(10 minute read)
In response to an article here by indiewire, I wanted to write about the influence of data science on the film industry. An even more comprehensive article can be found here by The Atlantic.
We live in a world defined by numbers. Social Security numbers, zip codes, latitude and longitude, all give our world structure. I've come across mountains of data in the form of endless spreadsheets and online databases created by some really smart people. Within these vaults of numbers, analysts like me are tasked to harness the power of big data to produce actionable insights and understand the behavior of our target audiences. What does that really mean? And if we have all this information at our fingertips, does this limit how much we can create?
Loaded but important as our world becomes more digitized and quantified. Recommendation systems like Google Maps and Amazon leverage Big Data and tell us where to drive and what to buy next. These machine learning and artificial intelligence models are being designed to make our lives easier and inform our decision-making.
According to a University of Oxford Report, 82% of Americans are concerned with AI and believe it needs to be monitored, yet new gadgets seem to come out every week as people in tech continue to advance our way of work.
As scientists, mathematicians, programmers, and analysts label and quantify consumer behaviors, we as consumers place a lot of trust in companies like Google and Amazon that collect data on us as we use their service.
Predictive analytics involves statistical buzzwords such as "clustering" and "factor analysis", which are some of the most common advanced analytical techniques in the data science community. If you're in this group, you've definitely heard about this. I like to explain things through stories, so here's an example...
Let's say you're a movie director writing your first film. You have close ties with a top producer at Warner Bros, and you're having lunch with him next week to pitch a preliminary script. You're stressed because he wants something that sells but you want something that's exciting to direct.
One day you're at a coffee shop, Googling statistics on what genres are currently hot. A well-dressed statistician approaches you and asks what you're working on. The statistician says that he has this algorithm he calls Genie that can make predictions using real-time data. He pulls out his phone, punches a few keys and says, "Genie says romantic comedies set in the deserts of Mexico have an 80% chance of becoming popular among millennials in the near future."
Pause. Would you use this knowledge to your advantage? The statistician claims it's accurate, and he shows you the numbers to prove it. You have just gained a valuable insight into millennials, the world's fastest growing audience and arguably the most lucrative one.
But you hate romantic comedies Your true passion is action. What is the opportunity cost of dismissing this insight and making an action film instead? Well although action films make the second most money out of most genres, you're going to need to ask your producer for a very large scale budget, be prepared to break into an already hyper-competitive market with established franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and go against the supposed trend of happy-go-lucky comedies.
What do you do? Do you sacrifice your passion for a "safe bet" in this Mexican desert romantic comedy? This could be your only opportunity at making it big because if this film flops, your producer may not sponsor any of your future films.
Before knowledge became so easily attainable online, people would go off hunches or observations to predict the future. The greatest inventors in the world didn't have Google. They relied day in and day out on what they could see, hear, taste, touch, and smell, which are all considered data points!
Saying that big data kills creativity is very premature because it's not the data that's harmful, it's the interpreter. Cathy O'Neil's highly-acclaimed book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data increases inequality and threatens Democracy details just that. Arguably, when we depend on black-box algorithms for a lot of our decisions, it can essentially lead to our demise.
Machines give us information, but how we measure that information's value and accuracy is another step that we should always challenge. Data can make matters look both really good and really bad because data can be manipulated into an infinite number of stories by whoever writes the final report.
My thoughts on creativity in general is simply this,
This leads me to the paragraph that The Atlantic article wrote about, which is the Steve Jobs model. If you are really passionate about something, you can brand your product to your audiences by "giving them something they did not know they wanted, something they didn’t even know could exist".
And in the last paragraph of the indiewire article, it affirms the message, "Passion wins...Big Data exists as a strategizing tool 'You absorb that and synthesize that and use it as you would' ". Those statements hit the theme of passion home.
Now I'm not saying don't trust the data. That is not what I'm saying. Data is an extremely valuable asset and as mentioned, should be used to develop a strategy, but it should not be a limiting factor. A 95% confidence interval can become very unreliable very fast when it is not fed new data.
Continue to create and invent. If you're a young creator, use data as a strategy to accomplish whatever you need to accomplish. You may not need big data to accomplish what you need to do. Just like all the Instagram influencers out there now... all it takes is a phone, a little imagination, and a LOT of luck that you can't control.
In response to an article here by indiewire, I wanted to write about the influence of data science on the film industry. An even more comprehensive article can be found here by The Atlantic.
We live in a world defined by numbers. Social Security numbers, zip codes, latitude and longitude, all give our world structure. I've come across mountains of data in the form of endless spreadsheets and online databases created by some really smart people. Within these vaults of numbers, analysts like me are tasked to harness the power of big data to produce actionable insights and understand the behavior of our target audiences. What does that really mean? And if we have all this information at our fingertips, does this limit how much we can create?
A World of Numbers
It's a loaded question – is Big Data bad for creativity?
Loaded but important as our world becomes more digitized and quantified. Recommendation systems like Google Maps and Amazon leverage Big Data and tell us where to drive and what to buy next. These machine learning and artificial intelligence models are being designed to make our lives easier and inform our decision-making.
According to a University of Oxford Report, 82% of Americans are concerned with AI and believe it needs to be monitored, yet new gadgets seem to come out every week as people in tech continue to advance our way of work.
As scientists, mathematicians, programmers, and analysts label and quantify consumer behaviors, we as consumers place a lot of trust in companies like Google and Amazon that collect data on us as we use their service.
Predictive Analytics
The articles mentioned in the beginning talk about predictive modeling in terms of measuring how successful a movie might be as well as which audiences are most likely to go and see your movie.Predictive analytics involves statistical buzzwords such as "clustering" and "factor analysis", which are some of the most common advanced analytical techniques in the data science community. If you're in this group, you've definitely heard about this. I like to explain things through stories, so here's an example...
Let's say you're a movie director writing your first film. You have close ties with a top producer at Warner Bros, and you're having lunch with him next week to pitch a preliminary script. You're stressed because he wants something that sells but you want something that's exciting to direct.
One day you're at a coffee shop, Googling statistics on what genres are currently hot. A well-dressed statistician approaches you and asks what you're working on. The statistician says that he has this algorithm he calls Genie that can make predictions using real-time data. He pulls out his phone, punches a few keys and says, "Genie says romantic comedies set in the deserts of Mexico have an 80% chance of becoming popular among millennials in the near future."
Pause. Would you use this knowledge to your advantage? The statistician claims it's accurate, and he shows you the numbers to prove it. You have just gained a valuable insight into millennials, the world's fastest growing audience and arguably the most lucrative one.
"While one of the biggest questions rising out of the increasing use of this kind of data is that artistic vision and creativity will be slowly replaced with market optimization".
What do you do? Do you sacrifice your passion for a "safe bet" in this Mexican desert romantic comedy? This could be your only opportunity at making it big because if this film flops, your producer may not sponsor any of your future films.
Ignorance is Bliss
We are so privileged with knowledge that it can now be a burden.Before knowledge became so easily attainable online, people would go off hunches or observations to predict the future. The greatest inventors in the world didn't have Google. They relied day in and day out on what they could see, hear, taste, touch, and smell, which are all considered data points!
Saying that big data kills creativity is very premature because it's not the data that's harmful, it's the interpreter. Cathy O'Neil's highly-acclaimed book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data increases inequality and threatens Democracy details just that. Arguably, when we depend on black-box algorithms for a lot of our decisions, it can essentially lead to our demise.
Machines give us information, but how we measure that information's value and accuracy is another step that we should always challenge. Data can make matters look both really good and really bad because data can be manipulated into an infinite number of stories by whoever writes the final report.
My thoughts on creativity in general is simply this,
Take risks. You don't need a computer to tell you how to think. ~ DNA
And in the last paragraph of the indiewire article, it affirms the message, "Passion wins...Big Data exists as a strategizing tool 'You absorb that and synthesize that and use it as you would' ". Those statements hit the theme of passion home.
Now I'm not saying don't trust the data. That is not what I'm saying. Data is an extremely valuable asset and as mentioned, should be used to develop a strategy, but it should not be a limiting factor. A 95% confidence interval can become very unreliable very fast when it is not fed new data.
Continue to create and invent. If you're a young creator, use data as a strategy to accomplish whatever you need to accomplish. You may not need big data to accomplish what you need to do. Just like all the Instagram influencers out there now... all it takes is a phone, a little imagination, and a LOT of luck that you can't control.