The University of California at Davis recently distributed the following press release, summarizing research by a psychology professor into the statistical correlations that go into making a critically-acclaimed film versus a box-office hit. There's not too much detail, and I'll be looking for more, so the only comment I'll make about it right now is that I love this kind of thinking, whether it's right or wrong. Like focus-group testing, it attempts to apply social science to creativity, usually with the result that both disciplines wind up with egg on their faces. "Social science" is more social than science, and "popular art" may lean toward "popular" more than we writers and filmmakers might like.
What do you think? Leave a comment and let me know. Press release follows:
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A film that wins critical acclaim is likely to be an R-rated drama, adapted from a prize-winning play or book and based on a true story, with the original author or director involved in writing the screenplay. It is unlikely to be a sequel or remake, a comedy or musical, a summer release, a big-budget project, have a PG-13 rating, open on numerous screens or do a big box office on the first weekend. It probably has an excellent score, but it may not have an award-winning song.
But box-office hits may have entirely different profiles.
Dean Simonton, a professor of psychology at UC Davis, has subjected thousands of feature-length, English-language, narrative films to a battery of statistical tests – including Pearson product-moment coefficients and hierarchical regression analyses – to get at the formula for cinematic creative triumph and box-office success.
He will summarize his research at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association on Friday, Aug. 17.
Simonton, an expert on human creativity, is the author of "Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity." He is at work on a new book, "Great Flicks: Scientific Studies of Cinematic Creativity and Aesthetics."
"Exceptional creativity is frequently viewed as a highly individualistic phenomenon," Simonton said. "But there is at least one type of artistic expression that is extremely prominent, often highly profitable and inherently collective in nature: the feature film. Motion pictures provide a valuable research site for investigating group artistic creativity under real-world conditions."
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