Tollywood: Tech to up box-office barometer

  • | Sunday | 20th January, 2019

That is because they go by the number of clicks the trailers get on YouTube without any solid data to determine the audience’s pulse. “Production houses pump in crores in the promotions and are often unable to determine whether the movie will have a mass appeal. “It will ascertain if the audience is happy, crying or in distress while watching the film. These are important factors that can be useful in making better feature films,” said Suresh Kumar. Among them is the 2017 comedy flick Fukrey Returns , produced by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani’s Excel Entertainment .

HYDERABAD: Much before it hit theatres and got rave reviews – from the audience and critics alike – a group of ‘backroom boys’ was certain that Care of Kancharapalem would take the box office by storm. That its star cast was bereft of any A-lister and the story spun around the ordinary lives of small-towners – in an industry synonymous with larger-than-life depictions – weren’t concerns that its creators had to be worried about, they insisted.Made on an extremely small budget, the 2018 production that lost an opportunity to contest for a national award, went on to rake in Rs 2.5 crore within three weeks.“We got associated with the film at the promotion stage, during the release of the teaser. The rushes were shared with us and we were asked to determine what kind of response the movie would evoke among the audiences, if its characters would be liked and if the film would earn any money at the BO,” said Ashwin Venkatesham, data scientist at Woodcutter. “Our analysis said that it had material for success. After its release, we figured that our accuracy rate was 64% (we were determined that it would do at least that much business),” he added.In the sector since 2017, Woodcutter is a city-based firm that largely works within the Tollywood industry. However, the team has also dabbled with B-town movies. Among them is the 2017 comedy flick Fukrey Returns , produced by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani’s Excel Entertainment . For this Rs 100-crore club offering too, the city boys recommended changes at the promotion-stage. “Production houses pump in crores in the promotions and are often unable to determine whether the movie will have a mass appeal. That is because they go by the number of clicks the trailers get on YouTube without any solid data to determine the audience’s pulse. The algorithm that we have come up with does that and significantly improves the reach of a film,” said Bethnavel Kuppuswamy, founder and chief executive officer of Woodcutter.The fact that this artificial intelligence-driven algorithm is working is evident from the response of big-ticket T-town producers who have been lapping it all up of late. With bigger and better movies flooding the screens every Friday and Baahubali setting a new record with its Rs 1,800-crore collections worldwide, they are only too happy to use technology to pump up their earnings. “It is very exciting to see technology being used for predictive analysis. Given that the success of a film eventually depends on how the audiences react to it, it makes sense to adopt mechanisms that will identify the emotions of the viewers on digital platforms when a film is in the promotion stage,” said T-town veteran Suresh Kumar, owner of Suresh Productions , which was founded by D Ramanaidu.He shared that the production house is developing a technology using AI that will capture facial reactions of the audience as they watch a movie. “It will ascertain if the audience is happy, crying or in distress while watching the film. These are important factors that can be useful in making better feature films,” said Suresh Kumar.

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