In 1987, a group of moviegoers watched a film which was never shown again. The reason? This particular audience said so. This wasn’t a typical group of film buffs, but rather a test audience serving as a focus group for the movie studio.

The issue? They hated the ending. The movie tells the story of a mistress who becomes overly obsessed with her lover—to the point that she kills herself over it. The focus group, however, felt that the mistress didn’t get her due punishment.

This feedback was taken to heart by the studios. So much so that they rewrote and re-shot the entire ending scene by scene. In the new ending, the wife shoots the mistress in cold blood. And the rest, as they say, is history.

With its new and improved ending, the film went on to be nominated for six Academy Awards and generated $320 million at the box office worldwide ($688 million in today’s value). No other audience ever saw the original, nixed ending.

The film in question? None other than Fatal Attraction.

35 years later, movie studios continue to do everything they can to get feedback and hedge their bets. Now, however, focus groups and surveys have been replaced by Big Data and artificially intelligent algorithms. The amount of data that is brought to bear on the creative process has become infinitely more sophisticated, and has influenced the creative process more than ever before. Netflix’s datasets have just as much influence on a film or TV show than human creativity.

How Big Data Is Changing Creativity in Film

Consider the current state of data-rich creativity. Netflix, whose existence lies in its creative content being enjoyed, viewed, and many times binge-watched, has spent over $15 billion on original content in 2019 alone for its over 165 million global subscribers. It’s only natural then, that they would turn to their mountain of user data to inform the creative process.

As Netflix Senior Data Scientist Mohammad Sabah describes, Netflix analyzes a LOT of data. This includes geo-location data, device information, time of day and week (it now can verify that users watch more TV shows during the week and more movies during the weekend), as well as social media data from Facebook and Twitter. 

All of this plays an increasingly important role in the development of creative content. The political drama House of Cards was Netflix’s most-streamed show prior to Stranger Things, and the first original show which achieved significant success. The show was born from the gauntlet of big data.

Algorithms had identified that a large segment of their viewership watched David Fincher films (e.g. Fight Club, The Social Network) from beginning to end. It also knew that its viewers were drawn to movies featuring Kevin Spacey (years before his cancellation due to allegations of sexual assault) and that a core segment also loved political dramas. These data points provided the foundation for House of Cards and strongly predicted its commercial success.

According to Jonathan Friedland, the company’s Chief Communications Officer, “Because we have a direct relationship with consumers, we know what people like to watch and that helps us understand how big the interest is going to be for a given show. It gave us some confidence that we could find an audience for a show like ‘House of Cards.”

In other words, the ‘creative’ process for House of Cards was heavily constrained and influenced by their existing data sets.

How the Science of Essentialism Influences the Human Element of Creativity

As movies and TV shows are forged from larger and larger data sets, the human element of creativity has become displaced. This data-driven creativity may come at the expense of something vital. As viewers, do we want to feel as if the show was made by a fellow human? Would we be less likely to enjoy a film made through artificial intelligence with little human ingenuity involved?

To understand how a data-rich approach to movie creation might impact their reception, we have to dive into the science of essentialism. 

Essentialism is the idea that we see everyday objects as having a hidden ‘soul’, which transcends its physical qualities and is intrinsic to it. The original Mona Lisa is priceless, but a framed, physically indistinguishable replica barely fetches $50. What’s the difference that makes the difference? Only the real painting has the essence. And this essence shapes our perception of the painting, and how we value it.

This way of seeing the world is deeply ingrained and may have its roots in childhood. From a young age, humans must learn to generalize about the world, about how things and people persist despite surface changes over time. Your mother doesn’t cease to be your mother just because she got a new haircut. It’s only through this essentialist perspective that you can understand the world to be a stable place. 

In one experiment, psychologist Paul Bloom tested this directly by tricking children into believing that he had made exact copies of their favorite stuffed animals. They were then given a choice of which stuffed animal to take home: the original or the duplicate. In other words, the real Mona Lisa or a perfectly identical replica. The children were nearly unanimous - the replica was no competition. Just like the original Mona Lisa, the real teddy bear has its own specific essence that cannot be duplicated. In essence, we gravitate toward the meaningful.

As we get older, we become more sophisticated in our understanding of the world, but our brains never fully outgrow these essentialist tendencies. And the essences the brain attaches to things impact our ultimate pleasure, our sense of those things’ value, and, of course, our consumer psychology.  

And what forms the essence of something in our mind? A major contributor is the origin story of the object; what we believe about how it came into the world. If Mona Lisa were painted by an otherwise ordinary person, it likely wouldn’t be valued at what it is today. Mona Lisa’s essence is largely forged by its creator, Leonardo da Vinci.

The Role of Psychological Essentialism Plays in Film

What’s true of famous works of art are also true for works of film. The origin story of the film - how it came to be, and what its hidden essence is, shapes how we perceive it. When it comes to creative output, we’re sensitive to what we believe to be true about the creative process itself.

How might this play out in the world of film? Look no further than the Cohen Brothers’ 1996 classic Fargo. No spoiler alerts, but the film tells the story of a grizzly set of murders stemming from a staged kidnapping gone wrong. The film opens with the following lines:

This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

This sets the tone for the rest of the film: Watching something and knowing it’s based on something real, is very different than watching something based on someone’s imagination. 

Turns out though, this was all for effect. The Coen Brothers later admitted that the film wasn’t actually based on murders that took place in Minnesota. The actual inspiration for the story has been the subject of much speculation, and the Cohen Brothers have never revealed what, if any, historical events the film is based on. Upon learning that the film was not actually factually grounded, actor William H. Macy exclaimed “You can’t do that!”, to which Joel Coen replied, “Why not?”.

There’s no arguing with the film’s success. It took home the Grammy for Best Original Screenplay and in 1997, was considered by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 greatest films ever made.  

We can never know just how much of this is due to this strategic deception. But this certainly changed the audience’s perception. When asked about this, Joel Cohen had the following to say, “If an audience believes that something's based on a real event, it gives you permission to do things they might otherwise not accept." 

Put another way, the belief about the creative essence of the film impacts how it’s enjoyed. 

The Impact of Data on Creativity and Consumer Psychology

When it comes to the constraints of creativity, we may just be getting started. Some have worried for example, that a larger reliance on data will pervert the creative process. As Andrew Leonard described in the Salon, “A reliance on Big Data might funnel craftsmanship in particular directions. What happens when directors approach the editing room armed with the knowledge that a certain subset of subscribers is opposed to jump cuts or get off on gruesome torture scenes? Is that all we’ll be offered?”

As more consumers become wary of data extraction and come to learn how it influences the films they’re exposed to, this will have a direct impact on how the film itself is received. And in turn a dramatic impact on their consumer psychology. The deep essence of the film changes when we come to learn how much data went into it. If there’s no longer a ‘meaning’ to hold on to, how will our relationship with data-driven films and TV shows change? 

In the past, certain movie versions were only seen once. Big data has reduced that to zero. 

Imagine how different Fatal Attraction could have been today. Would the mistress have made it out alive? Only big data can tell.   

Photo by Aaron Sebastian via UnSplash

References for The Psychology of Essentialism in Film and Creativity

GigaOM: Netflix analyzes a lot of data about your viewing habits, Derrick Harris

Salon: How Netflix is turning viewers into puppets, Andrew Leonard

The New York Times: Giving Viewers What They Want, David Carr

Variety: Netflix Spent $12 Billion on Content in 2018. Analysts Expect That to Grow to $15 Billion This Year, Todd Spangler