Software Predicts Movie Success 192
scheming daemons writes "TechNewsWorld has an article about software that predicts whether a movie will be successful or not by factoring in its rating by censors (e.g. G, PG, R), strength of the cast, genre, competition from other films at the time of release, special effects, whether it is a sequel, and the number of theaters in which it will show."
What about the most important part? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about the most important part? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about the most important part? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What about the most important part? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What about the most important part? (Score:2)
You don't need a good script to make a good movie, either.
Not that success and good anything but correlate, but some of the better movies I've seen have had lousy/inexistant scripts.
In a visual medium like movies, a lot of other things come into play, that may appeal to you. Script is just part of it.
Hollywood has used this formula for years: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hollywood has used this formula for years: (Score:2, Interesting)
And, this formula WONDERFULLY explains the COLOSSAL sucess of 'Showgirls'...
Re:Hollywood has used this formula for years: (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hollywood has used this formula for years: (Score:2)
overtraining. (Score:5, Insightful)
And then when they are done they find that any future predictve power it has only is focused into a couple of clusters that any fool could have told you were sure bets. It has not value unless your goal is to recycle the same things over and over till there's just one tru formula that all money making movies must follow.
I suspect movie making is probably a lot like the stockmarket. While there's general themes that always have positive returns, the can't be a formula for big success because if there were then once it was known it would not work anymore. Originality and a cyclic nature of traditional themes is the flow but not predictable.
Re:overtraining. (Score:4, Insightful)
You think this isn't their goal?
Re:overtraining. (Score:2)
Re:overtraining. (Score:2)
How do you know he overtrained his system?
I have just enough experience with these subjects to conclude that the article hasn't given enough information to make a decision in either direction.
I'll admit that this system doesn't have a whole lot of value when it comes to fostering creativity, and may even stifle it by placing another strike against small-budget films that could defy the odds. But in an industry that frequently makes $100M "oopsies", it may have some value.
Re:overtraining. (Score:2)
If a bunch of studio executives with a lot of hollywood experience and a lot of money to lose can't figure out that these movies will be "oopsies", why should a non-intelligent computer program that extrapolates results based on a few broad parameters do any better?
Re:overtraining. (Score:2)
In the real world, this tool will be touted when it's saying what the execs want to hear, and dismissed as hogwash when it predicts failure. So I really don't see it making a big difference either
Re:overtraining. (Score:2)
I have just enough experience with these subjects to conclude that the article hasn't given enough information to make a decision in either direction
Apparently not. Read the article again and then re-read my post. First I do explain in part why I think it is hopeless: the cylclical nature of the favorite and the likilihood that good movies lie outside the main clusters.
But read the article and you see he claims 75% accuracy on 7 catagories if he is allowed a bin p
Re:overtraining. (Score:2)
Re:Hollywood has used this formula for years: (Score:2)
Score = (numCarChases + numExplosions + numTits^2) / (budget/1000000)
I think you underestimated the power of tits.
Re:Hollywood has used this formula for years: (Score:2)
I'm trying to work out Total Recall fits in to your new equation...
The singularity is near... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe we're finally coming out of the "AI Winter" it seems like we've been in for a decade or so...
td
Re:The singularity is near... (Score:2, Informative)
Unless yours was a reference to the awful film A.I.
Re:The singularity is near... (Score:2)
Re:regression analysis has nothing to do with AI (Score:2)
The code (Score:2, Funny)
if ( this_is_mainstream() ) {
if ( good )
return 1;
else
printf("50 Million USD");
} else
printf("Sued out of existence before it's released");
return 0;
}
King Kong (Score:2, Interesting)
King Kong is flopping like a pancake...
Re:King Kong (Score:3, Insightful)
Please tell me you're not basing that statment on a total of three days of release time! Try making a more correct statement in two months or so.
Re:King Kong (Score:2)
What he means to say is that it's well done on both sides, and is turning nicely (as in profit).
Re:King Kong (Score:2)
A pancake is a hotcake....so King Kong is selling like hotcakes! Cool, so this will be the biggest hit of the year then. AND it's a good movie to boot.
Thanks for your insight.
