How Should Film Function in the Age of Big Data?
The big data explosion has left no industry unscathed. Today it is almost impossible to point to an economic sector that isn’t currently attempting to collect, analyze, and employ their data to make better, more informed decisions for their future. This includes the film industry, as companies seek to gain greater degrees of leverage and certainty in a perpetually unpredictable marketplace. Movies, commercially, have thrived in this new space on the cutting edge of technology. Netflix can predict what you want to watch next on your que, and more importantly, Netflix can predict what you will want to see in the future. It is the model by which they make the majority of their creative decisions with. But for film as an art, a new emphasis on data guided decisions spells danger. For the first time film creators have widespread and reliable consumer information on audience preferences. An industry that routinely makes one hundred million dollar gambles suddenly has a metric from which they can predict future success based on a knowledge of audiences known predilections. This presents a new, problematic narrative to the already complicated process of film creation. Film art, when at it’s best, works not because it was what everyone wanted but because it is a response to a felt yet unarticulated need.
In 2012 The New York Times published an article unambiguously titled The Age of Big Data. Much of the article details how the collection and application of consumer data is relevant and imperative to the future of almost every industry. In business, data is as a tool to decipher consumer buying habits from transactions, web traffic and social media interactions. On the logistic side data can help a business monitor its supply chain, costs, and sales. Beyond business, data is used in political science in an attempt to glean greater nuance and insight on the spread of political ideas through polls and voting records. Data has long been a cornerstone of industries such as science and technology, in the latter it’s abundance continues to accelerate advances in computing, and consequentially, continues a virtuous cycle of big data with improvements to machine learning algorithms.
Data’s impact spans much further than the traditional areas listed above. It can be found incorporated in dating applications to guide the search for a compatible partner. Data driven decisions are made in sports, perhaps most famously in Major League Baseball by Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane’s adaptation non-traditional sabermetrics. Significantly, big data has been readily welcomed into entertainment, as the likes of Netflix and MoviePass explore the depths at which consumer data can guide decision making in film and television programming. Decision making is ultimately the guiding tenant behind “The Age of Big Data” whether it be making financial decisions that support a business’ bottom line or helping singles make decisions in the confusing dating landscape. Data acts as an apparent bastion of objectivity. Bear in mind the off-referenced phrase, the data doesn’t lie.
Film sits on the intersection of commerce and art. The practical applications for data in commerce is obvious, producers have a fiduciary responsibility to turn a profit on their movies. Each movie is an expensive enterprise that hopes to make more than is put into it. The financing of a movie involves a lot of decisions and a certain amount of ambiguity and informed guesses. Does this movie have an audience? How do we incentivize people to see it? Who is interested in this kind of a story? These are questions that must be asked before the expensive production process can begin in earnest. Companies like Netflix, who have unprecedented access to their consumer behavior, can use data as a tool to make tough decisions. Not only do they know what their audiences are watching, they know how long they are watching, when they are watching, and how often they are watching. It is easy to track what shows or movies are successful and by extension, what through lines exist in the form or content of their projects. This can be as straightforward as identifying creators that resonate with their consumers. House of Cards is famously the amalgamation of three large, Netflix specific, audience niches; the fan bases of David Fincher, Kevin Spacey, and The West Wing. Another example of low hanging fruit is the four movie deal Netflix made with Adam Sandler. Despite poor critical reaction, Netflix knew how popular Sandler’s old content was on their service. His first two Netflix original projects quickly became the company’s biggest film releases. Thanks to data they knew Sandler films were going to be a hit just as they knew the pieces were there to make House of Cards a resounding success. Beyond this, data can be used to make more ambiguous judgments. For example, if Netflix is evaluating a script about a heroine adventurer they can look at their analytics which may reveal that a large segment of their audience has a rabid appetite for female driven action adventure films. Playing to the crowd is not a new concept in film, but never before have decision makers been afforded this level of confidence in their judgments.
Film is not, however, simply a commercial commodity. When assessing film from an art perspective the problems inherent in the age of big data become more obvious. There already exists a certain amount of tension inherent within duality of film. Artist, by principle, create the best art not under the constraints of what an audience is ready for. Film is bifurcated between two distinct places of thought, is this a good movie and is this a movie that can make money. The two are not mutually inclusive, in fact, ironically, but not infrequently, it proves challenging to achieve both feats. One factor that challenges the balance of these two tenants is pretty straightforward, in order for a movie to make a lot of money, it must be seen by a lot of people. In order to be seen by a lot of people it must be agreeable to a lot of people. However, art content that agrees with everyone is not necessarily good art, especially when it is designed, specifically, to agree with everyone.
