I've said it before and I'll say it again. Cutting musical numbers from Bollywood films is a terrible idea. As a non-Indian Bwood fan (and all my friends who are into Bwood as well will agree with me on this), the whole appeal for me about Bwood films is that they have those...we can't get that element from most Western films. I understand making films that didn't have songs to start with. But I really hope that trend of making two film versions does NOT catch on. It would suck the heart and soul out of the films themselves and these "edited" versions will fail miserably.
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Indian films ready for journey beyond diaspora
Calcutta News.Net
Friday 21st December, 2007 (IANS)

The billion-dollar Indian film industry is reinventing itself to get the maximum out of digital proliferation in the mass media. And the role model is Hollywood.

It is preparing to go beyond the diaspora audience in the West by making full use of digitised distribution networks, which are gradually replacing traditional methods. Digital distribution has an edge in terms of cost and speed.

Efforts are on to work out a two-edit format for Indian films, especially those from Bollywood that are distributed abroad.

'There is a lot of curiosity about Indian films from the mainstream audience abroad. But the novelty factor wears off very soon. There has to be a mechanism to make Bollywood cinema compatible with the Western audience,' said Navin Shah, CEO, P9 Integrated, a Mumbai-based film marketing giant.

Films will be edited twice - once for the audience in India and then for the 'white market' abroad. For the foreign audience, the duration of Indian films will be cut short. According to Shah, the time period will be reduced from two-and-a-half hours to roughly 90 minutes.

'Indian films are full of song and dance sequences, but the white audience is not used to it. The number of songs and dances will be cut down,' Shah told IANS.

'Alam Ara', the first talkie film in Hindi, reportedly had seven songs and several films that followed it were all musicals. Early productions sometimes featured as many as 40 songs. However, the number of songs and dances, on an average, now is restricted to six.

The industry is even planning to change the nature of promotionals. Bollywood film promos are mostly collages - a jumble of shots and snatches of dialogues, whereas Hollywood promos usually convey the stories in a nutshell.

'The industry will employ people to design promos and media footage like those in Hollywood so that the audience abroad gets an idea what the film is all about,' Shah said.

Another medium that distributors intend to make use of is YouTube.

'It is one of the top 15 popular sites in the world. Indian films can be uploaded on YouTube to build a movie library and viewed by users for free. It will check piracy,' said Marcus Stuart, executive vice-president, Eros International, Britain, a content distribution firm.

Outreach tools in the entertainment media have been morphing for some time. At least 50 top Indian brands are now talking to the global audience. Banks like ICICI and companies like MDH and firms that make tobacco products are using local content for brand promotion abroad.

'This helps small-time filmmakers market their wares to the mainstream audience in the West,' Shah said.

Tourism boards are also promoting Bollywood abroad in a big way. 'I have at least nine foreign tourism boards on my list of clients, who sell Bollywood destinations and also push Indian content in their respective countries. The Singapore tourism board is one of them,' Shah said. NTOs like VisitBritain have unveiled special Bollywood tourism maps this year.

The popularity of Indian film events, featuring Bollywood stars abroad and live telecasts of the same, has also taken Indian mass entertainment beyond the Asian audience in the West.

Well, I'm skeptical. First, Bollywood should make films with songs and without songs, whatever fits the subject better. Second, edit the same film two ways, once with songs and once without is nonsense. Either the songs are an integral part of the film and needed to make it a better film or they are not. In the first case you amputate the film and in the second the songs should not be there for Indians as well as the rest of the world.

I think I agree with mhafner -- storyboarding is all about what part of the story is best presented with songs, what part is best presented with intense one-to-one dialogues...

Once a film is ready from all aspects then it's not so simple (or should not be so simple) to just take away a song or two... because if it were, then the song (or scene) shouldn't be there in the first place.

Good design is not when you can't add anything more, but when you can't take away anything more.

I agree. And with most films, once you cut the songs you're left with a boring, mediocre movie

Aren't the songs one of the main reasons non-Indians watch Bollywood movies? To get something that Hollywood doesn't regularly provide?