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The Perfect Formula For Box Office Success
Julez writes "According to icLiverpool, the formula for creating the "perfect" film has been discovered by a UK academic. The research will be used to assess the potential success of possible film sponsorship deals.
Apparently, the perfect feature must have: action 30pc, comedy 17pc, good v evil 13pc, love/sex/romance 12pc, special effects 10pc, plot 10pc and music 8pc
"
i always thought it was an equal mix: The Destruction of Property, The Defiance of Authority, and The Removal of Clothing. Someone got paid for this? I'm in the wrong business.
How about 100% porn?
Special effects 10pc?
Episode I and II clearly messed up the forumla.
Did anyone else feel it was an insult to those with intelligence that plot took only an 8% grab?
Gee, I guess that means the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy is a tremendous flop, doomed to failure; it's got the whole thing backwards!
Any spoon would be too big.
38% Windows bash.
22% Linux worship.
16% Katz bash.
13% OS penis messuring.
8% punctuation correction.
2% spelling correction.
1% comedy.
1% math correction.
1% sig.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Blatent Product Placement
Oh, by perfect film, does he mean in the perspective of the film-goer vs. the film financiers? oops
Anyone else feel that the Matrix Reloaded Heineken commercial just makes the Matrix franchise appear "cheap"?
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Carry this study further: determine the ratios of the elements of what made for a "perfect film" for each decade since the birth of motion pictures. This would shed light on how audience tastes have evolved and where they might be going.
(Reuters) Further research also produced an Instant Film Generation Algorithm (IFGA). The Perfect Film Formula (PFF) was then programmed into the IFGA and the scientists were delighted to see Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope produced spontaneously.
Viewers of the IFGA/PFF results were astounded and enthralled until someone realized that popcorn hadn't been figured into the PFF. The project was scrapped.
Chris
Why would one use "pc" instead of "%", which is shorter and less confusing ?
No, seriously, that's a real question. Is this some local usage in some part of the world?
I've walked out of movies where the acting was so horrible that it totally invalidated what pleasure I may have gained from the rest of the movie.
Additionally, what about camera work? I almost got motion sickness from movies like "Behind Enemy Lines" and "The Blair Witch Project".
I think that they are putting the cart before the horse in a lot of ways here by just analyzing the statistical makeup of the movie.
They're forgetting to take into account that most of those huge movies have the acting required to let you forget that you're not watching a movie, but experiencing a story.
There was that episode where Barney and Fred (in P-31) write a song and analyze what needs to be in it to be a hit. I would not be suprised if this is just a hoax.
/*Sarcasm begins*/ /*Sarcasm ends*/ /*Comments added for the humour-challenged*/
What? And make people think?
That's crazy talk. Next you'll be expecting them to start reading books again. And that could lead to thinking, and no one wants that...
Living in North America, i don't think you can discount marketing as a true driver. Any movie will be a success with the correct marketer behind it.
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
I'd like to see the gross earning stats on all of these movies, as well as movies that really bombed. I'm sure there are some real bunkerbusters out there that met this fantastically depressing formula.
...Actors. Big name actors, big name actresses, pop stars, pop starlets, etc. are all going to have a harder time getting those lucrative contracts to be in a new movie now. Their influence on the movie being "perfect" doesen't even show up.
Imagine that.
-Rusty
You never know...
Between Bollywood getting slightly better and Hollywood shovelling out drivel, it seems that there'd be more money in the Bollywood offerings.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Maybe this is the first academic research of it's kind published, but I think it's clear that Holywood has had a good grasp of "the perfect movie formula" for quite some time, just like the music industry has "the perfect pop record" well understood. There are of course exceptions where genuine quality counts, but I'd be prepared to bet that the majority of low grade blockbusters churned out by the big studios come fairly close to this formula.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
that other time. Those British people attempted to find the funniest joke. But the joke wasn't funny. What they found was a joke that would be funny to everybody and anybody. There is no joke that would be hilarious to everyone, so the funniest joke is one which everyone can at least slighly enjoy. I mean, even though I didn't laugh out loud the joke did amuse me. I wish I remember what the joke was and had a link to the site, but oh well.
