Project Title: Critical and Consumer Choice: The Effect of Critical Aggregate Websites on Audience Engagement
BASIS Advisor: Dr. Jupin
Internship Location: Century Theatres
Onsite Mentor: Mr. Ryan Bordow
The state of movies in 2018 and 2019 is a pivotal one. With major franchises coming to a close and newer ones beginning to take up the positions once held by larger studios, the landscape of Hollywood is beginning to change. It’s now more important than ever that studios begin to learn both what critics and consumers ask for in a product, and how to craft a product that suits all parties. The spread of social media and the Internet has fundamentally changed how audiences choose what they want to watch, which also spells certain change for studios, no longer able to pass off subpar products to the general public. By working with Century Theatres, I will gather consumer opinions and compare them to worldwide data, collecting the information necessary to construct a model of the most profitable and critically successful movies in order to show the significance and structure of trends. I hope to not only investigate how critics write their reviews, but how the website assimilates data and the general effect it has on the movie-going public, and what effect this has on the worldwide industry as a whole.
My Posts
Refutation of My Theory
Apr 29, 2019
One of the biggest revelations from my data is the fact that my initial theories were proven incorrect. Though I initially believed that many people would be influenced by the aggregate sites, and therefore base their enjoyment off of what they read from the internet, this turned out to be untrue. Instead, most moviegoers did […]
Results and Money part 3
Apr 29, 2019
This discussion of the third aspect of the results, the actual usage of the aggregate websites, or what substitutes were used. The most commonly used website cited was Rotten Tomatoes, with very few people using Metacritic. These are the most commonly sited websites when it comes to critical aggregates, so I made sure to put […]
Results and Money part 2
Apr 29, 2019
The second part of the discussion is about the audience of the movies. Once again I will use the top 3 movies, Captain Marvel, Bumblebee, and Spider-verse as the examples. This includes age range, and location of audience (US or worldwide) (Likely skewed because of the larger audience) Captain Marvel had the widest range of […]
Week 4 Update
Apr 29, 2019
I’ve watched 3 movies since the last update: Captain Marvel, HTTYD3, and Lego Movie 2. After watching all three, I realized there were more examples of media influence to be found with all 3 movies. Though I found all three movies relatively enjoyable, I realized I too was influenced by the perception created by the […]
Week 10: Results and Money part 1
Apr 29, 2019
At the time of posting Avengers Endgame just hit theaters, but I have collected over 300 results from my survey, which should provide a picture of what kinds of movies people were most likely to watch, and the effect the websites had on them. This will be broken into 3 parts depending on which aspect […]
Week 9 update
Apr 29, 2019
One of the biggest challenges of creating a data poll is convincing a large amount of people necessary to create significant data. Polling over the internet is the most simple way, and achieves the best results. I have found that polling people in person is the hardest form of finding information. People aren’t very interested […]
Avengers Endgame and the Effect of Hype
Apr 28, 2019
After watching Avengers Endgame (which was amazing and everyone should watch it) I began to think about one of the major components to the movie’s popularity: the hype behind it. This movie was one of the most anticipated movies of all time, and is projected to make as much as it’s predecessor, if not more. […]
Week 3 update
Mar 11, 2019
This week, I’ve been trying to create the optimal poll to collect the most information for my data tables. As a result, I have looked for websites and sources to design not only the most appealing format, but also collects the data in a short and succinct way as not to distract and turn off […]
Week 2 Update
Mar 04, 2019
After analyzing the box office numbers for the previous week, 2 interesting trends occurred. The Lego Movie 2 opened February 7th to high critical praise, while Alita: Battle Angel opened February 14th to mixed reviews from critics. However, contrary to expectations, the Lego Movie 2 only 43 million dollars in contrast to the first installments’ […]
Week 1 Update
Feb 17, 2019
Most people enjoy watching movies, and most people spend a lot of their time reading stuff on the internet. Consequently, most people’s opinions of media are skewed by opinions they’ve read online. Most commonly people use sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic to check reviews and then make their moviegoing decisions. These numbers are so […]