here, and let's tell stories together. And, Sir, we have done it once, we will make sure all the artists,
and I speak for my entire fraternity, that we will do everything
that's in our might to tell great stories to the rest of the world. And India, Sir, is a land of culture
and the greatest stories. So, thank you very much. Let stories be told. Thank you. (Applause)
