Visualization of Film Circulation
Problem
Films and film festivals are important areas of research for domain experts in film studies. We work with a dataset created by domain experts containing films and festivals where they were shown, forming a network of film circulation. Of special interest are circulation patterns (e.g., how a film "traveled" between festivals, how films of a certain genre or from a certain production country traveled between festivals) and sudden changes in circulation (e.g., a sudden rise in festival airings of a film). However, in a dataset containing thousands of films and festivals across multiple years and various countries, it is difficult to find patterns without visual support.
We offer the following topics for projects or theses (Master's and Bachelor's):
1) Patterns of Success: Can we find certain (general) circulation patterns of films (e.g., all films of a certain genre being shown at certain festivals) or figure out which attributes influence film circulation (e.g., production country, genre) in order to derive success strategies for films (i.e., to which festival should a film best be submitted to in order for it to become most successful?)?
2) Circulation Bursts: Can we find "bursts" in the spread of films (i.e., when a film was shown at multiple festivals simultaneously, or was suddenly shown more often starting at a certain point in time), and can we track the sudden rise in circulation back to a certain festival where the film was shown before that caused it to become more popular?
Aim
The aim is to develop an interactive, web-based, deployable visualization that addresses one of the topics above, for example, using D3.js and React.
Other information
References and Starting Points to become familiar with the topic
1. Loist, Skadi, and Evgenia Zhenya Samoilova. "Film Circulation Dataset." (2023). https://zenodo.org/records/7887672
2. Loist, Skadi, and Zhenya Samoilova. 2023. “How to Capture the Festival Network: Reflections on the Film Circulation Dataset.” NECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies 12 (1): 363–90. https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/19615
3. Loist, Skadi, and Zhenya Samoilova. 2019. "Getting started on the film circulation project: studying film festivals with various data sources. Film Circulation". http://www.filmcirculation.net/2019/10/29/getting-started-on-the-filmcirculation-project/
3. Ehrich, Martha E., et al. "The film festival sector and its networked structures of gender inequality." Applied Network Science 7.1 (2022): 20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41109-022-00457-z
4. Loist, Skadi. "Crossover dreams: Global circulation of queer film on the film festival circuits." Diogenes 62.1 (2015): 57-72. https://doi.org/10.1177/0392192116667014