CHUD.com Community › Forums › THE MAIN SEWER › CHUD.COM Main › The Death of cinema
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

The Death of cinema

post #1 of 20
12/16/05 at 10:50pm
Thread Starter 
We always thought that DVD or a combination of broadband and HDTV or an asteroid impact would kill movies.

We were wrong. The death of cinema will come in the form of studios using a cheat mode.

Computer spots a blockbuster from box office flop

Just imagine a world without Shawshank Redemption or sleeper hits. A world in which we wouldn't be debating if King Kong is flopping or not because the studio number-crunchers wouldn't have greenlit it in the first place.

I don't know about you, but I'm all creeped out
Reply
post #2 of 20
12/16/05 at 10:56pm
It’s pure horseshit. Human caprice – a.k.a a chaotic system, much like the weather - is beyond the predictive capability today’s computers. If Professor Sharda felt otherwise he would spend the rest of his life in his local betting shop … winning BIG!
Reply
post #3 of 20
12/16/05 at 10:58pm
Thread Starter 
I hope so.

I don't get all those spoilsport scientists. Like the ones trying to explain falling in love through chemistry or those who came with the conclusion that Mona Lisa's smile is 83% happiness a couple of days ago.

I know they have grants to collect but excuse me for wanting a little mystery and magic in my life.
Reply
post #4 of 20
12/16/05 at 10:59pm
Yikes.

Although I'm not sure if it would mean the "Death of Cinema." Hell I'm not even sure if this is anything worth worrying about.

First, his required criteria has proven to be a little volatile. He needs to include the release dates and the competition, but most release dates aren't set until after production begins. And even then they change all the time. Plus, typically you don't get a rating until you have at least some cut of a film ready for submission to the MPAA. Again - after production has ended. That this guy is claiming studios should use this before they decide wether or not to fund a film seems to not be completely thought out.

I don't know, I think this is something that might raise an eyebrow or two, but in the end will just be a blip.
Reply
post #5 of 20
12/16/05 at 11:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mastronikolas
I hope so.

I don't get all those spoilsport scientists. Like the ones trying to explain falling in love through chemistry or those who came with the conclusion that Mona Lisa's smile is 83% happiness a couple of days ago.

I know they have grants to collect but excuse me for wanting a little mystery and magic in my life.
Ask yourself the question: would a smart man (a professor) announce to the world a reliable method of acquiring untold riches?

The man is an expert in 'information systems' - FFS! How does that qualification make him an expert on human behaviour?
Reply
post #6 of 20
12/16/05 at 11:09pm
In fact - the next time I'm at my university I'm going to seek out this publicity-worshipping charlatan's paper and make it my purpose to slate every last piece of it.

The man is giving science a bad fucking name.
Reply
post #7 of 20
12/17/05 at 1:21am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoff Foster
The man is giving science a bad fucking name.
I think the guys who spliced tomatoes with fish genes and grew a human ear on a mouse got there first...
Reply
post #8 of 20
12/17/05 at 3:08am
This relies on too many factors that take place long after the film's cameras would have started rolling, and I can't think of many factors that could be instituted from earlier in the development process to replace them and make this a studio's automated pitch green-lighting machine. It'd be about as ill-fated an experiment as the infamous three weeks Warner Brothers was run by Premier magazine's box office calculator.
Reply
post #9 of 20
12/17/05 at 3:46am
I would like to see a more in depth analysis of his seven criteria. On the surface it sounds completely flawed and in some cases highly unscientific. For example one of the criteria is strength of cast. What does this mean exactly? Unless the numbers are dealing strictly with the box office performance of the previous films a cast member has been in, there is no way to apply a number that measures the strength of the cast. That's purely subjective.

One of the other criteria was genre. The popularity of specific genres changes. Certain genres get done to death to the point that nobody is interested anymore. Other genres that didn't do well previously finally find their killer app that blows the doors wide open.

