Thanks Eoin for the heads up on this.  I thought this was a neat twist on the whole "It's so formulaic trope".

For as much as $20,000, Worldwide Motion Picture Group compares the story structure and genre of a script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success.

read the rest here

-Don

Yeah, nothing new or surprising there. Hey, any writer that wants a paycheck career, take note. When they announce what works and what doesn't, give them that and you'll be set. =)

Some of this sounds cool - good to see that what works and what doesn't still comes back to the script instead of some ad campaign.

Some of the advice sounded less formulaic than the STC cronies, and I guess a chunk of that $20k pay-check may go into him meeting the writers and putting their stuff in context.

You guys are nuts. This is basically a focus group run by statisticians. I'm with Ol Parker on this one. On top of that, I've always held the belief that there is no scientific formula to a hit film. You can make good guesses as to what'll sell but nothing foolproof. Audiences are fickle, not to mention big hits can come absolutely out of nowhere and flops can happen for seemingly no reason.

Quoted from James McClung You guys are nuts. This is basically a focus group run by statisticians. I'm with Ol Parker on this one.

;D

I liked what Ol Parker said, and I was with him on that point until I read a little further.

I kinda liked the guy's attitude - he was 'take it or leave it' and happy to say ugly baby.

The difference to me, was that it didn't really dictate the story too much. I'm not saying that I know too much about the angle he's coming from - but 'this person needs a side-kick' is cool by me because it's not dictating the story - it's suggesting method, methodology - it seemed to me to be more about having to tie things up nicely rather than 'this has got to happen on this page'. That's got to be better that STC??

Quoted from Forgive I kinda liked the guy's attitude - he was 'take it or leave it' and happy to say ugly baby.

If this business is really to become the norm in the studio system, take it or leave it might come to mean take or leave the job if you opt not to change your demons to the targeting sort. Not much of a choice there. I mean, people tout STC as guidelines, not rules. But when writers, agents, and script readers take that book as scripture, it becomes the rules.

There's definitely truth to the ugly baby comment though.

Quoted from Forgive The difference to me, was that it didn't really dictate the story too much. I'm not saying that I know too much about the angle he's coming from - but 'this person needs a side-kick' is cool by me because it's not dictating the story - it's suggesting method, methodology - it seemed to me to be more about having to tie things up nicely rather than 'this has got to happen on this page'. That's got to be better that STC??

It's the same ballpark. I mean, you're right that it doesn't target the story, only the details. But those details seem to be pretty significant. I mean, the difference between a cursed superhero and a guardian superhero could be as big as a completely different character, which could, by proxy, entail a lot of other differences. Sure, a sidekick doesn't dictate the story but it is an additional main character that could have some clout as far as the story goes.

My main objection here is that these specific details, that could be anything, really, are targeted based *exclusively* on marketing (not even marketability, just marketing) whereas even STC, as maligned as it is, was written under the guise of effective storytelling as well as marketability. I mean, this guy Bruzzese is a statistician. It's only incidental that he's working with studios. He has nothing to do with the industry. This is all in a day's work for him. Why would he care about any risidual effects this might have on the industry when all he has to do is deliver the facts?

And really, is saying something's better than STC really all that much of a compliment? You might as well compare it to a kick in the nuts.

Ha! Awesome find, Eoin.

Nothin' helps create great art like a thorough statistical analysis of current market trends  8)

$20,000 a pop? Wow, I really wish I'd have thought up this scam before he did! :P

Screenwriters will naturally rebel against something that seems so inantely crude and mechanical as imagined against the free flowing creative process they idealise screenwriting to be.

By its very essence, a screenplay is ironic, if not in content, certainly in context, it is an artistic form expressed in a rigid structure.

Statistics are predicated on a predetermined set of rules and assumptions. They yield results, but not always useful data, particularly, when the fundamental model is incorrect. Here's a rudimentary and recent example.

A University of Cambridge 'maths whizz' William Hartston backed Seabass in the 2013 Grand National - after creating a formula that predicts the winning horse.
This 'formula', was based on a statistical analysis of horses names and noting that horses beginning with S, R, M, or C, were most likely to win.

Auroras Encore at 66-1 was the winner.

He didn't look at age, weight, height, breeding, training history, track condition, prior races won that year - all data that would seem logical to analyse to someone with racing pedigree.

Analysing the future of film trends, based on a segmented history, seems like a very narrow subset of data to me. That type of analysis would surely say that there is no longer a market for black and white, based on frequency alone and all modern films should have sound.

How then, would it explain The Artist, a film conceived on a budget of $15M, yielding a box office of $133M worldwide and winning Oscar for best picture - shot in both black and white and without sound ?

I'm sure that statistics professor Vinny Bruzzese has an impressive resume, but that doesn't lend any more credence to his flawed method in analysing film.

A compelling story, riveting characters, scenes that stir emotion and are visually impressive are hard to define with statistics - but they leap off the page to experienced readers and screenwriters.


I wish him the best in his venture.

Quoted from Eoin How then, would it explain The Artist, a film conceived on a budget of $15M, yielding a box office of $133M worldwide and winning Oscar for best picture - short in both black and white and without sound ?

How would you explain it?

Quoted from Forgive How would you explain it?

If you pay me $20,000, I'll be glad to

Get out clause.

All knowledge is really based on the past - it's only ever guess work if something new will work.

The problem is, with anything, if you find out what someone likes and then give it to them everyday, they'll soon turn around and say I'm desperate for something different - that's human nature.

I was in TV news and I hated consultants. Never had to deal with them personally, but I'd always hear about the advice they gave my friends in the newsroom. I'm no news director, but I'm pretty sure a lot of that was snake oil and there were more intuitive improvements that could've been made to turn a better profit.

I don't like what Luca Brasi's doing here. It's up to writers to know the audiences well enough to write something that will entertain them. That comes naturally to the best ones. All others can either try to improve their writing skills or just accept the consequences of complacency/stubbornness/integrity. There's barely a literary formula for this stuff, let alone a mathematical one. For every minute a sucker's born, there's ten times more executives buying snake oil like this, hoping creativity's still not the way to turn a profit.