Re:King Kong (Score:2)
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/king_kong/ [rottentomatoes.com]
http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/kingkong [metacritic.com]
Program?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Program?? (Score:4, Informative)
Excel my as (Score:2, Insightful)
One of those two methods is bad math
Re:Excel my as (Score:2)
>>I seriosuly doubt that he picked Method #2
>> you'll discover they're using a nerual network
Using a neural network, in fact, means that they let the computer find the best equation. It's just that with a neural network, you don't get to know what it is.
Re:Excel my as (Score:2)
Which one? Why?
Regression is an accepted method to generate a model from data. Of course any model has deficiencies, that where good logic comes into play, to identify those deficiencies, and correct them if possible. It may have taken the professor 7 years to define the right variables and collect the data, but once the data is available, the model can be constructed within a couple of days using Excel.
Re:Excel my as (Score:2)
Re:Program?? (Score:2)
You would gett more karma if you used Calc or gnumeric ;o)
Music Industry Did This Too (Score:5, Insightful)
The big recording labels had developed software to determine the quality of song. Apparently, they could determine if a song would be a megahit or a flop. Judging from what I've heard on the radio, it doesn't seem to work. Hopefully the movie industry will have better success.
http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]Re:Music Industry Did This Too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Music Industry Did This Too (Score:2)
implicit none
logical
write(6,*) "Is this track published by a corporation which is a member of the RIAA?"
read(5,*) isRIAA
if (isRIAA) then
write(6,*) "Track will flop"
else
write(6,*) "Track will be a hit"
end if
stop
end program DetermineHit
!what's so hard about that?
Re:Music Industry Did This Too (Score:4, Insightful)
In any given genre - there was one or a generation of breakthrough artists and then the imitators get quickly spawned off to leech off that success. These algorithms try to predict the success of the leeches.
Just watch TV for confirmation - CSI becomes successful - there are X,000 CSI like shows on TV now. Medium becomes successful, how many medium-type show are on TV now? (I'm not saying these are the original trendsetters, but the original ones for this TV cycle).
But if the creative arts are tested against these algorithms, diversity will die and so will the audience as everything will become the SOS (Same Old Shit, more than it is now).
Re:Music Industry Did This Too (Score:2)
But you are listening to it on the radio, so the industry has already won.
Re:Music Industry Did This Too (Score:2)
It will never work. This is because when several companies have software that will predict something collide, they compete and we end up with recycled drivel.
This is similar to stock market analysis software. A software program that (hypothetically) successfully predicts which stocks will rise stops working as soon as a bunch of people use it.
But what about (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, this actually kind of disgusts me since it seems IMHO that it relies on the same formulaic approach that's responsible for the poor offerings that Hollywood is currently producing.
Re:But what about (Score:2)
I shouldn't rag on you for liking it, though. God knows I've loved lots of movies that everyone else hated. There's no accounting for taste, especially mine.
Re:But what about (Score:2)
Mmmm.. MTV Sheeple.
HJ
Re:But what about (Score:2)
Have you seen the movie? I was not aware it was produced by MTV until their logo popped up... I was disappointed, but oh well. The idea for the film certainly didn't come from MTV; the DVD includes a short black and white precursor to Napoleon Dynamite. For me, I think the quality that separates films I really like from films only mildly entertaining is something like a vibe of honesty or love.. Like, I feel that Napoleon was produced in order to make a funny movie, not in order to make money. I just w
Infallible? (Score:4, Funny)
Hmmm...I wonder what it had to say about Waterworld...
Re:Infallible? (Score:2)
Dead Poets Society (Score:5, Funny)
More data than they need (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More data than they need (Score:2)
Re:More data than they need (Score:2)
Re:More data than they need (Score:2, Informative)
Not Objective Criteria (Score:3, Insightful)
Obligatory Futurama (Score:5, Funny)
Executive Alpha: Hey hey hey.
Network President: Executive Beta, programmed to roll dice to determine the fall schedule.
Executive Beta: (rolls dice) More reality shows!
Network President: And Executive Gamma, programmed to underestimate Middle America.
Executive Gamma: It's funny, but is it going to get them off their tractors?
