Crunching my Cinematic Numbers

I love films and I love being able to track things, so when Letterboxd came along it was quite perfect for me. While I still track things that I’ve seen using Your Flowing Data, my core film tracking now takes place through Letterboxd. The big advantage of Letterboxd is that is takes advantage of The Movie Database which has a comprehensive set of data about films. This allows for all sorts of interesting things and my “year to date” page provides a wealth of information.

Up to this point in the year (December 30) the stats for 2014 show that I’ve watched 433 films which is 737.9 hours of cinema. That comes out to an average of 36.1 films a month or 8.2 films per week. Hands down my most watched star is Tilda Swinton with 12 films with her in them. For directors there is a five way tie with five directors with Jim Jarmusch, Jacques Demy, Frank Capra, Ethan and Joel Coen. I’m thinking that I should watch another Jarmusch film today or tomorrow to break the tie.

One of the things that I am trying to do more is write about the films with short reviews. In watching so many films it can be a challenge to remember things about them. I looked through the archive of All Consuming to find hundreds of posts about films that I watched there and over a few months I went through and copied and pasted those reviews into diary entries for the films on Letterboxd. Seeing all of that writing about films made me start to write more short reviews as part of my daily 750 words, so I’ve written reviews of 14.3% of the films which is way up from 1.5% last year, and .4% for 2012.

The older data also allowed me to use Your Flowing Data and All Consuming to figure out when I watched many films and so I’ve been able to enter relatively accurate data for films I’ve watched back to 2006 with some gaps. There is solid and complete data going back to 2010, so that lets me look at how my film watching has changed over time.

In terms of number of films watched it’s gone up since 2010 from 175 films to 433. So that has more than doubled. At the back of my mind for the past few years the goal has been to watch an average of a film a day and I’ve done that since 2012. There is an interesting pattern too as I try to fill gaps and watch films by certain directors or actors which is why certain directors and actors will jump to the top of the lists.

It’s interesting to see how it all fits together with the statistics showing what actually happened in terms of what was watched as opposed to trying to present an idealized version of the films I think I’ve been watching.

Top Statistics 2010–2014

Films Watched
* 2010–175
* 2011–229
* 2012–275
* 2013–388
* 2014–433

Films Rewatched
* 2010–16%
* 2011–17.5%
* 2012–38.2 %
* 2013–29.1 %
* 2014–35.1 %

Directors
* 2010 — Bruce McDonald, Agnès Varda, Joel & Ethan Coen
* 2011 — Chantal Akerman, Steven Soderbergh
* 2012 — Steven Soderbergh, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, Christopher Nolan, Joel & Ethan Coen
* 2013 — John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock
* 2014 — Jim Jarmusch, Jacques Demy, Frank Capra, Joel & Ethan Coen

Actors
* 2010 — Guy Pierce, Tilda Swinton, Zach Galifianakis, George Clooney, Nicholas Cage
* 2011 — Ludivine Sagnier, Michael Nyqvist, Matt Damon, Warren Clarke, Hugh Jackman
* 2012 — John C. Reilly, Gary Oldman, Sigourney Weaver, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jason Statham
* 2013 — Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Bess Flowers, John Goodman, Ward Bond
* 2014 — Tilda Swinton, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Fassbender, Willem Dafoe, Bill Murray