Tribeca Talks: 'Big Data and the Movies' discusses the upsides and downsides of data analysis

Is the movie industry ahead or behind the curve in terms of data? In the Tribeca Talks panel "Big Data and the Movies" on April 23, MoviePass CEO Stacy Spikes had a frank response: the industry is "a laggard." Yet data is becoming more and more a part of production, distribution, and exhibition, where it can be either a powerful tool or an obstacle to artistic process, depending on your vantage point. One reason that the industry hasn't fully embraced data is because it can be hard to procure information about viewers. The industry is a "cash, walk-up business" Spikes

elaborated. That means it can be hard to tease out information about the demographics of people seeing movies. Industry veterans may have a gut feeling about what it means to play well in New York City or Texas, or Fort Lauderdale but not Miami, but they can't back it up with data. Eugene Hernandez, The Film Society of Lincoln Center's director of digital strategy, acknowledged that his non-profit has advantages because it is member-based. Many of their sales are both in advance and online, allowing them to drill down into zip codes and other demographic information. As a non-profit, their goal is not to show the films that will sell out the house, but also to find ways to offer more challenging programming that appeals to a wider audience, often by sandwiching it with a talk that will raise interest.

Bill Livek, the vice chairman and CEO of Rentrak, which tracks movie ticket sales across the world, explained how globalization affects markets. If a movie opens well in Australia, which is almost a day ahead of the United States, studios may optimize their marketing budgets ahead of the release, pulling back or amping up its ad buys based on these early results. He was more skeptical of sentiment analysis, which attempts to figure out if people are saying positive or negative things about the film. "If the FDA were regulating it, it would have to have a warning label," he quipped.

Spikes jumped in to mention two counterintuitive examples where negative sentiment actually yielded positive results at the box office. When presidential candidate Bob Dole condemned Trainspotting, its box-office returns spiked. A similar strategy boosted Priest, which focused on a gay priest. Religious pundits complaining about the release were sent screeners of the film, which only amped up their outrage and brought a lot of attention to the indie movie.

What ultimately ends up mattering is not "sentiment analysis," but the old-fashioned kind that can't be accurately measured--yet. "Sentiment is everything. The heart leads with films, then we use data to connect to an audience," Hernandez emphasized. Movies that inspire strong reactions and emotions are on the path to success, even if they have a fraction of the "likes" and "tweets" of a competing release. If filmmakers are passionate advocates of their film, they can use data to find  their core audience and connect with them. While everyone in the panel embraced data in some form, they emphasized that it can't occur in a vacuum. Thoughtful analysis must be paired with knowledge of when data is a good fit for an objective. And while data can be an important tool for a filmmaker, it's their passion and belief in their art that ultimately counts.