Re:Obligatory Futurama (Score:2)
Constants for Various Artists (Score:3, Insightful)
Will it be based on looks or on acting ability? There would be some serious issues if they used acting abilities. There are some horid actors/actresses that sell boatloads because they look great, and then there are some...well...less visually pleasing folks, that are fantastic actors/actresses.
Re:Constants for Various Artists (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously - most of these parameters aren't very quantitative. I want to see some code.
Re:Constants for Various Artists (Score:2)
Well I've just been watching 'Star Trek: The Next Generation', from the beginning. And I can only say... theres a difference? Looks and acting ability can be *equally* bad and still make successful TV (yeah I know this is about movies but these days hey, I call the Brak show a 'movie', hows that?).
There are some horid actors/actresses that sell boatloads because they look great, and then there ar
So the solution to Hollywood's problem... (Score:3, Funny)
Statistically (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Statistically (Score:2)
Pixar films are like going to the circus, you know you'll get a few laughs, see a few animals, have some pop corn and generally have an enjoyable 2 hours. It's more or less a risk free movie, children will all adore it and want to see it. Parents will get dragged along (my parents often goto see Pixar films and they're not into films at all) and end up enjoying the slap stick comedy just as much as the kids.
Star wars is a
Re:Statistically (Score:2, Interesting)
garbage in, garbage out (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like saying you can dump fois gras, Chateau Latour, beluga caviar and a savoy truffle into a blender and end up with the world's most wonderful milkshake. In the end it's a recipe for mediocrity, at best. More often, all you get is expensive puke.
If one could predict success by adding up the elements that go into movie making, then "Catwoman" should have been the megahit of 2004.
Re:garbage in, garbage out (Score:2, Funny)
This is just like sesame street. Which one of these doesn't belong?
(Hint, Savoy Truffle isn't a fungus).
Re:garbage in, garbage out (Score:2)
From Wikipedia:
So... it may not be a fungus, but you could drop chocolate truffles into a blender with the rest, too. :)
Re:garbage in, garbage out (Score:2)
One of the best things you can do when coming up with a system like this is to create some sort of baseline to compare it against. For example, if you want to k
Pure garbage (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pure garbage (Score:2)
If the factors you listed as important were the only factors that really influenced the outcome, that would have manifested in the strengths of the neural net. It's very possible that the creator had a couple of other factors he was looking at, which didn't significantly
Simple formula to use (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not that impressive at all (Score:5, Interesting)
So we have a predictor that makes 0.63/0.88 ~= 70% as many mistakes as a dartboard. If you give it one category of "wiggle", it makes 0.25/0.66 ~= 40% as many mistakes as a dartboard.
People are making a lot of hay out of this. It tells you that small movies (opening on fewer screens) are very seldom blockbusters, and that heavily promoted movies almost always make at least ten million or so. How is this unexpected? I bet I could get similar predictive power using a SINGLE variable - the promotion budget for each of the films. If it could tell us something actually interesting (or useful to hollywood types) - like "why are some big budget movies successful while others are not?" - that might be worth something.
Also, the journalist is a nitwit - "North American ticket sales currently total $7.6 million."
This explains a lot (Score:2, Insightful)
This explains more than anything else why the quality of the majority of movies dropped so fast in the last few years.
None of those parameters can measure (digitally) the quality of the story, quality of acting (note: not popularity of the cast, Pam Anderson is also popular) and quality of the movie anyway.
Hearing from buddies or critic reviews, that a movie is poorly done mix up of popular actors, effects and soft porn with dumb as stics scenario st
Awesome-O (Score:5, Funny)
37% is successful? What about "fan factor"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Where this gets stupid are the advertising, word of mouth, and "fanatic" factors.
First, if a studio thinks a film is going to tank, they won't advertise it and won't push it to as many screens. As a result, less people even know the film exists and even if they do, it is harder to find. I can think of several movies that were awesome films that were just not advertised. I never saw a commercial for Usual Suspects, but saw it after a friend said it was the best movie they had ever seen. If the studio predicts failure, it could be a self-fulfilling prophesy, but I think the age of quick DVD release and peer recommendations is changing this.
