Solving Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data (NYTimes article)

refocusedmedia said:
An interesting read: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/b...-equation-of-a-hit-film-script-with-data.html

What do you guys think about this?
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Almost zero applicability to most people posting, or even reading this site.

If you can make 100's millions on a few percentage points... that is if you have billions to invest... it may be useful... but otherwise, while script is essential, there are many factors for which the nolo budget filmmaker has no solutions by which they can make a block buster.
 
I would love to see how this data algorithm scores cinematic masterpieces like "Ishtar", "Heaven's Gate", "Water World" or any Pauly Shore movie.
 
This is soulless, perverse, quite stupid, and flat out wrong-- its amazing that anyone involved in movie-making would think that this could work reliably. Story elements interact and intertwine, so what if a "summoned demon" is an integral part of an otherwise brilliant script? Erm.... "Hellraiser" has "summoned demons"..and it is, to most horror fans, a BETTER MOVIE than "Paranormal Activity". So there goes the theory, blasted to bits, right there.

Truly ridiculous. If everyone thought like this, there'd be no Pixar and no Toy Story (it'd be full of "songs, a villain", etc).... It's the suits that wanted Toy Story to be "more edgy" and Woody to be a wise-arse jerk.

nsfw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxDwieKpawg


A person will never learn screenwriting, by that way, until they get out of the "get-rich-quick" phase where they're hunting for magic secrets (we all start in it). There are TECHNIQUES, but they are FLEXIBLE, and can only be loose guidelines, because again, a story is an intertwined, organic whole.
 
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I think everyone forgets it is a business. 20K is a small investment against 100MM film to at least say or try to have done everything you could to make it good.

I doubt anyone who reads this board is in the circle of people that greenlight 100MM films. I imagine the pressure is huge not to f up.

If you are in that elite circle - please send me a pm - I have some ideas I wanna pitch.:Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
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prexdealer said:
I think everyone forgets it is a business. 20K is a small investment against 100MM film to at least say or try to have done everything you could to make it good.

I doubt anyone who reads this board is in the circle of people that greenlight 100MM films. I imagine the pressure is huge not to f up.

If you are in that elite circle - please send me a pm - I have some ideas I wanna pitch.:Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
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Investors are sheep. They often exhibit the 'herd' mentality, and these sorts of 'market prospectus' offerings attempt to assuage the worries of the sheep.

The only significant 'twist' is the tagging of 'script elements' to perform some form of regression analysis, and obviously, some amount of 'industry' heat in the movie making business...
 
Time will tell, the first time he bags a movie script that turns out to be blockbuster by someone else will see the last of this guy.

Cheers.
 
It can only tell you what the film would have done in the past, but not the future. I do think this guy will make money for a little while, but ultimately he'll have to show that it actually works.
 
Chris_Keaton said:
It can only tell you what the film would have done in the past, but not the future. I do think this guy will make money for a little while, but ultimately he'll have to show that it actually works.
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From my view, the way 'stats' seem to work best is identifying 'markets', and as such, there are many suppliers of such information. The problem is that most such 'data mining' is directed to 'big unexplored' markets, rather than finding very specific niche markets. Markets which may allow a very small production company to make a 'living', but not necessarily yield the next big blockbuster tentpole.

Further complicating matters is the fact that these 'data mining' reports are often expensive... and so the small time operator doesn't use them, because between funding a film, and paying even $1000 for a market analysis... making the film seems to make more sense.
 
ultimately its amazing that otherwise intelligent people, whose business is, essentially, making art, have not figured out that subject matter, tone, and form/execution are separate artistic elements, with subject matter being the least important. You can make a good or bad work on any subject, its like day one of art school. Leaning on talented and time-tested directors and actors? That's smart. Manufacturing a creative endeavor based on subject matter? Its just flat out wrong and bone-headed, and shows no real understanding of the nature of creativity.
 

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I'm sure at some point, your screenplay pdf will be fed into a program. The computer will do an analysis and spit your script back out with a pass or recommend. Dreams crushed in nanoseconds. Hooray for progress.
 
Batutta said:
I'm sure at some point, your screenplay pdf will be fed into a program. The computer will do an analysis and spit your script back out with a pass or recommend. Dreams crushed in nanoseconds. Hooray for progress.
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Which is yet another reason for my constant refrain... "Make your own damn movie"... Waiting for Godot Productions to come, buy, develop, and get it on to a screen... is essentially waiting for death.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Which is yet another reason for my constant refrain... "Make your own damn movie"... Waiting for Godot Productions to come, buy, develop, and get it on to a screen... is essentially waiting for death.
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This would be a perfect setting for a french/hungarian/german arthouse movie about the perils and sufferings of making films that are not made .... Neo-auteur, post-Berlin-school and suicide! May make no money but make it to Cannes.... :-)
 
nycineaste said:
...... with subject matter being the least important. ...... shows no real understanding of the nature of creativity.
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I beg to disagree a bit. Subject matter matters a lot in film and there is - or should be - a form/function correlation. And there is definitely a great difference between single works of visual arts and movies which are - at least in the case of narrative and most documentary film - works of dramatic art.

And dramatic art becomes dramatically un-dramatic the moment it is too concerned with form. Too many movies that are only nice window-dressing. So, yes, subject matter becomes tremendously important because it defines a movie and the probability people might want to watch it.

On the other hand you are right - given someone is extremely creative in the visual as in the dramatic arts, he/she should be able to make a long film about the love and death of - for instance - an unlikely couple like a harzer and a naked mole rat.

What concerns me more is when success of a movie is defined by the box-office alone. There still is something we call culture and while I dearly believe that movies are the wonderful hybrids born out of nearly all art-forms and the flagrant, wonderful impertinence of the fair ground, too much of either the one or the other sends me snoring. But: That's just me, probably.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Which is yet another reason for my constant refrain... "Make your own damn movie"... Waiting for Godot Productions to come, buy, develop, and get it on to a screen... is essentially waiting for death.
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There are people who are only interested in writing. Who have no interest or aptitude for anything else. Not everyone is a director, producer, editor, cinematographer.
 
Rolf Silber said:
This would be a perfect setting for a french/hungarian/german arthouse movie about the perils and sufferings of making films that are not made .... Neo-auteur, post-Berlin-school and suicide! May make no money but make it to Cannes.... :-)
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Watched "Strictly Ballroom"(1993) last night, had a fight with the Wife about the merits of the 'new bluray' vs. the old DVD, but the BD had a short with Luhrmann and his producer and the woman who provided some amount of investment. When they finally made SB, presented it to an australian distributor, the distributor walked out of the showing, then later said it was the 'worst' film he had seen... somehow the film was presented to someone at Cannes, it was shown at midnight to a half filled audience... but that audience response was a 15 minute standing ovation, and they had another showing again at midnight, and the lines were around the block... the rest is history...

Unfortunately I don't think I could 'guarantee' such a response from Cannes... but it has happened... and lighting at Cannes does seem to strike more than once...

Unfortunately I don't have the infrastructure to create a poignant, brooding, existentially profound, french/german/hungarian arthouse Cannes lighting in a bottle...

I'll have to settle for a mid-20's transvestite stripper who finds fame and fortune working in a Tijuana strip joint, and luring young sailors to their sexual identity doom.
(If I put in brooding putting on of make-up interspersed with long thoughtful puffings of cigarettes, will that be the ticket to the 'arthouse' scene? Or, how about a catchy title of "Sailor Moon" to cash in on the east Asia style arty houseness)
 
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