A movie is not an Excel sheet for us, says head of Yash Raj Films’ youth content division

Ashish Patil wears several hats at Yash Raj Films. The former Chief Executive Officer of MTV India handles the studio’s youth-oriented division Y-Films as well as the talent management cell, which has actors such as Ranveer Singh, Anushka Sharma, Arjun Kapoor, Parineeti Chopra, Saqib Saleem and Vaani Kapoor on its roster. Patil also oversees YRF’s social media engagement and partnerships with retail brands and their placement in home productions. In 2013, Y-Films produced Mere Dad Ki Maruti, a comedy about a missing vehicle that doubled up as a plug for the car manufacturing company.

Y-Films has produced three films so far and has one in the cans (Bank Chor), apart from launching the transgender pop group 6 Pack Band. Y-Films is also hard at work creating digital content. Love Shorts is the third in a series of films centred on a theme. It follows Man’s World, a satire on the battle of the sexes, and Bang Baaja Baaraat, a spoof on Indian-style weddings. Love Shorts, directed by musician-turned-filmmaker Ankur Tewari, is exactly what it suggests: internet-friendly capsules on romance and relationships.

Yash Raj Films was set up by Yash Chopra in 1969 and taken over after his death in 2012 by his filmmaker son, Aditya. The studio has arrived at the short films party late, but has taken all steps to ensure that its efforts do not go unnoticed: previews for critics, a press conference, and a publicity push. YRF was known to keep its distance from the media, but its attitude has changed in the past few years. The studio is on a quest for new direction and fresh audiences, and is keen to be seen as an active player in the evolving space of digital content – as long as there is money to be made, Patil told Scroll.in.

What does Y-Films hope to achieve with the web series ‘Love Shots’?

There are serious filmmakers making short films – I love what Sujoy Ghosh did [with Aahalya], for instance. We want to give this format a platform, and I am hoping that shorts become a generic category. We also want to make the format viable from the business point of view. You will not pay for a three-minute film, but if you have an anthology film, people might start exploring.

What is the business model if your short films are available on YouTube for free?

The music is one revenue stream – the audio for Love Shorts is available on Airtel’s Wink platform, through ringtones and so on. Frankly, no one has cracked the digital space. Subscriptions could be a step, but that is dead as of now. Hopefully, people will pay for content, but that’s in the future. Advertising is not going to pay – it will bring in some pocket money for all it is worth. We have opted for sponsorship. Every asset [short film series] so far has had a sponsor, whether it’s Lakme for Bang Baaja Baaraat or Red Label for the 6 Pack band.

Syndication is another option. We are in advanced talks for remake rights of Man’s World as an American sitcom.

The short films are also a good way of keeping the in-house talent busy.

Love Shorts has in-house talent like Saqib Saleem, Tahir Raj Bhasin and Rhea Chakraborty. The rest are not with us.

Saqib has not done a film as a lead outside the banner till date. He has the remake of Oculus [in which he stars with his sister, Huma Qureshi] and Rohit Dhawan’s Dishoom, and hopefully the Mere Dad Ki Maruti sequel when we get started on it. We have consciously not opened up Vaani Kapoor [one of the two leads in YRF’s Shuddh Desi Romance], because we believe that will happen after Befikre [being directed by Aditya Chopra and starring Ranveer Singh].

We are not going to take our foot off the pedal until the person pops. If a person is endorsing Pepsi, we will not let him or her endorse a toilet cleaner. We work out the entire end-to-end deal, from magazine covers to red carpet handling. When our clients make money, so do we – and we make a decent chunk.

We are going to launch fresh talent every year. We will have two new actors next year in Habib Faisal’s next film.

Who makes the creative calls at Y-Films?

The YRF DNA is that we don’t acquire films. Everything is built ground up from here. We have a standalone team of two-and-a-half people – the half is me. Nikhil Taneja works with me, he channels a lot of development and execution.

I am the oldest guy in the team. We have many kids working here, who have a very strong bullshit meter. We also tap into interesting minds who we bring in, be it Anand Tiwari on Bang Baaja Baaraat or Vikram Gupta for Man’s World or Nishant Nayak for the 6 Pack Band.

How involved is YRF head Aditya Chopra?

The main studio has as much input as I want. Adi [Chopra] is hands-off. All he says is, keep me in the loop. Like when we told him we were thinking about creating a band with six transgender people, he said, you are crazy but I love it – and make sure we treat them the way we would our other stars.

Adi is great in helping you open up content in interesting ways. He saw the first episode of Love Shorts only on the day of its release. He sent me a message on the lines of, very good, Ankur [Tewari] has done a great job, just tone down the English or else it will cut down our base.

Y-Films productions haven’t exactly blazed trails at the box office.

We are only five years old. We have made dimes and pennies on some of our films, but we haven’t lost money. They are made on efficient budgets. In fact, Mere Dad Ki Maruti was profitable, since Maruti ring-fenced a lot of our costs and the film ran well. We are in the process of green-lighting a sequel.

Your next production, ‘Bank Chor’, starring Riteish Deshmukh and Vivek Oberoi, doesn’t sound like a Y-Films title.

It’s a mid-range film, very high-concept, and the story-telling is young and edgy. It could be a YRF film. The lines have started to blur. Band Baaja Baaraat could have come from Y-Films. What would make something a Y-Films title is not a demographic slice in terms of concept and execution, but a budget slice.

How different is this from UTV’s defunct Spotboy division, for instance?

Spotboy was neither a demographic slice nor a budget slice – they had Dev.D as well as No One Killed Jessica. Balaji Telefilms’ ALT Entertainment too had Once Upon A Time in Mumbaai as well as Ragini MMS. Bank Chor is about two idiots trying to rob a bank in real time. Its style and rhythm is very us. The film is ready, and we will decide soon on a release date.

I am in no rush to make four films a year. We have two or three in the pipeline.

One of the pitfalls of producing everything in-house is that YRF productions do not always connect with audiences and critics beyond the four walls of the studio.

That is a warped perspective. No studio has a 100% track record. We were known as the house of romance, but we also pushed the envelope with films like Silsila, Lamhe, and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. We did a sports film that wasn’t about cricket, Chakde! India.

We have punted and taken some risks. Some have fired and some haven’t. Being independent from external finances enables us to take our own risks. A film is not an Excel sheet for us. We are not plugged into an audience, we don’t do research. It’s an ongoing exercise, and we get a different learning from each film. Maybe the marketing is wrong, or the music. I am very proud of Rocket Singh Salesman of the Year, for instance, but it didn’t work at the box office. Maybe it was marketed wrong.

You finally go with your gut and your instinct. If you start second-guessing the audience, you will make the same film over and over again

Y-Films has stuck with comedies and romcoms. Are there other genres you would like to work in?

There are very few original films out there, and a lot many are not successful. Ticket prices are also so high that people go for event films, so the smaller films either drop off or they have to be a ‘must-watch’.

I would love to do sci-fi films, but we can’t afford it. I would like to do a hectic action film, but I can never have a movie with the Taj Mahal blowing up.

Will YRF return to television after producing such acclaimed shows as ‘Powder’ and ‘Mahi Way’?

We will probably not go to television as of now. The saas-bahu and mythology stuff is not for us. Young fiction is on YouTube, so it has become the logical extension for us.

Would I like to do a web series? Sure. It’s a question of an improvement in bandwidth.