20th Century Fox Is Using AI To Analyze Movie Trailers, Find Out What Films Audiences Will Like (theverge.com)

20th Century Fox is using AI to predict what films people will want to see. According to a recently published paper, researchers from the company are using machine learning to examine trailer footage and compare the objects and events it identifies with data generated for other trailers. "The idea is that movies with similar sets of labels will attract similar sets of people," The Verge reports. From the report: As the researchers explain in the paper, this is exactly the sort of data movie studios love. (They already produce lots of similar data using traditional methods like interviews and questionnaires.) "Understanding detailed audience composition is important for movie studios that invest in stories of uncertain commercial," they write. In other words, if they know who watches what, they will know what movies to make.

To create their "experimental movie attendance prediction and recommendation system" (named Merlin), 20th Century Fox partnered with Google to use the company's servers and open-source AI framework TensorFlow. In an accompanying blog post, the search giant explains Merlin's analysis of Logan. First, Merlin scans the trailer, labeling objects like "facial hair," "car," and "forest" (taking into account how long these objects appear on-screen and when they show up the trailer). By comparing this information with analyses of other trailers, Merlin can try to predict what films might interest the people who saw Logan.

Comments

The problem is the measurement

[alternative_right]

"People" are not a fungible quantity; they differ greatly as individuals, groups, and even between regions. Instead of trying to make a movie to make a generic consumer happy, make a quality movie that people who like quality cinema can recognize. Others will emulate them.

Re:The problem is the measurement

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Instead of trying to make a movie to make a generic consumer happy, make a quality movie that people who like quality cinema can recognize.

They don't want to make quality movies. They want to make movies that make money.

A quality movie might come out as a waste product.

But then, it depends on how you define quality. Run Run Shaw was once asked, "What type of movies do you like best?"

He answered, "Those that make money."

Re:The problem is the measurement

[youngone]

This is what the AI is going to recommend: Fast and Furious Nine

Of course it will. They want to be able to churn out widgets exactly like the music business figured out how to do 15 years or so ago.
In the music industry's case they discovered that what Simon Cowell likes on his various TV "talent" shows can cheaply be packaged up and sold for a brief period before the next sound-alike comes along and starts the process again.
The movie industry wants to be able to do this too, and Fast & Furious 9 (or 10 or 11) is perfect for them.

Re:The problem is the measurement

[tlhIngan]

Is it really so difficult, they want a good story well told. They probably don't want the same story told over and over again, often told worse than it was before. You can cheat, scope out all other media and check out what stories people liked and tell them in the movie format but remember to tell them well, so fuck off the nepotistic no nothings, that make things look good but tell really shit, clumsy, stupid stories because that is the limit of their intellect and they are to egoistic to hire smart people with knowledge who can improve the quality of the story told.

And you can join the filmmakers barely making it.

FIrst off, there's a reason why the summer blockbusters season is called blockbuster. It makes a TON of money. Even in their bad years. People want explosions and disasters and big robots and tons of CGI with comic book characters.

A movie is an escape - a chance to transport someone away from their problems in the world for a couple of hours and into a new world. Sometimes to let someone else do the driving, other times to numb the brain from all of today's problems.

There is plenty of room for movies that "make sense" or "tell a good story" but you'll generally be limiting yourself and your audience to people who want to think and analyze. The vast majority of people want to sit down, be entertained, and stop thinking for a while.

For a movie, its goal is to "put asses in seats". Entertaining them is how you do it, especially in this age where there are multiple options for spending a couple of hours.

Of course, you can share wonderful stories, but you'll find your reach awfully short - limited to art houses or film festivals. If you're lucky you'll get a mention somewhere and a bit of buzz but still won't reach a lot of people because the theatres showing your movie are few and inconvenient.

Re:The problem is the measurement

[Mashiki]

A friend of mine owns a small chain of theaters here in Ontario, they're in mostly small cities/towns, where the old theaters died out and they never replaced them. For him, this was the first fiscal year in the last 20 where he's operating on a loss. Roughly, he had 35% less "asses in the seats" then the previous year. People are tuning out on movies, too many remakes of poor quality for example. Or too many trying to push an agenda. These things are either not creating that escape, or they're simply jamming the crap they are trying to escape down their throat.

Bonus points if you can figure out the theater chain.

Re:The problem is the measurement

[AmiMoJo]

Fast and Furious Nine

Honestly I'm looking forward to that. 7 was great. The Rock took out a drone by landing an ambulance on it.

examined footage

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawrence of Arabia was an okay movie but it really could have been great if it had facial hair, car, and forest.

Simple

[fahrbot-bot]

In other words, if they know who watches what, they will know what movies to make.

Make movies that don't suck *or* halve the admission price -- problem solved.

Re:Simple

[ShanghaiBill]

Make movies that don't suck *or* halve the admission price -- problem solved.

I've never understood why good movies cost the same as bad movies.

Also, movies should cost more on the opening weekend, and then decline in price each week.

Easy!

[Anonymous Coward]

No SJW, no diversity quotas, no feminist appeasing, no kids.

There is probably no way to measure audiances

[bobstreo]

by analyzing movie trailers. Modern trailers for upcoming movies usually spoil anything possibly good or interesting about new movies. I seriously avoid watching trailers for movies I want to see. Although for other movies, trailers can convince me which movies to absolutely avoid.

Data analysis of movie revenue based on actors/scriptwriters/directors would be a better start, but that would cost way more money, because you'd have to work around "Hollywood Accounting" practices to figure out how much money movies actually created.

This type of analysis will create another miasma of Spiderman//Superman movie "reboots" because "This Time for Sure" Isn't there another Robin Hood movie coming out soon?

Well Sure, Mr Smarty Pants...

[Slugster]

Most of the data is probably going to point to more Police Academy sequels, but I'm still hoping that a follow-up to Popeye isn't off the table yet.

Re:great

[syn3rg]

This explains why all movies now "feel" the same..