What do you do if you want to leverage data analytics for informed decisions in your film career?

Diving into filmmaking? Use data analytics as your compass. Start by exploring movies you love and the directors behind them. Notice what grabs you—themes, pacing, visuals. This is your unique blueprint. Next, peek into the audience's likes and market trends, turning complex data into a guiding light for your creative journey. It's not about changing your vision but fine-tuning it to resonate more. Stay curious, adapt to evolving tastes, and blend your creativity with insights from data. This blend of art and analytics will help navigate your path to storytelling success, ensuring your films not only reflect your vision but also captivate hearts.

Leveraging on data for informed decision requires a data analyst to first transform the data in to different categories. The categorised data to be analysed based on the area of interest of the user. But one important thing that is key in data analysis is what information do the analysis need to extract from the data. The kind of usage will determine which data tools to be used. If the information is for comparative analysis, the methods of analysis must be in line with comparison. If it's to measure growth the analysis should tilt toward measuring growth. An analyst has to know what exactly is the information required. Data happened to be the best tool for projections, pattern movement, just to mention but a few

Explore data-driven insights for audience preferences, market trends, and content performance, integrating analytics tools to enhance decision-making and creative strategies.

"informed decisions in your film career" Whether data analytics will play a useful role will depend on what the decision entails. Determining which market segment to go after based on your existing skills? Determining what to train up on or upskill on in preparation for the potential future career space in 1-3 years time? Yes, those benefit from data analytics. ... Provided you both understand the data being put into the analytics and the results that come out from the analytics. Ie, unless your background includes data analysis or using analytical tools, data analytics isn't a magic box that spits out answers. To the point of "understanding data", I would add: involve a friend who understands the analytics.

There’s a need to define what is the desired success—is it ratings, is it awards, is it box office, is it commercial viability through licensing opportunities? Within creative industries, it will be the right data for the corresponding objectives where possible. And also frankly, sometimes the right content to the right audience, at the right time which isn’t really something data can guarantee. While certain elements of the script can be reviewed and tweaked against what worked in the past, FGDs, creative testing can help in providing data that can measure potential receptivity, but ultimately, it also boils down to marketing budgets, distribution platforms, trends, etc. and being at the right place at the right time.

See #1 regarding understanding the data. If you are considering a decision with your film career and you do not have a background that provides you with the knowledge and understanding to make use of data analytics, you will be best served by bringing in a friend who is knowledgable of data analytics and the relevant tools. Having said that, Youtube/Google/etc. provides many tutorials on how to use the tools. And that can get you started, even if it will take more time and effort to get the incoming data right and the interpretation of the output answers right. You shouldn't need to spend money here, as there are plenty of open source tools and even commercial tools which are free to use in a limited fashion.

Analytical tools are undergoing a significant transformation. A dedicated team is focused on developing visualizations to the current state of AI allows for the creation of dashboards in seconds with a simple question prompted by user. Companies like IBM Cognos and Amazon QuickSight are leading tools that can be used across various industries, including the film industry. These tools are relatively low-cost, require fewer resources, and deliver faster results

The industry is fortunate to have are a lot of tools and syndicated data providers. The challenge I’ve seen is how the wider consumers of these data tend to immediately jump on the takeaways before really understanding the methodologies and definitions. It is important to work with data providers and spend time to understand the methodologies to minimise jumping into any inaccurate conclusion down the road. Mistakes can be on combining data from sources with extremely different methodologies and definitions. As an example, reach can be different from viewership as the later should be further qualified by level of engagement (can be defined by average minutes, attention, etc.) whilst reach can be considered even with just 1 second.

Please see #1 and #2: if your background doesn't provide you with the skills and knowledge to understand the workings of and the results of data analytics, bring in a friend who does. At this point, you have gathered the data, the tools, done the exercises and have a general idea of what the process of ingestion of data and production of outputs. The data you produce may be meaningful and helpful, or it might just be that it answers the wrong question. Data analytics is more than just gathering data, operating the tools, and applying the formulae... interpreting the data requires a bit of experience. And hence the continued suggestion to bring in someone who DOES have that experience, if you don't.

The industry’s big challenge on the use of data is how fast can the team execute a project based on the data used to justify its green light as trends change constantly and rapidly. If true crime has been a hit in the recent years across geographies and age groups, eventually, people might want to move on with sci-fi which we are seeing now too with the release of dune 2. We’ve seen how some franchise movies were not able to sustain the same box office success even if they have the same formula from the prior versions. Covid brought about delays which impacted some of studios’ big bets. With much later releases than planned, they no longer enjoyed the same box office results as consumer preferences changed.