A Magic Dwells In Each Beginning
A deep breath and smile. We’re really happy when we look back to the last four months after launching Moviegalaxies. And we can only state that we are truly surprised and overwhelmed by all the positive feedbacks at different events, channels and conversations. Not only the Wish List is getting bigger and people were sending us movie requests via mail, we also got amazing feedback and interpretations from
“Movie Galaxies, at its most basic level, is a site devoted to social networking, though not in the sense you may think. (…) It’s an interesting way to visualize the contours of a single film’s narrative, but things really get interesting once you start making comparisons.”
“Perhaps the answer can be found in the entertainment value – and the long conversations one can have – after watching a socially complex movie with many interwoven stories.”
“There are metrics, such as density and clustering, associated with each network, which could be made less technical sounding, but it’s fun to browse and search your favorite movies. I clicked around for a good half hour.”
“The duo create a new cinematic experience by utilizing the social interaction graph in movies and helping viewers discover new relationships through smart algorithms and data processing.”
Also, there are blog posts from around the world, like the Brazil, China, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain and the UK, as well as Pinterest users starting to like the page. At some point, marketing got a self-runner as all the mentioned as well as Twitter people from around the world spread the word. With the side-effect of awakening us in the middle of the night and noticingthat the servers have reached their limit. A pleasant way to get up.
We recently took some time to leave the desk and presented Moviegalaxies at different events in the US, such as Graph Connect or small gatherings at the Red Rock Café in Mountain View. Not to forget, conversations at YCombinator´s Startup School 2012 as always gave us an idea of how to improve and communicate the idea.
One of the biggest highlights was when we discovered an Stanford student sitting in Palo Alto´s Coupa Café, just in the moment when he was surfing on Moviegalaxies. You can´t imagine how it feels like when you see your product and user at a random place, thinking back to the endless small crafting hours in your room, next to a candle, some tee and sketches. Just amazing.
“A Magic Dwells In Each Beginning” - Hermann Hesse, German-Swiss poet.
Last but not least, Moviegalaxies had been featured in Coursera Course “Social Network Analysis”, by Professor Lada Adamic. While we always keep an close eye on the user, the proof and support by the scientific community is a matter close to the heart of our idea. Because we think that in the always more growing and interconnected world, social graphs in movies can be a good vehicle to translate a scientific matter into an easy understandable daily science and awareness. Especially, when you think about how far you resonate with the content, story and messages of the movie culture.
So far, we are just amazed and surprised by the journey that this little idea has taken so far. And it tell us that the evenings, nights and weekends we spent on the development of the product bears its fruits. Of course, the journey has just started, and we have a clear vision where we want to take Moviegalaxies the next months.
Right now, the first wave is gone and the servers can take a deep breath. However, we will go on improving the idea and we are happy to give you a good experience galaxing some movies. Cheers!
The Network Density in Movies
Just like your own Facebook- or real-life-network, the clusters, scenes and networks in movies are the environments that shape a story. Taking into account that you observe characters and their interactions you identify and empathize with, you can see social networks in movies to be in resonance with your personal life. Just like in movies, it makes a big difference if you have a network of 5 close buddies or 20 loosely-coupled friends. Here, we have arrived at our topic: The network density in movies.
The density of a network plays an important role in the dynamic development of a motion picture story. In a nutshell, the network density is “the proportion of edges in a network relative to the total number of possible edges”. Most probably, maybe 5% of you are now better informed than before. So, let´s go slow: Primarily, the social network is an empirically discovered structure. Edges in the network are the ties (connecting lines) between nodes, namely characters. Here, network density is the proportion of ties present relative to ties possible among alters in an character´s first degree neighborhood. In this context, network density can be a measure of how many of my friends are friends themselves, controlling for my network´s size. A dense network´s nodes are “densely-knit” and “tightly-bounded”, meaning that the most relevant ties stay within the network. In sociology, network density is often seen as an indicator of the extent to which individuals identify with those around them (homophily) or it is noted as an important factor of social capital.
