Ultimately, who makes a movie a hit or a flop? It’s the audience. Now, you get an exciting chance to win free movie tickets and other gifts by the hour, thanks to 1D1S.
With a self-explanatory title, the fun app developed by city-based entrepreneur Samson Manickaraj employs a novel way of movie promotion, letting you take a sneak-peak into an audio clip of an upcoming movie — say, a stand-out punch dialogue or a dramatic speech with all the fire and brimstone of the background score. It doesn’t end there. 1D1S lets you lib-dub the clip and share it on myriad plaforms. The idea is to make the promo go viral.
“Movies are produced with a lot of hard work but their promotions have traditionally been a boring affair. Production houses still follow the same old routine of posters and ads. We wanted to make it more fun, engaging and also add virality into it by letting people participate in the promotion of a new flick,” says Samson.
Every hour, the 1D1S’ backend algorithms monitor which users generate maximum buzz about a movie in that past hour, to choose the prize recipients. Apart from free movie tickets, users are handed out headphones, sunglasses etc. Though the app is currently supported only on android phones, Samson says his team is working towards expansion.
Samson, who describes himself as a “problem-solver”, struck upon the idea during a conversation with a television executive. “He pointed out how movie producers are struggling with promotion and that’s when I felt, if the common people too are brought into a gamified environment for promotion, that can make a big difference,” he recounts.
Future ‘superstars’
Despite the heavy competition for space in the modern digital-driven entertainment market, Samson was not daunted to march ahead. “We don’t compete with anybody. We are in our own space. We are already talking to a couple of production houses about using the ‘superstar talent’ from among 1D1S users in order to provide them opportunity in movies. So expect 1D1S to produce future stars,” he laughs.
1D1S usually features clips, provided by the production houses, that “can spark a conversation.” Mersal, Theeran, Velaikkaran have been among the more popular ones that have received a remarkable response so far.
“There is one [clip] in Velaikkaran that’s is going viral now. When we say viral, it is not just what’s happening within 1D1S; we also track the user-dubbed-videos shared on other platforms and how far they reach. Some user videos reach the 3rd degree network of the user within 1 hour, and that is quite phenomenal,” Samson says, adding that typical users have been in the age bracket of 15 to 54.
Though the app catapulted itself to popularity thanks to Tamil movies, 1D1S now features Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada and Bengali movies, says Samson, who is currently busy with the promotions for Velaikkaran . “We are already signing up another four movies in Tamil.”
“When you aim for virality, you leave the choice of platform to the user. We encourage users to share their dubbed clips on social platforms of their choice. It could be Twitter or Facebook or WhatsApp. We don’t try to control that,” says Samson, revealing that the app currently has about 20,000 users. “I’m a 1D1S addict. Every time there is a clip, I like to be the first to dub on 1D1S. Friends tease me over the addiction but that’s only because they are way below me on the 1D1S dub list. Haha,” responds Sundar, a 1D1S user.