On September 5, 1995, two dissident Russian artists, Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, launched America’s Most Wanted Painting as part of their People’s Choice series (1994–1997). It was the culmination of many polls and marketing surveys designed to determine what specific elements of a painting most resonated with the American people. “Forty-four percent of Americans prefer the color blue. Sixty-four percent like traditional art more than modern. Eighty-eight percent prefer pictures that show outdoor scenes, in which wild animals such as deer are preferable [to] domestic cats by twenty-four percentage points. Humans should be historical figures or ordinary people, depicted fully clothed.” The resulting painting coalesced this data onto a single canvas. The panting looks like something you could see in a classic art museum; it is not noticeably amateur. But with no prior knowledge of the market study or the context behind the piece it’s purpose is easily lost. Would a casual passerby look at this painting and it’s disjointed, random imagery and declare it “Their most wanted painting”? Very doubtful. For all intents and purposes the art is ordinary and unremarkable. It is intended to be farce, a critique about the flaws and folly of polls and surveys. Understanding the context is the art itself. By knowing how the painting came to be it’s meaning is elevated in a thought provoking way. Beyond the superficial interpretations of crowd-sourced data is a truth Komar and Melamid set out to capture. The painting reflects the inherent absurdity of structural institutions attempting to use the public’s expressed preferences to manufacture a public aesthetic. They posed the question, what does it look like to give society the art they claim to desire?
Film art works best as a tool to help us think more deeply about familiar or foreign aspects of our life. In this way film can directly or subconsciously affect how we see the world. This is often inspired by filmmakers drawing from their own lives or crafting circumstances that are resonant or relatable. Film informs our lives as much as our lives informs the creation of film. Art theory often deal with the experience of perceiving art as a moment of time in which we can think through our personal problems or our problems we have as a culture. Some art theory borrows from Freudian dream psychology. Freud theorized that in our dreams we resolve problems that we haven’t been able to solve during our waking state. He believed because our ego’s defenses were lowered dreams were a path to our unconscious. Often “manifest content”, or the parts the dreamer remembers when they wake up, is based on events of the day before. These are things that a person saw or experienced but could not fully comprehend in the moment. Though they were unconscious to this need, their mind wasn’t, and by the morning they have come a little bit closer to understanding how they fit into the world around them.
A really good film can function just as a dream. Within the darkness of a theater, and the vastness of a screen a good storyteller can bring the audience into the world of the movie. A well crafted protagonist makes it easy for the audience to relate to the circumstances of the film. It is not necessarily about their appearance, they don’t always have to look like the audience to connect, they just have to act authentically in human ways. Just as we observe others in the world we can observe characters on the screen and gain greater degrees of empathy. Sometimes the character is relatable, or faces relatable plights. When this occurs it becomes easy for the audience to project themselves into the circumstances of the story. Filmmakers have a responsibility to understand that what occurs on the screen is not isolated to the fantasy world of cinema, but welcomed into the societies’ unconscious reality. This is not to say a filmmaker is necessarily burdened by an obligation to teach society how to live, but ultimately their goal should be to approach a high level of authenticity and truth in their stories. At their best movies can create the same depth of feeling and insight as real experiences. Imagine the process of memory recollection, we replay an experience in our head, almost instantly it takes on the cinematic properties of something similar we have seen on the screen. As we replay the memory over and over again it morphs from the objective truth of that moment and is elevated into a much more emotional interpretation. We draw insight on how we feel about it in retrospect, and maybe make subtle adjustments in response. Eventually the memory settles, almost assuredly deviating from the moment when it occurred but more importantly internalized after continuous thought. The point is moments in time, just as a movie, are interpretable beyond a purely objective reading of the facts. Ultimately we learn a lot more about ourselves in the process because of this. The closer films can get to serving this purpose, the more likely it is that they will resonate with, and affect an audience in a meaningful way.
In order for films to function like this, storytellers must uncouple the audience’s expectations from the narrative. Film art is not conceived to meet an “emotional market demand”. For this to be viable we would have to assume people know what they want, and more dubious a proposition still, we must assume people know what they need to know. The truth of the matter is people are not so simple. Art doesn’t meet a market demand the same way a commercial product is designed to cater to an identified need. It meets an audience need, but one that is felt yet unarticulated. This is why America’s Most Wanted Painting seems so ridicules, and how Netflix’s superficial, data guided, genre tagging is problematic. An artist doesn’t ask their audience what they want to see, they make something and then the audience wants to see it.
The problem is, as already stated, film is not just art nor just commerce, it is both. Film has always walked a treacherously unnerving line, having to weigh both it’s artistic merit and commercial worth. There is a reason blockbuster movies make a lot more money than Academy Award Nominees. In order to push the medium forward creators have to be able to stomach a certain level of risk and uncertainty. Ideas that are new are ideas with the potential to move the needle on cultural significance. Sometimes they are financial breakthroughs, sometimes they make a little money or break-even, other times they are ignored. When a film misses there is immediate consequences. Films are not just expensive, they require a tremendous amount of time and energy. Years of planning, many man hours, and millions of dollars in investments to production and marketing. Filmmaking is risk taking. There is a degree of comfort in knowing that people want to see your movie before you make it. This is abandoned when filmmakers are willing to risk the unknown. The reward is acclaim, respect, and the furthering of film and societal culture. The risk of failure is ridicule for your audacity to try something knew and, more often than not, swift and unceremonious bankruptcy.
