Film mathematics shows the formula of Hollywood blockbuster.

What was the last movie you saw in the theater? I no longer watch a movie. In part, I prefer the TV series, especially the action show with the spy. But I go to the movie for the actual blockbuster. sand dune movie. Seeing the epic story on a big screen is still a special experience.

In 2020, the film plunged in the cobid epidemic. There was a attendance for a few years since then Upward In many parts of the world, it is still lower than the free band level. The injuries of streaming services such as inflation, Netflix and the transition to prestigious TV series can participate in these trends. Therefore, the film industry is under pressure to attract people into the cinema. Mathematics can help.

In 2020, British data scientists Ganna POGREBNA and her colleagues We analyzed revenue, expenditure and popularity rating More than 6,000 other movies. The findings mapped the storyline throughout the film and linked these types to the audience’s approval and money.

To support science journalism

If you are enjoying this article, support the award -winning journalism. accession. By purchasing subscriptions, it will help you to ensure the future of influential stories about finding the world today and the idea of ​​an influential story about ideas.

Storytelling: From Aristotle to Hollywood

The researcher’s research is based on Initial analysis of literary works Researchers from Vermont University and Australian Adelaide University. Both studies are based on the premise that the majority of stories can only be mapped to a few story arcs.

This idea has been around for a while. About 2,300 years ago, Polymath Aristotle was already thinking. The composition of the story And how to move the audience. And in the 20th century Kurt Bannet Each story delivered from the beginning to the end examined the emotional progress of the story that was well known as a chart.

Inspired by Vonnegut’s “Story Shaps”, Vermont University and Adelaide University teams provided 1,327 stories from Project Gutenberg’s novel collection to algorithms and confirmed six dominant emotional arcs (spoilers for classic movies and books).

Patch

This story begins with the main character who must escape over the negative situation and time. The classic film examples are as follows: Groundhog DayThe protagonist finds himself in a strange situation that repeatedly reproduces on the same day, and his situation is improved by learning more and more in his situation.

Tragedy (or rich in a cloth)

This is reverse arc. In tragedy, the situation begins positively and is a negative end. Think about Romeo and Juliet: Couples are initially happy with love, but the two main characters died.

Man in a hole

In this story, the protagonist is doing well, and the situation has made a negative change, but in the end it is in a more advantageous situation than the first. A typical example is godfather. The Corleone Crime family is at the peak of power when the film begins, but the family’s head was seriously injured and his eldest son was killed. The youngest son, the youngest son, takes on the role of the leader and gains an unparalleled power when becoming a new godfather.

Icarus

This arc overturns the man with a hall story. Consider the character of Leonardo DiCaprio huge: A poor person falls in love with brilliant adventures, but eventually destroys hypothermia. The ancestor character of Great Gatsby It also ends with a successful case and a murder case like a cloth for the rich.

Cinderella

The story of Cinderella first started with an improved bad situation for the protagonist and hit an emotional descent. Think about Babe, a small pig of ancestors that change things when you start to find your place on the farm, but start learning sheep. Unfortunately, he is in a dangerous situation while defending the flock. To be happy, at the end of the story, everything works and Babe wins the grazing competition.

Oedipus

The emotional arc of Oedipus is the opposite of Cinderella. The situation begins well, but there is a stroke of bad luck. The protagonist ultimately picked up him again to get a bad situation. Examples of the character with this arc include the main character of the fate. Frankenstein,,, Moby Dick or hamlet.

POGREBNA’s team wanted to find out whether it followed six emotional progresses and what the structure is paid the most. The researchers downloaded 6,174 English subtitles and analyzed them in sentences for emotional content. They assigned scores to each word according to their emotions. –1 is 0 for negative, 0 for neutral, +1 is positive. The researchers then specified emotional value to each sentence according to the word and dropped the sentence value to -1 and +1. To compare different lengths, we processed the data so that each story is summarized as 100 individual data points.

To group the story, researchers needed a way to measure the distance between the two films. According to the researcher, the difference between two arcs of tension with each data point set X and why You can calculate as follows.

In the equation, researchers were able to compare the differences between the emotional trajectory of the two films at some point.tea) In the story. Since the absolute value of the square root is square, the code does not play a role in comparison. Therefore, whether a curve is far from each other’s distances is not related to each other.

Using this measurement, experts were able to group the film with similar calls. That way, they confirmed that all the films that were studied fell into one of the six emotional arcs confirmed in previous studies.

Interestingly, they found that the genre is often associated with the emotional progress of the story. For example, horror movies generally have a tragedy structure, but comedy follows people in holes or Cinderella stories. Electricity is often rags about wealth, and thrillers tend to have people in the hole structure.

What is the most successful movie?

POGREBNA’s team collected estimated production and income data from the movie industry data website. numberWith movie grade Internet movie database (IMDB).

First, experts surveyed the domestic profits generated in each film. This was the only information that can be used for all works studied. The person in the hall category was the most successful of $ 34.8 million in the second most successful category, Cinderella, compared to $ 3,663 million.

People go to movies more for movies where heroes suffer, but ultimately have a happy ending. Interestingly, the much simpler mop for wealth generated the minimum profit on average.

But is it probably the most expensive movie? The answer to the question is a subtle difference. The team found that there was no correlation between human budget and success in the hall story. The film is played greatly regardless of the consumed dollar or genre.

But tragedy is especially low if there is no high production cost (more than $ 100 million). “This can explain the financial success of a big historical drama. The last samurai Or, such as survival epic PI lifePOGREBNA’s team wrote in the paper.

What is the most popular movie?

Another picture appeared when an expert looked at the user grade of IMDB.

In the size of 1 to 10, one is the most advantageous and 10 is the most advantageous, and the film played 0.19 points with a man in the hole plot. Worse Than rags about rich stories. In fact, ranking the film category to the rating forms a list that is almost the opposite of the results obtained when ranking with profits.

One reason for the conflict of data is that the person in the hall story attracts more viewers and generally receives more rating, so IMDB users are more likely to leave negative reviews than positive. However, IMDB’s metaScore considers user reviews about this story category, a score of metacritic, based on the weighted average of critics. Researchers say, “People who are drilling holes do not produce their favorite movies, but they create a movie that talks about the most.

On the other hand, tragedy is the best suits in the reviews of critics who seem to prefer “serious movies” rather than happy ending.

This information allows the film industry to make a data -oriented decision. In order to attract as many people as possible in the cinema, filmmakers can produce more movies with men with a hole setting. Heart pink tragedy remains the best to get critical acclaim. But keep in mind that the audience still likes a simple upward promise of rich travel in rags.