Ram Gopal Varma Blog about What’s in a Title?

Ram Gopal Varma Blogs
What’s in a Title?

ram gopal Varma

3 February 2010

Apart from the title of a film attracting one’s attention, it also gives a certain emotional tone to the film through which one can in a very specific way look at the film.

I have always been fascinated with movie titles. The first title I consciously remember as a kid being intrigued and impressed with, was of an old western called “Bad Day at Black Rock”. If you study the title on what it is indicating. It promises a highly emotion based action flick shot at some exotic location. I say emotion based because bad day is what we will associate with what happens to a good guy and if the good guy suffers we will empathize with him and the very fact that the title pinpoints that the incident happened at something called the black rock is preparing all of us to see a locale which could be exciting.

Also a title can characterize something in the film and sometimes a person’s character in the film thereby preprogramming the audience to look at that aspect with additional seriousness.

When I titled my horror film as “Bhoot”, almost everybody said it sounds funny. But I was convinced that along with the poster design’s image and the seriousness of the font design it will be far from funny.

Similarly a powerful title like “Sarkar” will psyche the audience into feeling the power of Amitabh Bachchan’s character even before they enter the theatre.

A title like Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark” is like a present day comment upon people who lived a long time back and who were attempting to rob the Ark and titling the film like that is such a beautiful way of transporting the people in the theatre to some ancient time period.

I was thinking so many different titles for “Rangeela” and nothing was striking enough and one day as me and Aamir were walking in the lobby of Holiday Inn at Hyderabad discussing titles I suddenly blurted out the word Rangeela. Aamir stopped in his tracks and said, ‘say that again’, and I said ‘Rangeela’. He said “That’s it. No more thinking”. Incidentally “Rangeela” was registered for, of all the films a Mithun Chakraborthy action film and I had to use some influence to get it.

It’s very difficult to know what exactly triggers off in your mind for you to suddenly come up with a title..

In my case many times for me I just like the sound of the title and I look for the justification later. I was doing treadmill one day and thinking about the title for a new horror film I was planning and as I was talking to a writer on the phone and discussing the rituals of black magic he used the word jhaad phoonk and the sound of the word “Phoonk” attracted me instantly. I didn’t know the meaning of it at that time but I made up my mind immediately that I want to call the film “Phoonk”. Also over the years I have realized that no matter how bizarre it sounds, if you keep on hammering a title through creative designs people will get used to it and eventually start liking it. The big high for me is that whether they finally like the film or not. I atleast managed to subject a great number of people in the country to the sound of the word Phoonk and their eyes had no choice but to see the word “Phoonk” written on posters and hoardings all over the place.

Barring very few most of my titles have been received with a negative response when they were first heard but as they keep hearing it they keep getting used to it and after years they start believing it’s a great title irrespective of how the film fared. In fact many of them eventually end up saying that the film didn’t live up to the title.

Some of my favourite titles of my own films are:

1). Rangeela
2). Bhoot
3). Company
4). Jungle
5). Sarkar
6). Contract
7). Phoonk
8). Nishabd
9). Rann

Titles like “Shiva”, “Satya” etc I think became likeable by association with the film rather than any inherent creativity in them.

Also sometimes a title can turn off people in the very beginning itself, case in point being my masterpiece “RGV Ki Aag”. It’s another matter that the title was a resultant outcome of legal battles but I am not talking of the cause here but of the effect on the viewer. The title sounds tacky, cheesy, arrogant, mad, to use just a few adjectives. I strongly feel that, for example if it had a title like “Contract” instead of “RGV Ki Aag” the film might remain the same but how one will look at it could have changed.

Apart from attracting the viewer’s attention and setting a tone, many times what a title does is that it gives a sense of direction to the writer and director in which way to take the script forward. It also serves as a devise for the marketing team on how to pitch the film through its various mediums.

Many times I have seen filmmakers getting carried away by wanting a title which would summarize the subject. But in my opinion suitability to the subject (which is obviously important) is secondary to the importance of it managing to grab the attention of the viewer as he will only know what the subject matter is after he comes into the theatre, whereas the title should also help in drawing him into the theatre.

I will just give a very pertinent example of what a title can do to a film’s prospects in every which way. A few days ago I wrote on this blog that I was intending to make a film on the Police world titled as “Company 2” to which someone named Suman on this blog suggested that it should be called “Department”. I did a double take when I saw that and even without thinking immediately reacted to it as “brilliant” and thanked Suman.

Later when I thought about the film with regard to this I realized that “Company 2” is such a wrong title for the subject matter for the simple reason that an underworld organization is primarily designed for making monetary profit and hence it can be called a “Company” but a Police organization is primarily designed to evolve a procedural system whose ultimate success will best lay with how the posts and designations in the systems themselves will be both it’s growth and strength rather than they depending upon the merit of the individual officers who don those posts and wear those designations.

Good officers are required to cover the deficiencies of an organization but a truly good organization will make do with, no matter who the officers are.

In short for want of a better way of describing, if an underworld organization is run by a Don, I think the Policeworld’s Don is the department itself.

Hence I decided to title my film as the “Department”.

The moment I told concerned people like investors, actors, tecdhnicians etc about the subject matter and the title “Department” and why I want to call it the “Department” they are all raring to go and make it happen as soon as possible. So let’s not ever ever ask the question again, “what’s in a title?” because everything is indeed in a title.

And thank you once again, Suman.

Note: Thanks to Ram Gopal Varma for giving us special permission to republish his blogs in idlebrain.com (visit rgvzoomin.com to visit Ram Gopal Varma's blog)

Tell us how you liked this article