CUDAN@ IC²S² 2022 Conference

When: 2022-07-21 21:00-22:00 (Tallinn time)
Where: The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, USA

Abstract – CUDAN Senior Research Fellows and Faculty Vejune Zemaityte, Andres Karjus, Ulrike Rohn, Indrek Ibrus, and Maximilian Schich will present a co-authored poster at the 8th International Conference on Computational Social Science.

An Ecology of Film Industry Networks

The film industry has long been recognised by network science as a worthwhile area of interest, with the movie-actor network according to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), and the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, in particular, at times rivaling Zachary’s Karate network in scholarly attention. Yet, more broadly, studying the film industry as an integrated complex system, as a network of complex networks, has so far been difficult, due to a lack of available data. Here we present the analysis of a large, so far proprietary dataset which is rooted in Cinando, i.e. an online platform operated by Marché du Film – Festival de Cannes. The platform services film festivals and their associated markets by facilitating global film industry operations, including rights sales and investments, as well as business-to-business video-on-demand (VOD) viewing. Beyond classic networks, such as the association of actors, directors, and crew with particular films, the Cinando data harbors a whole ecology of meaningful networks, including around 140k instances of film-festival participation, as well as several other networks that are not covered elsewhere. The core purpose of our presentation is to unfold the inherent ecology of complex networks, which includes a variety of interactions connecting films, concepts (including genres), human individuals, companies, locations, and events. The data further allows for temporal analysis in granular detail. Interesting aspects include the dynamics of gender in film production networks, the creation of public value through film-festival participation, the structure of film genre classification, and the annual dynamics of the international film festival circus, including effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Rounding off the presentation, we will compare specific aspects with results based from complementary sources, which capture additional materials and time frames. In general, our analysis sets the base for multiple follow-up studies of specific aspects, while highlighting the film industry as a system of complex networks.