Stephen Follows

Can we measure great acting?

I used 3,144,427 data points to decode Emma Thompson's performance in Love Actually to understand the 'maths' of great acting ...
Stephen Follows

What happened to the sound of action films?

The total number of detected sound events per minute in action movies has been rising steadily. A modern action film packs in ...
Stephen Follows

How often does one person write, direct, produce, and star in a movie?

After analysing 38 million film credits, I found 11,827 movies where one person held all four creative roles. I'm calling ...
Stephen Follows

Movies have become more intense (but not in the way you think)

It’s a common claim that movies today feel more intense than they used to. In a world of multiple screens, endless ...
Stephen Follows

Sitemap - StephenFollows.com - Using data to explain the film industry

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Stephen Follows

3 smart sounding reasons movies feel dumber…er

Last week, I posted my new research on the simplicity of movie scripts. Today, I’m sharing the companion video under the guise of The Film Data Scientist. It’s just like the original research but ...
Stephen Follows

What does the patent behind Netflix’s acquisition of Ben Affleck’s AI company actually do?

This article is part of my ‘Big Ideas’ series, in which I explore the evolving landscape of the film industry. Each instalment combines data, research, and analysis to go deep on a trend, idea or case ...
Stephen Follows

Are movies becoming more simplistic?

A reader, Peter, got in touch to ask: People often complain about a sharp decline in the quality of film writing in the last 10-15 years. So my thinking is, are modern screenplays objectively worse? I ...