Anyway this seems to be the formula for a movie that will please everyone, much like the joke. I think that the relatively small amount of plot reflect the intelligence of our society. 10pc of society want plot 30pc want action. That's the way this has to be interpreted. So if you make a movie with this formula it wont be a smash super hit like Star Wars or Matrix or LotR. But it wont suck. People who see it will say "that was an ok movie".
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
You can get a lot of people to see a movie if you hype it enough, or people may just see it anyway because they're bored, but it should be noted that just because your film made money, doesn't mean it was good.
I hope filmmakers don't fall into any sort of rut when it comes to filmmaking despite findings like this, because the movies I most remember and enjoy are ones like Momento, because they are so different and force me to think about the world and how I percieve it. Moreover, what people like changes. Certainly most of the 80's movies I liked, I would scoff at nowadays.
Suffice to say, I won't be seeing 2Fast 2Furious or whatever.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
The article didn't really dig into what the research said, so I am somewhat hesitant about the title of my response, but...the fact that the article is scanty never stopped an intrepid Slashdotter from running his mouth, so away we go...
The "perfect film" is obviously highly subjective. From a sentimental standpoint, perhaps it is something like Casablanca. From a producer's standpoint, it may well be "Deep Throat" or "Behind the Green Door" with their respective cost to profit(!) ratios. Artistically, it could be whatever floats your boat. I'm partial to Empire Strikes Back or Unforgiven as my favorite films.
Statistical analysis of elements contained in films is only useful to the extent that the elements are cohesive, well-executed, etc. This all reminds me of the assinine film from the eighties about the robot that wrote a love song based on analysis of popular music, resulting in a meaningless spouting of bubblegum phrases.
Besides, the research only looked at top-grossing films. How much money a film earns is not necessarily a proxy for how "good" it is. It is frequently the result of pimping and media hype. It is quite possible that some of the films which were top grossing lost money (even under sensible non-film industry accounting methods) and were terrible.
The reference article is total fluff coverage and is highly instructive from a media analysis standpoint. You get no analysis of the underlying research. It in fact smells like a press release copped from some idiot researcher which was dumped almost unchanged into a "news" story. The percentage of shit that appears in newspapers that is derived in this exact manner is frightening -- it gains the imprimature of "news" instead of PR and there is no value-added journalism component. Journalists of the world, hang your heads.
Whew. Had to get out my morning rant. I feel much better now. Get me some coffee.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
These statistics are about as useful as toilet paper, if you catch my drift.
evil adrian
It'll happen again, it always does. I hope they use this formula, because it'll spawn another chrisis just like the one in the early 70's after everybody gets their fill of our generation's "Paint Your Wagon".
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Seriously. Jesus... What more can I say? This is just going to provide more evidence to the production houses responsible for the cinematic toxins that clog up our screens every weekend that their formula is not only economically but artistically valid, providing even less incentive to produce movies requiring anything other than open eyes to watch. Great.
Incidentally, I'm not a great nostalgia freak, but one or two examples aside, haven't films got much, much worse over the last year or two or what?
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy takes out his phone and calls the emergency services.
. fu nniest/
He gasps: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says: "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: "OK, now what?"
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/10/03/joke
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
Search Google for "funniest joke", first item that comes up is the joke in question.
JP
Speaking of Catherine Zeta Jones - I think the movie Chicago proves this whole ratio thing wrong. It was an EXCELLENT movie 60% music 10% plot 10% Comedy 10% Action 10% sex/romance
...
.... Matrix
Here's the actual formula for a good movie:
Great visuals (set designers, hair dressers, costuming)
Great visuals (Special effects to a level of realistic integration)
Great talent (not just actor clout, but role accuracy)
Great music (john williams, danny elfman, or james newton howard, or fosse) Background Music made Jaws scarey, background music made the first Star Wars and Gone With The Wind emotional. and
MEMORABLE writing (good writing has memorable lines) Remember Looney Tunes are only a masterpiece of cartoon art because of the lines each character were noted for (+ all the other elements mentioned)
Arnold Swartzenager and Keanu Reeves CAN make great movies under this formula. Total Recall
There's no certain percentage.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Xulux writes "According to icBloodyWankers, the formula for creating the "perfect" Slashdot Story has been discovered by a UK pompus-git. The research will be used to assess the potential success of possible Slahvertisements(TM). Apparently, the perfect story must have: troll 30pc, childish humor / potty words 17pc, Nazi MS Users v Commie Linux Users 13pc, pr0n/goatse.cx/ASCII-porn 12pc, 'special' spelling 10pc, grammer 10pc and Katz 8pc "
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
action 1pc
comedy 0pc
good v evil 1pc
love/sex/romance 1pc
special effects 1pc
plot 0pc
music 0pc
water 96pc
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
By the way, LoR has plenty of both, as well as plot...bonus.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
While this woman doesn't look like a scientist, this is quite an interesting problem for Machine Learning, I guess.
