My Movie. My Space

It was quite an experience,if a little disconcerting,because till then Id watched films the only way there was: on a big flat screen straight ahead of me,surrounded by linear rows of viewers and the crackle of yellow-buttered,pre-popped corn and the long pull of saccharine-y cola.

It was all so different last week. I was alone in my bedroom,with punk-princess-cum-avenging-angel Noomi Rapace for company. The Swedish leading lady was on a roll in The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest,getting after killers and rapists,with the help of well-intentioned journalists and unwashed geeks. I was watching it on a gleaming iPad,all by myself. That really is the only way you can watch anything on an iPad,and dont let anyone tell you any different: try sharing,and youre sure to get into a squabble. Even if two of you sit right next to each other,all hugger mugger,you will get to watch it from your side,and your viewing partner from the other,and there will always be an angle which is better for both,but not at the same time.

I know,I tried.

I also got the iPad tangled in the sheets when I slid down the pillow,trying to keep it to one side. Like a good Apple product,the screen view slid right alongside,all the way down. Rapaces head was upside down,so was her hospital bed,her feet staring at me. Her accomplice was quite as lopsided. I started to reach out to pull it the right way up,and then I stopped,struck by the uniqueness of my position. Could anyone else claim to have watched just that film just that way at just that time,anywhere in the world? It was not just highly unlikely,but near impossible.

So there you have it: movie watching is not what it used to be. It now has the ability to be all things to all people,switching from one of the most communal to one of the most intimate of experiences. And you can choose your size depending upon the time,the place,and,yes,your mood.

Ask Deepak Shetty,vice-president,domestic sales and marketing,Moser Baer. On a flight to Bangalore early this year,he saw a fellow traveller juggle with a jumble of wires. The passenger first took out a laptop,then a movie DVD,fiddled with the case,took out the film,slid it into the slot. Only then was the laptop movie-ready. Shetty stepped off that plane,with a eureka moment. How about if you could fit a film on a USB stick,which you could stick into your pocket? No bulk. No weight. Just complete portability. A movie on the go.

Six weeks back,the Moser Baer Movie-on-a-USB hit the stores,and according to Shetty,its doing well. Its one of those products whose time has come,the marriage of technology and a good idea. The only way Moser Baer could differentiate it from a Transcend or a Sandisk USB stick is to put a movie on it (they tried putting a film on a microSD card; it was Jab We Met,and it wasnt a success). When they transferred the film on a 4GB USB stick,theyve had interested customers and sales.

Even at a relatively high price of Rs 850? Oh yes,says Shetty. Because you are getting not just the movie,but a USB stick with large storage. You can download it,burn a disk and wipe the movie off. Its erasable,downloadable. Basically,the product has flexibility built into it, he says. Plus,you can stick it into your laptop,desktop and new-gen LCD televisions which come with in-built USB ports: it is compatible with most media. Moser Baer has been in talks with manufacturers of DVD players,and within a few months,all the research and development and protocol issues will be sorted out,so that the USB stick will play on all DVD players. If you have to pause in between,just hit a button,pack your laptop and your USB. There,my movie is in my pocket.

Even though Shetty feels that early adopters of technology will have maximum fun with the USB movies,I have to confess that I quite enjoyed the whole thing: its a mini-USB which folds neatly upon itself,which you have to straighten out and then plug into your machine. The usage is fairly intuitive,even for tech dinosaurs,and within a few seconds,the film unfolds on your TV or laptop: my choice out of the 10 films Moser Baer has on USB right now is Kaminey. As the film plays,I hear Gulzars gorgeous poetry aaja aaja dil nichode,raat ki matki tode…

Technology broke the first barrier when the now defunct VHS player came riding into the Indian markets on the first wave of liberalisation. From 70mm,movies closed in on your 21-inch TV for the first time through a gadget which played a video cassette. The early 80s were the game-changing years for the home theatre industry. The whole idea was to extend the life of the film,and it wasnt always possible to keep them in theatres beyond a point,says Hiren Gada,director,Shemaroo,one of the first companies to get into the field of home entertainment in India.

There were various reasons for the popularity of the VHS format,says Gada. There was a limit to how much content people could consume when movies first came out in theatres. There were distribution challenges after they left,post their first run. Movies had to move to the home,where you could pull it out of your box (or rent,more like,because it was too expensive to own a VHS at Rs 2,000-2,500),and watch it at a time of your choice.

I rescued an old,scratched video cassette from my collection (it sits in a fraying carton in one corner of the house in the hope that it will get transferred on to DVD one of these days),and played it on my old VHS player,still miraculously working. It was an early Sanjay Dutt film,and I could only catch the climax,because the tape was damaged here and there. The player made all kinds of whiny noises,and had to be coaxed into playing out its grainy images which contained a very young Dutt,chest bared,dodging gunfire on a hillside and hanging off helicopters. And to think it was the acme of our entertainment life all the way from the mid-80s to the beginning of the 2000s,when I finally shelved my rickety VHS player for a spanking new DVD player. Bye bye clunky video cassettes; hello slim VCDs and DVDs.

Soon video-on-demand and digital downloads (all legal and above board) will make the DVD a thing of the past. Or maybe not. Maybe we wont have to choose one or the other. Maybe we will have all the formats and media at our disposal,giving us the luxury of true choice between big and small; large-themed universal blockbusters and tiny,edgy fare. Some days we will feel like haunting the vast,cavernous theatres where the movies will always be bigger than us,where we will let the velvety dark envelop us and tell us stories. And some days we will be content to look into the palm of our hand,and watch the minuscule moving images hold us without the need of surround sound.

My movie. My space.