That brings me to the second factor - word of mouth. How do you put word of mouth into a formula? Maybe I am in a very small minority, but my interest in a movie goes up significantly if a trusted friend (key point, others I do the exact opposite of what they say) says it is am AWESOME movie. They rank many movies as good, but very few as awesome. So what is the Awesome determinator? A movie can creep out of nowhere and just keep growing on the word of mouth factor. I admit that this is not a common event, but one that would seem nearly impossible to predict.
Finally, the fanatic factor. Remember where fan comes from. There are certain writers, directors, actors, soundtrack performers, etc. that carry a certain draw all on their own. Josh Weadon could write a movie about a girl who has poo flinging superpowers and tens of thousands of fans would go see it based on his name, but almost all would be inside a tight demographic. 37% sounds about right in this area.
As a final addition, there is the stupidity of Hollywood factor. They make movies based on what movie-goers like. There are less movie-goers each year because there is less for movie-goers to like. Why pay $25 for tickets, coke, and popcorn to take the wife to see a movie when I can go the big screen TV, NetFlix, and Newman's Own Microwave Popcorn route? My wife would probably add the "you can't pause the theater movie to go pee" factor, too.
Hollywood responds with stupid formulas like this that lets them focus on certain formula films fed to certain demographics and expect a simple equation where you fill in 40 variables and get instant profit. Political and religious discussions aside, the Passion totally breaks the mold. I went with 10 people to see that movie in the opening week and 6 of those people had not been to a theater in years.
The box is getting smaller each year and each year Hollywood continues to segment the box into what it thinks is the most profitable section, throw their efforts there, and alienate another years worth of eyeballs out of the box.
My hope is for alternative delivery and an uprooting of the current studio/distribution model. When the fanatics have a mechanism for funding a film or tv series that goes to internet and/or dvd delivery, the whole world changes. There are multiple ways to do this, too. Fans could pre-pay for a season of tv in order to get the dvds as they are made instead of in a boxed set (with no rental/netflix option until the boxed set was out). A film company could put up a bond that they would sell to the fans for a share of the profits.
If you really think JMS is so awesome, how many $50 bonds would you buy? If he sold 100,000 bonds with a 20% of profit share, made the movie for the $5 million, and netted only $30 million on theater, pay-per-view, and dvd, you would still get $60 back for each $50 investment.
Re:37% is successful? What about "fan factor"? (Score:2)
Depends on what you do. In my R&D work, if I'm successful 37% of the time, people begin to wonder if I'm pushing the envelope hard enough.
Ticket Sales (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ticket Sales (Score:2)
Get Rich Fast Scheme (Score:3, Insightful)
2. make a software that conforms to the already existing stats and "guesses" the income. If it doesn't guess it, tweak until it "guesses" it.
3. pitch it to Holywood execs by demonstrating it "works" by entering the same movie info you have already tweaked it for
4. profit
Of course the fact that it has (well, relatively poor IMO - 37% success? 75% "sort of success"?) success with the db of 800 movies is a result of it been tuned to work for those stats, and there's totally no guarantee it'll work for future releases.
Especially that it can't and won't factor in the most important factor: does the movie suck after all or not.
Noticeably absent... (Score:3, Funny)
How does Passion of Christ or Mystic River fit. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How does Passion of Christ or Mystic River fit. (Score:3)
Ah, but you're missing the point: this wasn't a formula to see how good a movie will be, but how much money it will make. Two completely seperate issues.
IMHO, it's very possible to determine the latter with this degree of success just by figuring out how many individuals are going to see the movie once. It's those people who go seven times that give it the error margin, and how do you quantify the quality of the movie?
Re:How does Passion of Christ or Mystic River fit. (Score:2)
Some movies are about the plots, others are the furthest thing from it. Look at thenew star wars episodes 1,2 and 3. All those movies I thought sucked compared to the originals (except maybe starwars "episode 4", they still dont ho
Re: (Score:2)
citation + main (unimpressive) results (Score:4, Informative)
The main result is that the method (neural net) works a little better than other methods on the same data (Table 4 of paper). It scores 75% in a test; conventional regression scores 71%. As they say in the statistical literature, "big woop"; the fancy new thing is marginally better than the simple old thing.
