StephenFollows.com - Using data to explain the film industry

StephenFollows.com - Using data to explain the film industry

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Indie Film Hustle
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I use data to understand how the film industry works and then share that to help filmmakers get their films funded, shot and seen.
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Indie Film Hustle

My appearances on the indie film champion Alex Ferrari's Indie Film Hustle podcast.

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Stephen Follows
Mar 16, 2021

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Indie Film Hustle
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IFH 446: How Netflix's Algorithm Impacts Indie Films

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In this age of streaming platforms, knowing your distribution route and audience’s comfortable viewing habits as filmmakers is crucial. Today on the show returning champion and film industry data analyst ninja, Stephen Follows, breakdowns the build-up process and goal of his newly-launched data analysis platform, VOD Clickstream.

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IFH 391 The Future Of Hollywood Distribution Post COVID-19 With Stephen Follows

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A good friend and returning champion Stephen Follows wrote an amazing article discussing the future of Hollywood distribution. I asked him to jump back on the show to discuss. Here’s a bit of the article:

Change in the film industry is often an extremely gradual process. The views of those involved tend to be entrenched and hard to shift. Therefore, how the film industry will operate one year can reasonably be expected to be very close to that of the year before.

Not so in 2020. The current COVID-19 pandemic has forced a number of huge changes upon the sector over a matter of days. Cinemas are shut, productions are on hiatus and almost everyone is at home watching TV and VOD content.

In order to take the industry’s temperature at these uncertain times, I teamed up with Screendollars to interview 363 film professionals. We focused on the domestic market (i.e. the USA and Canada) and asked a range of questions about their views on the current changes and what they think a post-lockdown future may bring.

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IFH 367: Is Die Hard The Greatest Christmas Movie Ever - Yippee ki-yay!

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I’m here to finally put to rest one of the greatest cinematic arguments of all time, is Die Hard a Christmas movie? I thought I’d tackle this epic question with my good friend Stephen Follows. In this Special Christmas Edition of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast Stephen and I use data to finally put this debate to rest.

I believe without a shadow of a doubt that Die Hard is the greatest Christmas movie of all time. Stephen is not so sure so we go to the data to find out. Stephen wrote an EPIC article about this a while ago where he does what only Stephen does. Below are some of the graphs he created for his dissection of this issue.

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IFH 359: How to Build a Profitable Horror Film

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Today on the show we have returning champion Stephen Follows. In this Halloween themed episode, we dive into Stephen’s opus, The Horror Report. The report was created by using data on every horror film ever made, a data-driven dive into everything from development, production, and distribution to recoupment and profitability.

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IFH 324: What Makes a Great Screenplay

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What if someone could read over 12,000 scripts that were read by professional script readers, who gave the scripts an overall score as well as scores for specific factors including plot, dialogue, characterization, theme, and voice. Then looked for connections and correlations to discover what professional script readers think a good screenplay looks like. Well, today on the show I have that man, Stephen Follows.

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I use data to understand how the film industry works and then share that to help filmmakers get their films funded, shot and seen.

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Was Harvey Weinstein thanked more often than God at the Oscars?
I analysed almost 2,000 Oscar speeches to discover if the claim that Harvey Weinstein was thanked more often than God is true. Plus, we'll find out…
Feb 27 â€¢ 
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StephenFollows.com - Using data to explain the film industry
Was Harvey Weinstein thanked more often than God at the Oscars?
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How many Hollywood movies are made outside America?
I crunched the data behind the state of "non-American" Hollywood movies, and considered how any system of American tariffs might work.
May 5 â€¢ 
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What film professionals can learn from A24's business model
How a carefully balanced mix of creative risk-taking, financial discipline and audience-first thinking turned an indie studio into a cultural…
Mar 26 â€¢ 
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