Hindi film industry’s most popular star, Shah Rukh Khan, has a presc­ription for the dismal state of Bollywood and to make it really global. Learn from Hollywood the screenplay writing techniques, visual effects know-how, and the discipline and organisation in doing film business, Khan suggested while addressing the inau­gural session of Ficci-Fra­mes 2010, the annual global convention on the business of entertainment in Mumbai.

“Learning Hollywood screenplay and technology is not about losing the intrinsic quality of our stories. We have to maintain our own cinematic individuality,” said Khan while calling for formation of partnerships with Holly­wood to help the Indian fi­lm industry nurture its potentially different story format, the drama- musical format, and make Bollywood relevant and a global force.

Khan described entertainment as the “fourth basic need” of Indians after “roti, kapda aur makaan” and, according to him, mo­vies can significantly fulfil this fourth need. And to that extent, the movie industry has a lot to learn in order to fulfil that desire adequately.

Emphasising the importance of screenplay, Khan said: “The sooner Indian filmmakers realised that screenplay was not an art form but a science, the fas­ter Indian films will globalise and Hollywood can share that know-how with India.”

According to him, what Indian filmmakers should look for from Hollywood is the training of mechanics for running machines for visual effects.

“We need to develop people who can make us our own cheaper, better and faster software for filmmaking and have a special branch of trained visual effect teams and talent here,” said Khan who also owns Red Chillies VFX and has significant business interest in the special effects space.

Talking about the dis­cipline that Indian film ind­ustry must learn from Ho­llywood, Khan said this discipline of doing business is already existing in other businesses so why should not the Indian movie making business learn it and profit from it.

“This discipline of doing business needs to filter down to our own distribution system of films based on their models and the most essential aspect that we need to learn is the science of marketing of fil­ms,” he said.

He said the time has come to have a symbiotic relationship where Hollywood and Bollywood can both feed off the knowledge that we have instead of just the financial part.

The three-day conference this year, which began on Tuesday, has substantial time dedicated to the discussion of the poor state of story creation and screenplay writing in Bollywood, which many people in the industry think is the primary cause for the poor box office performance of a la­rge number of films.

“There has to be substantial investment in research as part of developing a story and converting it into a cinematic experien­ce. And once that happens, Indian films will appeal to audience across the world and not just to the non-resident Indians,” said Vijay Singh, CEO, Fox Star Studios India, in a discussion moderated by Karan Johar, director, Dharma Productions, on the subject of Indian films going global.

The conference for the first time has also lined up scriptwriting workshops by Hollywood writers like Ste­ven de Souza. The second day will also see key scrip­twriters from India and abroad discus­sing the topic “screenplay, the Indian cinema’s missing link” and “the impact of quality story-telling in fi­lms”