As for the practical side of things, the main predictive variable is the number of screens on which the film was initially shown. The next-highest predictive variables are a variable representing the use of technical effects and a variable represengint the actors' reputation. Well, none of these indicates that this tool (or others discussed in the paper) is of any real use to the industry. The suggested use of the tool is to predict movie success. But the main predictive variables all represent things the industry already knew, when the film was being made and promoted. It's like asking a patient if they have a cold, and then charging them to tell them they have a cold.
Chewbacca? (Score:2)
Dupe. (Score:3, Funny)
Um, Ok, how bout this, Adam Sandler, is like in love with some girl, but then it turns out, that the girl is actually a golden retriever, or something.
Pointless (Score:3, Insightful)
Classifier and statistics (Score:3, Informative)
Reading TFA, it's impossible to know whether this study has any value without seing a proper article, as submited to a reputable stats journal.
First of all this sounds like simple statistical classification with pretty obvious variables. However making classification work is not always trivial.
Methodology is the key here. The sample of 800 movies is rather small, and the details on the chosen explanatory variables is sketchy. With enough variables, even meaningless ones, one can explain anything on a training sample. However with proper classification techniques, using for example jacknife/resubstitution/cross-validation [wikipedia.org] one can find out if the classification model has any actual predictive values.
As someone said "anybody can predict the past", and someone else "prediction is rather difficult, especially about the future".
With props to Inigo Montoya... (Score:2)
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Censoring a movie would be an accurate description if the MPAA actually edited the movie. They rate the movie which allows consumers to make an educated decision about seeing the movie.
Re:With props to Inigo Montoya... (Score:2)
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Censori
Re:With props to Inigo Montoya... (Score:2)
What about the movies it failed on? (Score:2, Insightful)
My Software Success Detector says... (Score:2)
Did software predict that: remakes = success? (Score:2)
What movies were not remakes were almost all sequals, TV show adaptations, comic/children's book adaptaions, or biographies. What ever happend to an original idea? Can't you get that from software?
Remakes:
"King Kong"
"Willy Wonka"
"Yours, Mine, and Ours"
"The Bad News Bears"
"War of the Worlds"
"The Fog"
"Oliver Twist"
"The Longest Yard"
"Damn Yankees"
"Fun With Dick and Jane"
revenge of the nerds
Remakes in the works:
"Doberman Gang"
"Superman"
"Bullit"
"The Birds"
"Warriors
Like psychohistory? (Score:2)
Suddenly I'm reminded of Asimov's fictional science of Psychohistory, which, in later books set in that universe written by Brin, Bear and Benford, which alluded to the fact that psychohistory was accurate only because humanity, under control for years by robots bent on making humanity happy, had managed to mane humanity incredibly predictable.
Most movies
Circular Nonsense (Score:2)
What the hell is the point of this? Why would someone spend time developing an algorithm that uses budget as one of the variables? Budget is something that would be based on an algorithm like this. So, this is basically saying: some group of people already decided that this movie is a good investment based on a number of factors; based on that,our formula thinks this movie will be successful, and it performs at a whopping 26% higher than chance.
Well pop the champagne.
How about this formula: (Score:2)
Where R = Ratings,
R
There you go.
Thanks, I'll be in all night.
I thought this already existed... (Score:2)
I thought that such software already existed, and was called P2P. Really, it's simple: create a 700MB file containing some video footage (doesn't have to have anything to do with your movie) and share it on Fasttrack / Gnutella / whatever. The number of downloads = the amount of interest in the movie, which correlates directly on how many people will go see it on the theater.
To keep from pissing people off too badly - remember, these are the people who are interested in the movie, and therefore most likel
Good acting, good plot, crappy dialog (Score:2)
There is no magic bullet, if you make a stew from the best ingredients of 5 different other foods you can still end with something that tastes overall like strawberry-flavored-fish-in-marinara-sauce.
Re:NOT INSIGHTFUL. DIE. (Score:3, Interesting)
We have an entire industry devoted to figuring out which movies will be most successful, how best to advertise them, how many theaters to release a given movie in, etc. Arguably, this entire industry is less talented at picking winners than a small shell script. If yo