;), these alleged 'percentages' that this woman is talking about... could be a fun research project on the side.
We can use learning and classification techniques to have a proper go at something like this. Rather than work out the supposed 'best' film, we can look at proposals and decide whether they're going to be a success.
See, in the vast array of films that have been produced, and their box-office takings (the metric I assume we'd use for measuring success) we have an annotated training set to train a learning algorithm with. We then run candidate films past that algorithm, and see what it decides. Might work.
The interesting thing, as with many of these classification problems, is the 'feature vector' representation we use to describe a film. I suppose we'd need things like release date, budget, some kind of 'star-quality' rating (average Kevin Bacon distance?
Henry
i don't do sigs. oops.
Supposedly, Robin Cook did a similar analysis for the Perfect Novel, mixed the ingredients, and came up with Coma, a best-seller.
-Joe
Lose = not win
Sotz artists Komar and Melamid did similar research to create ideal paintings. They broke out their results by country. They did some work with music, as well.
Wars ------ 2
Killed ---- 5
Wounds ---- 3
Legs ------ 2
Arms ------ 1
Wives ----- 2
Children -- 6
-------------
Total ---- 21
Funny, I don't recall a whole lot of love/sex/romance unless you count the Potatoheads getting it on in the Lincoln Log cabin early in the movie...
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
I thought all movies were already starting to look alike. Isn't "formulaic" an insult for movies? I guess research is being done to change bad to worse.
Ahhhhh! If only it did not work! I am sorry but I really have to blame people for this. This is what the music industry does already. Albums are produced rather than written. AND IT WORKS! People are very stupid and they buy them. It's the same damn song folks. Over and over again.
And people wonder why I seem to egotistical. I would rather not be, but these stats just fuel my fire. I need to lie down.
[Silverman draws a standard dog]
Myers: No, no, no! He was supposed to have attitude.
Silverman: Um... wh-what do you mean, exactly?
Myers: Oh, you know, attitude, attitude! Uh... sunglasses!
Lady: Could we put him in more of a "hip-hop" context?
Krusty: Forget context, he's gotta be a surfer. Give me a nice shmear of surfer.
Lady: I feel we should Rasta-fy him by... 10 percent or so.
[the resulting dog is rather... proactive]
[all stare at it w/o any expression]
Myers: Hmm... I think he needs a little more attitude. [Silverman blackens in Poochie's sunglasses]
All Three: [variously] Oh, yeah, bingo. Yeah, that's it! There it is, right there! I love it!
-- Another cartoon character created in less than 15 minutes,
"The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show"
1. You read and are a registered member of Slashdot, therefore your intelligence is likely at least 40 points above the average population.
Really? Is that so? This is nothing but unfounded arrogance and propaganda. You fancy yourself well ahead of the curve (doesn't really matter whether you've been tested or not, so please don't tell me your score) and as such like to believe that all those who share your interests are well ahead of the curve as well. What makes you think that there is a correlation between being able to read and sign up on a website and intelligence? Not to mention the fact that the so-called Intelligence Quotient only measures logical problem solving and mathematical insight, a very tiny fraction of what could reasonably be considered intelligence. Or, as it has been put glibly many times before: It only measures your ability to do well on IQ tests. At a guess I would say that it is probably likely that the Slashdot crew would average above the norm on IQ tests (maybe 120 or so) seeing as a large proportion are programmers and that is a field where logical problem solving is an important skill. But what we are talking about here is appreciation of the arts. I won't argue that this may be a function of intelligence, but it is certainly not a function of the IQ type of intelligence.
2. This "successful movie formula" is geared for the masses, i.e., people with an IQ of approximately 100 or so.
IQ is statistically defined such that the mean is exactly 100.
