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Distribution of colors in movie posters between 1914 and 2012

vijayp.ca

61–70 of 85 posts

Re: Distribution of colors in movie posters between 1914 and 2012

#61
post #48

The eventual settling on teal and orange is interesting. I'm curious what the feedback loop was that told the marketing department "this is what will make more money". It seems such a subtle thing, and I would think red (as an alarming color) or green (as the color we see best) would end up figuring more prominently.

I take it you have not seen this yet (linked elsewhere in the thread, but it's been on HN a few times): http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-ho...

Re: Distribution of colors in movie posters between 1914 and 2012

#62
post #48

The eventual settling on teal and orange is interesting. I'm curious what the feedback loop was that told the marketing department "this is what will make more money". It seems such a subtle thing, and I would think red (as an alarming color) or green (as the color we see best) would end up figuring more prominently.

I'm sure you've seen this[1] before, but the answer is probably more of a feedback loop. The big-money movies could afford to do more color alterations that caused movies to appear to "pop", getting audiences used to those colors, forcing less-expensive movies to do the same as the technology to do so became cheaper.

1. http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-ho...

Re: Distribution of colors in movie posters between 1914 and 2012

#64

I immediately starting scanning the colors to see if this blog post from a couple of years ago was vindicated about all movies being teal and orange: http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-ho... It is.

I don't think "vindicated" is quite the word - as far as I know, the author hasn't taken any significant flak for it, nor have I heard much about it beyond "Huh, yeah, they do look like that now." I would just go with "this analysis is in agreement with this other one."

Re: Distribution of colors in movie posters between 1914 and 2012

#65
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a week is about $2500, so I guess it'd take around $5k.

There are many people who would call $2500 their two day rate. So, $10k+ doesn't seem that far fetched for a project of this complexity that delivers business value of some sort.

I don't mean to be facetious, but there are also developers, and I mean that in the loosest sense of the word, that call $100 their daily rate. My guess is that both parties need to maximise the value/profit ration by negotiating. $10k sounds right as we are delving into hypotheticals.

Re: Distribution of colors in movie posters between 1914 and 2012

#67
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is mostly one line in which Mark Zuckerberg says something along the lines of "time for a little wget magic". Certainly not a major plot point. Here's what I think is the relevant scene on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odOzMz-fOOw

Wow, I was surprised on how realistic that was. Maybe I should watch the movie after all.

Especially the empty search part. In my experience, the three search terms most likely to return all results are:

  1) %%% (many sites limit the minimum search term length to three so a single % will not do the trick).
  2) '   ' (trhee spaces)
  3) '' (empty string)
Edit: formatting

Re: Distribution of colors in movie posters between 1914 and 2012

#68
post #41
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I was surprised on how realistic that was. Maybe I should watch the movie after all.

It's actually quite a good film if you ignore the character assassination of Zuckerberg (not that he really needs defending, just it seems a little cheap).

I don't think it's fair to call it character-assassination. He didn't paint Zuck with a pretty brush, but I'm not sure any first-tier founders made it to where they are without delivering a few cheap blows themselves. There's definitely some sense of admiration for "Zuck the Doer", not "Zuck the Dreamer".

Re: Distribution of colors in movie posters between 1914 and 2012

#69
post #39

While beautiful, only a seriously limited amount of movies was analysed for this and the selection seems weird. The year 2000 for example only has 48 movies in this. I am not sure you can interpret anything from it.

Agree.

I'm surprised at the amount of comments here that reflect this data as if it's gospel and whether it's fair to interpret anything from it at all. We can't even vet and recreate the methodology of, as you said "limited movies", and see if it's correct for what it does say.

Not to mention the fact that prior to 1929 there is not more than 9 posters of data being analyzed.

Printing has changed also. Number of color, type of press, computerization all would contribute to difference in what designers would do (the analysis did mention this) but as mentioned the data was limited.

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