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Using math to make a successful movie
  • According to these guys it's all in the numbers.

    ScienceDaily (June 13, 2012) — A group of Japanese scientists have surprised themselves by being able to predict the success or failure of blockbuster movies at the box office using a set of mathematical models. The researchers, publishing their study June 15, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics, used the effects of advertising and word-of-mouth communication to create a model that turned out to be successful in predicting how each movie fared once it hit the silver screen. The only data the researchers needed to put into the model were the daily advertisement costs of 25 movies that appeared in Japanese cinemas. Their model was originally designed to predict how word-of-mouth communication spread over social networks, applying it to conversations about movies in particular, which was a success; however, they also found that when they overlapped their predictions with the actual revenue of the films, they were very similar. They now intend to apply their model to other commercial markets, such as online music, food snacks, noodle cups, soft drinks and local events. The researchers, from Tottori University, used their model to calculate the likelihood of an individual going to watch a movie in a Japanese cinema over a period ranging from 60 days prior to the movie's opening date to 100 days after it had opened. Recognising that word-of-mouth communication, as well as advertising, has a profound effect on whether a person goes to see a movie or not, whether this is talking about it to friends (direct communication) or overhearing a conversation about it in a café (indirect communication), the researchers accounted for this in their calculations. The daily number of blog postings for each of the 25 films was also collected from the internet as a means of comparison for the researchers' calculations. Lead author of the study, Professor Akira Ishii, said: "If a person is reading and commenting on a friend's blog, we consider this as direct communication. If a person happens to come across a blog through a series of web pages and links, we consider this indirect communication." The result was a set of graphs outlining a person's intent on watching movies such as The Da Vinci Code, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Spider-Man 3, Transformers and Avatar, based on the daily amount of money spent on advertising the film and word-of-mouth. When overlaid on the actual revenue from these movies whilst screened in the cinema, they appeared to match very well, meaning the calculations could provide a fairly good prediction of how successful a movie could be even before it is released. (snipped)

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120615103702.htm

  • 8 Replies sorted by
  • Btw, this just means how little part of us is human and how big is monkey part :-)

  • Not monkeys, sheep :)

  • Not monkeys, sheep

    Nope, monkeys at their best.

    Big brain need energy saving, so advertisment works ("look, how cool is it!", no need to think go and buy, go and see, ready solution) and social skills are very important (much more than your professional skill or overall level).

  • social skills are very important (much more than your professional skill or overall level)

    Very good point, @Vitaliy_Kiselev. Most of what I'm now seeing (even semi-professionals, such as gigging musicians) is not success based on quality, it's about how well they put stuff out there on social media. I guess it's always been like that, just that I haven't seen it said so clearly before.

  • PS @Vitaliy_Kiselev, just looked to the right, and you have exactly 10000 posts. No connection between this and my previous post, of course, just that I noticed.

  • Marketing is a huge component to financial success, but the data itself can't prove that it's the marketing itself that determines the film's success. Since correlation does not imply causality, other factors may be at play. Perhaps the film's marketing budget is dependent on how successful executives think the movie will be. If the marketing budget is dependent on the budget for the movie, then it could be the movie budget that's determining its success. Word of mouth also can work the other way. The chances of me watching a movie increases if a close friend recommends it, but also decreases if they tell me it sucked. I think everyone has seen an over-hyped movie that sucked, told a friend, and that friend didn't see it because of you. I know I've been on both sides of this.

    If the success of a film mainly depended on its marketing and not so much with the content, then studios could have saved Gigli just by spending more money on commercials. People are dumb, but they know what they like.

    It would actually be a really cool experiment, but it would cost a ton of money. Some billionaire could take a random shitty high school student's feature film, and then spend 20 million dollars marketing it without telling anyone the movie's background. When the movie is released, we can see just how many people go to see it.

  • 10,000 posts hehe. I'm #2 top poster. I'm hoping @driftwood takes over the 2nd place. @LPowell please post more. You Mark... never mind.

  • I believe the power of social networking. Internet is full of junk info. Googling used to give useful links. Not anymore. So why not rely on one's friends' tastes or power blogger's tastes?

    When Facebook (FB) goes below $10, I'd think about buying some shares.