So that means film such as The Legend of 1900 are bad films. Or just that people like to watch bland blockbusters.
--- In scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com, "Brent Wodehouse" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050613/full/050613-1.html > > Published online: 14 June 2005 > > Modellers measure 'word of mouth' for films > > Mark Peplow > > Mathematics calculates quality of sleeper hits and movie bombs. > > > It's official, says one group of researchers: Blade II is a bad film. > Their study turns patterns of attendance into a single number that claims > to grade a film's quality1. > > The number attempts to gauge of how good the 'word of mouth' was around a > given film, based on the behaviour of the harshest critics of all, the > paying public. > > César Hidalgo, now a graduate student in physics at the University of > Notre Dame, Indiana, and his colleagues, decided to study the 'word of > mouth' effect in the film world simply because reviews often have a huge > impact on audience numbers and there are copious data on ticket sales. > > Hidalgo, along with Carlos Rodriguez-Sickert, an economist at the > Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, and Alejandra Castro of > the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, constructed a mathematical equation > that approximates box-office takings in the weeks after release. They > assume that revenue relies on three major factors: the size of the > possible audience, the initial desire of audience members to see the film > (which is often dictated by the amount spent on marketing and publicity), > and audience response to the film. > > The team then plugged arbitrary numbers into their simple equation to > create dozens of graphs describing weekly box-office results for a film > during its cinema lifetime. If the marketing weighed in heavily, for > example, but audience reviews were poor, the resulting graph would peak in > the first week and then plummet. If the reviews were good, however, the > graph would keep climbing. > > When they compared their graphs with actual box-office data (available on > the Internet Movie Database) for 44 recent films, they found good matches > for films ranging from huge blockbusters to budget flicks. "It was a > surprise that the model behaved nicely for all different behaviours, and > was not just a coincidence for some of them," says Hidalgo. > > > Staying power > > The team says that the review coefficient (the word-of-mouth component of > their equation) is a rough indicator of the film's quality. > > The comedy Kissing Jessica Stein, for example, can be modelled using a > large, positive review coefficient. It started with initially poor > attendance, but increased its box-office take over the following five > weeks owing to good reports from the audience. In contrast, Blade II looks > like a classic bomb: a large negative review coefficient matches its quick > dive in takings. > > "It's a fun paper," says Gerben Bakker, an economic historian who studies > Hollywood marketing at the University of Essex, UK. "But it's quite a > basic model. They don't consider a lot of the complications." > > Bakker says that the model could be improved by factoring in the effect of > a film's availability on its box-office take, for example. Many people who > would like to see a particular low-budget film are unable to because it is > not playing in a local cinema, he says. > > > Show me the money > > Good quality films don't always win financially, even if they do have more > staying power. A bigger initial interest in Blade II meant that its > overall box-office take was more than ten times greater than that of > Kissing Jessica Stein, which took just US$7 million in the United States. > > Big blockbusters are often simultaneously distributed to more than 3,000 > cinemas in the United States, explains John Sedgwick, a media economist at > London Metropolitan University, UK. So a film generally does enough > business in its first two weeks to recoup its costs, which is the first > priority of the studio. > > However, about 70% of film revenue now comes from outside the box office, > he adds. The rise in home video and DVD sales, along with toys and other > products, means that pleasing the audience is ever more important for a > film's overall financial success. > > Hidalgo adds that thinking of films this way should help studios to decide > whether to commission a sequel. Even high-grossing films can be deeply > unpopular with the audience, which dooms their cinematic offspring, he > says. > > If only they'd thought of that before commissioning the third in the Blade > series. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scifinoir2/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