For a movie analysis, it is interesting to know who belongs to a group, as well as the patterns of relations that explain and sustain such a group. For example, dense networks have considerable direct communication among all members - This is the classic case of a romance. By contrast, few members of “sparsely-knit” networks communicate directly and frequently with each other, see The Lord of the Rings. In unison, these networks provide character with considerable room to switch between relationships (esp. sub-clusters) and scenes. As a consequence thereof, you will notice a higher diameter and clustering coefficient within a interaction design of that kind. To understand the idea of network density easily, just explain yourself, why the average value in romance movies is significantly higher than for any other genre.
Typical for romance movies is a smaller network (#nodes) and a relative higher amount of strong connections (#edges). Typically, a man and a woman play the central role in the movie and have a strong connection to each other and their peers throughout the plot. The density is higher because of the inner conflict of the characters, that reveal it to the close connections. Especially, the inner conflict is often projected outward onto something else, for example through the character expressing his or her feelings to another friend. While we can state that so far for most romance movies, we are surprised to discover that Romeo & Juliet doesn´t perfectly fit into that frame with a network density of 0.12.
More interesting -and maybe a small world premiere ?- is one of our other insights from the first (non-scientific) analysis. For example, we can observe differences among movie directors in the dynamic arrangement of their character network. Just have a look:
The chart shows each director´s average dynamic design of the character network in a movie. You will discover that Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone have a different way to design the character network to the end of a movie than the Coen brothers and Clint Eastwood. Here, the increasing density in the last quarter of their movies is a result of the elimination of side-characters, and the general compression of the network at a higher amount of close interactions. The “solution of the conflict” and the showdown of the protagonist and antagonist in the drama is what we can see here. On the other hand, Quentin Tarantino and David Lynch are similar in their (average) network design at the half-runtime of a movie. Their network densities drop significantly because of the introduction of new side-stories and herewith side-characters and scenes into the story, increasing the overall network size.
These small insights are just the tip of the iceberg. There are a plenty of other factors that vary among directors and actors. A whole “Movie DNA” can be explored and be sure, we will. Maybe, you also have something discovered you like to share with us?
Stay tuned and have fun galaxing some movies!
Cheers, your Moviesgalaxies team
Moviegalaxies Launched
We are super excited to release the first version of moviegalaxies to a broader audience. We work on this project for quite a while now, with the goal to enable a unique view on movies. Starting off with this project right after presenting our work at the social network driven COINS Conference 2011, we received really good feedback. Since then, we analyzed more than 700 movie scripts which is quite a solid base to start from. But we know that there are plenty of interesting stories out there that would be worth visualizing.
The reactions on this project vary from a “Wow!” to an honest “Nice, but what can I do with it ?”. We are super happy receiving all the positive feedback but also very carefully listen to the latter once. Each graph represents the conversation layer of a movie, and therefore can only reflect the part of the story. A good movie makes use of sounds, non-verbal communication, pictures and many more layers that cannot be represented within the visualization. Nonetheless, we think that the conversation layer is on of the dominant, most powerful part of each story. Sure, there are exceptions, but we assume you’ll get a good idea of the story by switching off your tv screen and just “listening” to the movie. For instance, take Babel or Traffic. These stories are clearly reflected in their graphs and Moviegalaxies helps to understand the plot of a movie only through a graphic representation. That is what makes uns drive and Moviegalaxies so fascinating to us!
But we already look far ahead. Currently being caught up with regular bug fixing, we will be focusing on feature implementation the next weeks. Building dynamic graphs is one of our major goals, because we think the story can be reflected so much better with the 4th dimension: Time. Seeing the main actor becoming more and more central while the movie evolves, will provide such great insights into the story, wouldn’t it? Also, we think about a more interactive channel for the user.
Moviegalaxies can be usefull for network analysts, film academics or just movie lovers. Next time you walk out of the cinema and you are thrilled about the structure of the movie, make sure to check out Moviegalaxies. For meeting us, shoot us a mail or have a look at our schedule. We´ll be in Boston, New York and San Francisco the next months. For now, have fun galaxing some movies.
Cheers,
Michael & Jermain
