Partners in rhyme

Figures talk. So figures first. Of the year's 10 biggest box office blockbusters so far, just one "" Kajrare from the con flick Bunty Aur Babli "" could claim to have drawn crowds into cinema halls with an "item number", a song-n-dance teaser that seems inserted into a film basically to rock airwaves outside the halls.

Of course, "title tracks" (Dhoom last year, for example, and No Entry this year) have always served a similar purpose, of advertising films by popularising titles, but these are largely in the nature of "sampler" ads.

What job do item numbers perform? Take Bunty Aur Babli. It is the year's biggest grosser, no doubt, raking in estimates upwards of Rs 50 crore, but the film's drool factor "" Aishwarya Rai's aforementioned item number "" was not used as a teaser campaign in the lead-up to the film's curtain-raiser.

The film's title track, a rap fusion number, was meant to do that, and it got only a lukewarm response. Kajrare struck later. It was a surprise flung upon the viewer, and then word-of-mouth and airplay took over, helping set off waves of repeat attendance as the song's salience reached a slow crescendo.

So, do item numbers "" and they do seem to be getting raunchier film after film "" make terrific ads for films or not?

What works is welcome. This is the basic industry view. "If the song is good," as film producer Vashu Bhagnani puts it, "it just helps you market the movie better. Beyond that it is the audience's prerogative."

As a device, an item has given many a film a taste of success. "Any innovation, item number or otherwise, does contribute to the overall appeal of the film, but none of the hits in 2005 could be attributed to just an item number," in the analysis of Tarun Tripathi, manager, marketing, Yash Raj Films, "Item numbers can enhance the movie, but if a film lacks quality content, a well composed and visualised item number cannot sell the movie on its own."

That view is endorsed by Taran Adarsh, trade analyst. Item numbers must complement the storyline in some way, he feels. "They manage to get footfalls into multiplexes," he observes. "Item numbers usually help getting in distributors," adds Komal Nahta, another trade analyst, "and contribute in getting a larger section of audiences.

An item number featuring a top star tends to provide a lot more mileage as compared to an unknown artiste." Nahata recalls the example of Ishq Kameena in a film called Shakti. "Boney Kapoor had to pay a really fancy price to rope in Aishwarya and it was only due to this one song that the movie made an opening," he says.

Clearly, the item's communicative thrust must not be completely out of whack with the content of the film. As in advertising, relevance must go with originality. It is a matter of creative synergy, which is not easy to achieve.

"In most cases," says Piyush Pandey, national creative director, Ogilvy & Mather, an ad agency, "an item number is viewed as 'timepass' and does not really talk about the product per se, as against an ad film which needs to talk about the product in totality." While the sexual overtones in an item number might attract some people irrespective of the storyline, sustained success is made of sterner stuff.

Agrees Prasoon Joshi, national creative director, South Asia, McCann Erickson, another ad agency. He wonders if the drool factor alone is good enough any longer, given the extent to which risque imagery has come to suffuse urban spaces. "Today it is a tough call to state that one would go for a movie on the basis of just one item number," says Joshi, "although that still might hold true in the case of smaller towns."

An item teaser cannot act as a film's reason-to-watch for another reason, too: if it catches on, it catches on. It reaches far beyond the cinema halls in any case. For free. A successful item, thus, would do just enough to engage the optic nerves well enough to arouse the cine-goer in some refreshing way, and no further "" but then ensure that the film also comes good.

Both must come good. One must vibe with the other, without giving away any more than necessary. Like the con couple of the year, rivetting in the act, but ready to give anyone the slip.