Film tailored to the masses is not a new concept at all. Modern blockbusters exist and succeed because they have a greater degree of certainty that they will work in the marketplace. The Marvels and Star Wars films of the world are able to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into their production, paying for the most recognizable and well liked stars, employing the most expensive equipment and special effects, before spending another hundred million dollars on marketing. This kind of model would not exist without a high level of confidence that it will continue to be sustainable. They gained that confidence after years of grooming an audience, setting expectations, and consistently compounding sound strategic business decisions. Are these movie’s constantly challenging film’s status quo? No, but they don’t really have to. Wide appeal blockbusters serve a purpose effectively because they know on the spectrum of commerce and art they fall closer to the latter. These films fill a market need and there is a constant high level of demand. Big data is not the cause of blockbuster success but it certainly dove-tails nicely with the ideology. In a way it merely serves to exaggerate something that has always been there. Blockbusters have and will always exist for the foreseeable future, consumer information and big data only serves to make their job easier. Their goal is to reach the most audience with the most confidence that the ideas and content they are presenting is agreeable. This is an inevitability and, frankly, this is a situation where the intersection of data, film, and commerce makes some sense in terms of goal alignment.
The films that reside on the scale closer to art than commerce is the medium at risk. Independent film’s rise came as a response to the big budget blockbusters. They are the alternative voice to the mainstream dialogue. This is a relationship that has always existed in some way and is now being organized around big data. What independent film has to avoid is trying to compete for audience attention the same way as the blockbusters, mass agreeability. That has never been a winning strategy but now, with the vast amounts of consumer data at everyone’s disposal, it becomes more tempting than ever. More importantly, in order to continue moving the art form forward, the same principles have to be put into practice. Art film isn’t trying to win a popularity contest; it is trying to approach a level of truth that benefits society. Big data doesn’t change this necessity, in fact, if it is used well, it could prove to be a handy tool.
The late Steve Jobs said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” The implications being, its hard to make world altering changes within a focus group. The same is true about movies and big data. Currently, the default practice is to track what genres audiences gravitate towards, what artists they are drawn to and what sequels or reboots are profitable. This is a perfectly sound business model if you are treating a film as a commercial good. However, no matter how much information you collect on what an audience has proven they like, art film will never get closer to real change by catering to these tendencies with derivative content. What data may be able to provide is something altogether more subtle and important.
The real questions that art filmmakers should ask of the data are not direct. The real questions are what do these trends and through lines point to below the surface? What are people searching for not literally but subliminally? Data can give us insights into this like never before. Just as blockbusters can remove some of the guess work from identifying what is massively popular in society, independent film can cut through some of the inherent ambiguity in identifying what is on our collective minds. By no means is it as cut and dry as the Netflix approach but the results can be just as powerful. Data harnessed to help guide artists to unarticulated needs could be a powerful tool. Take for example, the most recent best picture winner, The Shape of Water. This is a story about a mute janitorial worker falling in love with a humanoid fish monster during the cold war. This movie did not appear in any algorithm. There was absolutely no precedent that it would work and yet it was financed, produced, and nominated for 14 Academy Awards. The Shape of Water worked because it cataloged a bunch of relevant social issues in the form of a fairy tale. There were themes of loneliness, metaphorical lack of voice, otherness, government distrust, political anxiety, and taboo romanticism. Whether the creators had statistical proof that these theme resonated within society, resonate they did. If big data can be a tool to gain a little bit of insight on some of these relevant issues, then art film can still endeavor to open and lead a conversation on them, both publicly and internally.
Big data is here to stay and, like almost every other sector, the film industry will have to adapt to the opportunity it brings. There is tremendous potential here to tap into the collective emotional pulse of society with a higher degree of accuracy than ever before. At the same time there is a wrong way to utilize this new technology. It is important that independent art film doesn’t take the safe path of playing to the crowd. Even as the stakes raise, and the cost of failure mounts, independent film must brave the same perils it always has, venturing into uncertain, alternative waters. It seems like a tough proposal, finally film has some kind of objective statistical measure for demand by which financial and creative decisions can be weighed and I am suggesting indie film avoids it? Understanding blockbusters will exploit it for all it’s worth, yes, because in the end of the day they are playing two different games anyways. Art film has to risk financial uncertainty, per usual, but the reward is immortality and cultural significance. It has to prioritize creating depth of feeling and insight as real as lived experiences. Film art, when at it’s best, works not because it was what everyone wanted but because it responds to a felt yet unarticulated need. Though we are unconscious to this need, our mind isn’t, and we can come a little bit closer to understanding how we fit into the world by thinking about it.