I know that this post sounds dangerously like a flame, but the spreading of this IQ propaganda really irks me.
lysergically yours
"Ms Clayton, [...] was commissioned by diet Coke to carry out the research in order to better understand what the British public love about popular movies." That sounds to me like they will approve and sponsor films that follow the formula, hence fulfilling the prophecy of those types of films being the most popular.
Oh come on, if a movie isn't 40pc plot it is not worth watching.
I completely disagree. Different films/works can work for different reasons. Some can work entirely without plot, and instead rely simply on character development and/or other methods.
The Thin Red Line is one such example. No plot, very little character development -- just characters "reflecting" for more than two hours. It works, in its own way, regardless. Jaws is an even better example. The plot is simply "Shark terrorizes beach community" -- the power of the film comes from an intense atmosphere and mood - not plot.
To use another mainstream example, the film GhostBusters was at its best when it was unconcerned with plot - when it just followed these characters through their daily lives as they, of all things, trapped ghosts. The film did not get its energy from the unnecessary and predictable "save the world" plot tacked on.
The best Bret Easton Ellis books work similarly. "Less Than Zero" and "American Psycho" have minimal to not plot, yet are very good, fascinating books.
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
Reminds me of my plan to sculpt a movie designed to get exactly zero points on the capalert scale: 15 minutes of wanton violence/crime, followed by 15 minutes of Impudence and Hate, 15 minutes of Sex and Homosexuality, etc...
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
.... Lord of the Rings' plot is dismal.
A lot of nonsense that unless you are a fan of the books will explain very little about what is going on...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There are, of course, scientific guidelines behind any art form, such as the Golden Ratio, but this isn't one of them. While I am open to the possibility that there may be some universals in human narrative, I shudder to think that the commodified culture of Hollywood might impose its formulas on us like a mental template. Or is it too late?
Whenever Taylorism is applied to a creative endeavour, we get quanity over quality and the fears of General Ned Ludd and the Army of Redressers as well as Socrates become valid.
Dehumanized art is dead art.
Damn those pesky terrorists
But I want to know why you do think Halle Berry silicone boobs are best than the other actresses' silicone boobs. Then we can partner in making Better Silicone Boobs!!!
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
His keyboard '5' key is probably broken. This conjecture is supported by lack of the digit '5' in all the percentages he listed.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
The earlier thing was intended to provoke people to ask why the idea of "ideal" art was so wrong... This one's just an advertiser's formula for avoiding risk.
Sorry, though -- low risk means lower gain, too. Out of Africa doesn't match up with the formula all that well, but in the mid 80s it had a huge marketing impact. That movie set fashions going -- none of the big designers were planning on a sort of "Safari" line at the time, but the movie touched it off. Banana Republic owed a ton of its business to that one movie for maybe five years. And I don't think advertisers could have figured that out using this formula; they'd have had to see the movie and get the idea it was going to look a certain way and appeal to a certain type of person.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Back in the mid-late 90s, a couple of the Hollywood studios put some serious dollars into trying to build a predictive model of film success. Problem is, they couldn't make it work. They could make the model match _prior_ outcomes, but getting it to correctly forecast the success of _future_ films was well-nigh impossible. The project was scrapped, I believe. Given how incredibly valuable a working model like this would be, though, I wouldn't be surprised if the idea keeps making a comeback.
The Matrix was cool because no one had ever done something like that before. Star Wars (the fourth, er first one) was cool because no one had ever done something like that. And not just science fiction, look at Pulp Fiction and Airplane.
Shannon's Information theorum states that information can be measured on its surprise. We only need to transmit the parts of a signal that we aren't expecting. This is why a black frame compresses down to nothing, while a colorfull photograph is much larger (assuming the same size image.)
The application here is that people are drawn to movies for the novelty. Outside of teenagers (who seem to think everything is new) people aren't going to go to a movie to see the same thing, over and over. I'm dissapointed if a movie is exactly what I expect. On the other hand, a really good movie I will I pay to see twice, just to catch the stuff I missed.
Novelty, is of course, highly subjective, and changes with time. Right now sex isn't all that novel. We have seen it all. Photo-realistic computer graphics are not all that novel, we have seen it all. Ultra-gory war flicks, everyone dies at the end horror flicks, fairy tales, and post-apocalptic hero stories: been there, done that.
Thank you. Have a good day.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming