PowerPoint Presentation
How Data Can Save Hollywood
Prerna Gupta@prernagupta
Think about the last movie you saw, or book you read, that moved
you? Took you on a journey. And maybe even changed the way you look
at the world.
What was it that made this story so special? It was likely
something about the characters, the world and the plot that worked
together to get you to suspend your disbelief and keep you engaged
through the course of the story.
Can art and data be friends?
We tend to think of storytelling as an intuitive artform. A
product of raw talent / creative genius and moments of
inspiration.
What place does data have in this sort of creative endeavor?
[This is the question I kept asking myself when I began writing
my first novel a couple of years ago. Its a sci-fi fantasy trilogy
set in Silicon Valley 100 years in the future.
Im a tech entrepreneur by training. And in my last startup
I]
But what I want to show you today, is that great stories are not
really that different from great tech products. They are developed
through a process of iteration and benefit greatly from data.
A good story is worth billionsTwilight $829,685,377The Hunger
Games $864,912,963Alice in Wonderland $1,025,467,110
Skyfall $1,108,561,013Transformers $836,303,693Spiderman
$890,871,626
And in fact, there is good reason to incorporate Lean
methodologies into story developmentBecause if you mange to develop
a good story, it can literally be worth billionsHollywood is a
massive, multi-billion dollar industry.And when their products
succeed, they are hugely profitable
Hollywood has already grossed over $8B this year domestically.
And what many believe will be the biggest of all time is scheduled
for release in Dec (star wars)Did $10B last year domestic, $39B
worldwide; $88B total filmed entertainment revenue
Ticket revenue was down more than 5 percent in 2014, to an
estimated $10.35 billion, compared with $10.92 billion last
year.
Hollywoods innovation crisis
Blockbusters require $100M+ budgetsProject greenlighting driven
by past & politicsDifficult to get actionable data during
production
But for every profitable blockbuster, there are many more
flopsAnd there is a general sense of crisis these days in
HollywoodThe movie production model is brokenBudgets are
skyrocketing. To give yourself a shot at making a billion dollars,
you need to spend several hundred millionThere is no objective
method for greenlighting one project over anotherAnd, theres now
way to get feedback during developmentThey do focus groups AFTER
production, but very little can be changed at this stage. And most
of the $100M has already been spent.
- But big revenue requires increasingly big production budgets-
bc blockbusters make all the money- but creating a blockbuster
takes huge capital investments- and returns are unreliable, at
best- Hollywoods average return rate last year was XX% (negative)-
software analogy- can you imagine a company pouring $100M+ into
developing a product, without testing a beta first?
Case study: Jupiter Ascending
Made by Wachowskis (of Matrix fame)Astronomical budget
(300M+)
Nerd rapture (space travel, genetics, Mila Kunis)
- To give you an example of this, lets look at a big-budget
movie that was released earlier this year, called Jupiter
Ascendingdirected, written and produced by two of the most beloved
directors of our time: the Wachowskis, who created the MatrixHad
one of the biggest budgets of all timeAnd addressed classic sci-fi
themes, which on the face of it, might have been the building
blocks of a great story
Result: box office bomb
Loss of $150M+ at box officeJupiter Ascending is a gigantic,
soulless misfire from the Wachowskis...
Aggressively dull and terribly paced.
Your movies descended into Uranus
So howd it do?it was a huge flop at the box officeAnd it was
slammed by criticsWhat was so bad about it?Well remember all those
things I mentioned at the beginning that make a story great?
Namely, the world, the characters and the plot?They basically got
it all wrong.
- so whats the solution?- how can hollywood introduce lean
startup into their process?- after all, you cant a/b test a
moviecan you?
How can Hollywood increase hit rate?
Hint: 50% of Top Grossing Movies are based on successful
books
- well, the market is starting to show a path- if you look back
at that list of Top 50 grossing movies of all time, youll notice an
interesting pattern: 50% of them are based on successful books
A book is increasingly become a place for market validation of
the most important parameters in a story: namely, the world, the
character and the plot
And guess what? Books are insanely cheap to produce!
Case study: iterative writingLaunched MVP, one chapter at a
timeGot feedback from early adoptersEarly evangelists spread the
word
And books are much easier to test during the creative
processAndy Weir, a software engineer based in Mt View, started
posting his story The Martian on his blog a few years agoOne
chapter at a timeHe began attracting an audience of early adopters,
and this audience gave him feedback, which he incorporated into the
storyAs he iterated, his audience of early adopters grew, and they
began encouraging him to release the book on Kindle He released it
for $.99 and it shot to the top of the chartsAnd the rest is
history
andy weir / the martian backstoryTrend is toward iteration and
market validationMuch cheaper to produce stories in text first
Result: from blog to blockbusterProduction budget:
$108MWorldwide gross: $440Mand counting!
andy weir / the martian backstoryTrend is toward iteration and
market validationMuch cheaper to produce stories in text first!
Worldwide gross: $440MProduction Budget: $108M
But What About Data?
Explicit customer feedback is not the same thing as dataIs there
a way to use statistics to determine when a story is resonating
with your audience?Sort of like how we use engagement metrics, and
other KPIs, when we develop software products?I was very interested
in answering this question a few months agoMy background is in
mobile app development. I previously developed music apps, like
AutoRap and MagicPiano, that have over 150M downloadsAnd we used
Lean Startup methodologies extensively to improve these
productsLast year, I began writing a novel a sci-fi fantasy trilogy
and as I was writing, I found myself wishing I could a/b test some
parts of my book. I wanted objective data that told me whether
people actually liked what I was writing
How do we know a story is good?
So I set out to answer this question: can data tell me when a
story is good?We tested 50 best-selling young adult novels
Data can identify a good story
204060801000502510075% Read% Users Retained
Uglies
Avalon
Graceling
Grisha
Delirium35% max
Fiction has a UX problem
And our hypothesis was that this 35% ceiling was primarily
driven by a UI/UX problemReading long-form fiction on your phone
kind of sucks- We wanted to see if we could come up with a format
innovation, that made reading fiction a more native experience on
mobile- And therefore, make reading fiction more engaging
Solution: lean fiction
Completion rate skyrocketed: 85%
Case study: power of data
204060801000502510075
% Read% Users Retainedsteep drop-offonly 39% read
Ill discuss how we tested a sci-fi story named Discovery, about
a guy in space.First version had 39% completionI noticed huge
drop-off in first 20 messages, so I edited beginning of story to
make it clearer, punchierI re-tested the story, and completion
jumped to 80%
Result: completion rate doubled
204060801000502510075% Read% Users Retained
now 80% read!!
Does data kill creativity?
Here Ill make the point that, isnt art ultimately made to get a
particular reaction out of your audience / deliver a particular
experience to your audience? and wouldnt it be helpful to get
objective metrics on whether your art is actually accomplishing
that?
as an artist myself (im a singer and an author), I believe data
frees to be more creative
if Hollywood used data, maybe it would break them of their
increasing reliance on awful sequels, and get them back to creating
art that truly has the potential to move the masses, and shape how
generations view the future
Prerna Gupta@prernagupta