Second, the track record isn't all that impressive.
Quote:
The results of the study showed that 37 percent of the time the network accurately predicted which category the film fell into, and 75 percent of the time was within one category of the correct answer.
37% accuracy? Most of us can do just as well simply by guessing. Maybe I'd be more impressed if I knew just what it was figuring out 75% of the time, but the article doesn't quite make that clear.
Reply
post #10 of 20
12/17/05 at 8:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoff Foster
In fact - the next time I'm at my university I'm going to seek out this publicity-worshipping charlatan's paper
No need to go to the library. Here it is (PDF format). Figure 4 tells me pretty much all there needs to be known about this guy and his method...

In all I think his criteria are a bit arbitrary and I think his 37% rate of BINGO is nore than a little low for a predictive method which is supposed to be considered successful.
Reply
post #11 of 20
12/17/05 at 9:00am
37% ?
This is a joke, right?
A monkey could throw darts at a board and get a better score than that.
Reply
post #12 of 20
12/17/05 at 9:28am
And to think, the guy could be doing something worthwhile in science but noooooo, he'd rather just help predict which movie's will succeed or fail at the box office.
Reply
post #13 of 20
12/17/05 at 9:44am
I mean, all he needs to do is check the CHUD messageboards.
Reply
post #14 of 20
12/17/05 at 9:54am
You speak the truth.
Reply
post #15 of 20
12/17/05 at 10:28am
37%? whoa, hold the front page...

i supose the guy has to justify his grant somehow but does this have any real application? i'd be interested if he applied his program to movies that have still to be released and see how they fare in the real world against what MovieBot (or whatever) says.

and i reckon i could hit a better success ratio of 37% but i don't see Hollywood producers beating a path to my front door.
Reply
post #16 of 20
12/17/05 at 12:36pm
Yeah, right. If only he could've announced earlier this earth-shattering discovery (mapping the humane genome? Bah, amateurs...), I wouldn't have seen so much running around in my office these last two days regarding the first BO estimates of Kong.

Really, it was just like that scene in Die Hard with a Vengeance when the fat Sgt.Turley tells his black female switchboard operator they're gonna hand all emergency phonecalls from there on out ("...yeah, and I'm gonna marry Donald Trump!")

37%?! If only we could have had that kind of accuracy for predicting The Ice Harvest numbers here...
Reply
post #17 of 20
12/17/05 at 7:22pm
A better indication might be reaction to trailers. Hollywood should get all indie and start financing trailers before they greenlight an entire film. Based on the response from the crowd last night to the MIAMI VICE trailer, they could have saved a wad of money on that one. If inertia has a sound it was the response to that trailer.

In any case, I'm going to write this theory up in a paper and expect people to accept it as science. Rather than just a bullshit theory I devised while waiting for KONG to start.
Reply
post #18 of 20
12/17/05 at 7:44pm
Code:
#include <stdio.h>

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{

  If (arg[1] == JACKSON  || SPIELBERG || CRUISE  ||  }
    
  {  printf (“\nHIT!”);
    return (LOTS_OF_DOLLARS)}

  if (arg[1] == MADONNA  || GUY_RITCHIE || BEN_AFFLECK )

   { printf (“\nTURKEY!”);
    return (THIS_MORNING’S_BREAKFAST)}

}
For my next trick - discovering the Grand Unified Theory, with HTML.
Reply
post #19 of 20
12/20/05 at 4:00pm
To combat this, Hollywood has created a computer that will create the types of movies that alway make money.

Reply
post #20 of 20
12/21/05 at 12:23am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoff Foster
Code:
#include <stdio.h>

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{

  If (arg[1] == JACKSON  || SPIELBERG || CRUISE  ||  }
    
  {  printf (“\nHIT!”);
    return (LOTS_OF_DOLLARS)}

  if (arg[1] == MADONNA  || GUY_RITCHIE || BEN_AFFLECK )

   { printf (“\nTURKEY!”);
    return (THIS_MORNING’S_BREAKFAST)}

}
For my next trick - discovering the Grand Unified Theory, with HTML.
Dude, that so doesn't compile.
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: CHUD.COM Main
CHUD.com Community › Forums › THE MAIN SEWER › CHUD.COM Main › The Death of cinema