Movie Math Reveals the Formula for a Hollywood Blockbuster

What did you see the last film in theaters? I rarely go to movies, partly because I prefer the TV series – especially the action shows with detectives (recommendations welcome!). But I go to movies for real blockbusters, such as Dune Films. I have to accept, seeing an epic story on the big screen is still a special experience.

In 2020, cinema-boiling collapsed amidst the Kovid epidemic. Since, there has been attendance on the rise In many parts of the world but still below the prepaidemic level. The rise of streaming services such as inflation, Netflix and a change towards the prestigious TV series can play a role in these trends. Therefore, the film industry is under pressure to attract people to film theaters. Mathematics may be able to help.

In 2020, British data scientist Sugarcane Pogrebna and his colleagues published a paper which Revenue, expenditure and popularity rating analyzed Out of more than 6,000 different films. The findings mapped the story lines in films and combined those stories with audience approval and money.

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Storytelling: Aristotle to Hollywood

Researchers’ study was based on A prior analysis of literary works By researchers at the University of Vermont in Australia and the University of Adelaide. Both studies created on the grounds that the vast majority of stories can be mapped only on the story arch.

This idea has been around for some time. Some 2,300 years ago, Polymath Aristotu was already thinking Manufacture of stories And how can they move the audience. And in the 20th century, Kurt Wongut Each story came out of the sadness or happiness expressed from the beginning to the end and examined the emotional progress of the famous stories.

Inspired by Wongut’s “Story Shapes”, the University of the University of the Vermont and Adelaide team fed 1,327 stories from the story of Project Gutenberg for an algorithm and identified six major emotional arcs in stories (spiiler for classic films and books):

Money

These stories begin with a negative position and a hero, who should do their work over time. A classic film is an example Groundhog DayIn which the main character finds himself in a strange prediction to relieve the same day in a single day, and improves his conditions as he learns more and more than his situation.

Tragedy

This is the reverse arch. In tragedies, things begin positively and end negatively. Think of Romeo and Juliet: The couple are happy in their love in the beginning, but by the end, both heroes are dead.

Man in a hole

In these stories, the hero is doing well, and then things take a negative turn, but until the end they are often in more favorable position than the beginning. Is a classic example RighteousCoralion Crime Family is at the beginning of power at the beginning of the film, but then the major family are seriously injured and his eldest son is murdered. The youngest son, hero, then receives a unique amount when he plays the role of a leader and is made a new Godfather.

Ikaras

This arc inverses man into a hole story. Think about the character of Leonardo Dicaprio Titanic: A poor man falls in love with a glamorous adventure, but finally destroys hypothermia. Name of the great Gatsby It also follows what starts like a ravine to give money to the success story and ends with his murder.

Cinderella

Cinderella’s stories begin with a bad situation that initially improves to the hero, then kills an emotional lineage, but ends with a pleasure at any time. Think of Babe, a small piglet from the Epinem film that struggles to find its place on the farm, but when she begins to learn for the flock sheep, she rotates things. Unfortunately, he is then put in a dangerous position while defending the herd. Happily, by the end of the story, everything works, and the babe wins a herring competition.

Edipus

The emotional arc of Odipus is the opposite of Cinderella. Things begin well, but then there is a stroke of bad luck. The hero again raises himself to end in a bad position. Examples of these arched characters include Doomed Nayaks Francustein, Mobi dick Or Small village,

Pogrebna’s team wanted to find out if the feature films also follow these six emotional progress and if yes, which structure pays the most. Researchers downloaded English subtitles of 6,174 films and then analyzed them by sentence for their emotional material. He assigned a score to each word based on emotion: -1 -1 for a negative, 0 for neutral and +1 for positive. The researchers then assigned an emotional value to each sentence based on the words and scale the sentence values ​​to fall between -1 and +1. To compare different -length films, he processed the data in such a way that each story boiled at 100 individual data points.

To meet the stories, researchers needed a way to measure the distance between the emotional arcs of any two films. According to researchers, the difference between two arcs of tension with the respective sets of data points X And Y Can be calculated as follows:

With that equation, the researchers were able to compare the difference between the emotional trajectory of two films at any time point (Tea) in fiction. Because the absolute value in the square root is paid, the sign does not play a role in comparison; Therefore it is irrelevant whether one curve moves up or below the other – only their distance from each other.

Using this remedy, experts were able to create films with similar arch. In this way, he confirmed that all the films he studied fell into one of the six emotional arcs, which was recognized by earlier studies.

Interestingly, the film style often correlated with the emotional progress of a story, he found. For example, horror films usually have a tragedy structure, while comedy follows man in a hole or cinderella stories. Autobiographies are often ravine for wealth, and thriller is a man in a hole structure.

Which movies are the most successful?

Pogrebna’s team then collected an estimated production and income data from a film industry data website NumberWith film rating Internet movie database (IMDB).

First, experts examined the domestic revenue generated by each film – this was the only information available for all the work done. In a hole category, the man performed the best, which earns an average of $ 37.48 million, while the second most successful category, compared to $ 33.63 million in Cinderella.

People go to more films for films in which Nayaks are suffering, but eventually get a happy end. Interestingly, very simple rags for the amount of funds generated the least revenue on average.

But perhaps the big winners were only the most expensive films? The answer to that question is fine. The team found no connection between budget and success for humans in a hole stories. These films clearly play big, regardless of dollar spending or style.

The tragedy, however, generates less money unless they have particularly high production costs (in an area of ​​$ 100 million or more). “It can explain the financial success of large historical plays like Final samurai Or like the epic epic Pie JivanPogrebna’s team wrote in paper.

Which movies are the most popular?

When experts saw the user rating on IMDB, a different picture emerged:

On a scale of 1 to 10, with a minimum suitable and 10 most favorable, films with a man in a hole plot performed 0.19 points Malevolent Latta to give money to stories. In fact, the ranking of the film categories by rating creates a list that is almost opposite to the result obtained during the ranking by revenue.

One of the reasons that the data may occur in Auds that the man in a hole attracts more audiences in a hole and usually obtains more ratings – and IMDB users are more likely to leave negative reviews than positive. But Metascore on IMDB – A score from the review Agricultural Metacritic that is based on the weighted average of a film’s critics reviews – this story reviews the user for the category. Researchers wrote, “The Man in a Hole Emotional Trajectory does not produce films ‘most liked’, but most talks about films.”

Meanwhile, the best fare in reviews from tragedy critics, which favor “serious films” instead of a happy end.

With this information, the film industry can take data-operated decisions. To attract more and more people for a movie theater, filmmakers can produce more films with a man in a hole setup. For critical praise, the heart -redeeming tragedy remains the best. But they should keep in mind that the audience still loves a simple promise of a rags-to-rich journey.