Topic: VFX Oscar Number Crunchin'

Here's some fun figures to bring up at this year's bake-off. Based on the past ten years of data, we can say that if your title contains any of these items:

  • "of the"

  • "of"

  • "the"

  • ":"

  • or a number

...you have a very slim chance of winning. In fact, your chance of winning with a number in the title is actually zero. (Again, based on the past ten years of data.)

I collected the titles of every movie shortlisted for a VFX Oscar, as well as the eventual noms and winners, and I go into it at pseudo-length in the video below. (I've also charted all of this on a spreadsheet for your perusal, if you care, which you don't.)

Here's a few quick highlights from all that data-mining:

  • Read this slowly, because it's amazing: there has been a feud between Captain America and Apes and Transformers and X-Men, where none of them won, twice.

  • For the sixteen "something of the something" movies that have played the bake-off in the past decade, one has won. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Eight years ago. So stop it.

  • If there's a colon in your title... you have a 4% chance. Good luck.

Anyway. The data is all in the spreadsheet, but I talk my way through most of it in the video below if you're into that sort of thing.

Anyway. I've been making noises about collecting this data for years, and now I've done it, so my soul is now free to move onto the next plane or whatever.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: VFX Oscar Number Crunchin'

As is often the case, it depends on when you start and stop your data collection. Go back one more year and you Have Spiderman 2 winning. The previous three years had the Lord of the Rings films, with ':' in the titles, winning. At that point your theory takes hold again, as Terminator 2: Judgement Day was way back a decade earlier.

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Re: VFX Oscar Number Crunchin'

I was curious what happened if you expanded the sample size, so I did. If you take the whole list into account, all the metrics normalize towards 1/3, which is expected given how there's usually 3 nominees. I probably should have thrown out all the special achievement awards where there was no competition though. Maybe I'll got back and do that tomorrow.

"ShadowDuelist is a god."
        -Teague Chrystie

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Re: VFX Oscar Number Crunchin'

*thumbs up*

Did you sample from the whole list of shortlist titles, or from the pared-down nominated lists?

One of the reasons I started from the whole shortlist instead of from the nom list is because — presumably — a fair amount of "okay but seriously though we're not nominating that fucking movie" selection bias is going to already be present in the nominee list... and what I'm interested in is movie title types that are proportionately under-represented by wins.

Or, in other words, when you limit your sample to pre-screened, nominated movies, we've just thrown out a whole lot of the shitty "of the"s... and naturally the scrubbed-up-and-nominated list will have a better batting average than the unwashed bakeoff list, but the point isn't how many times a nominated "of the" has won, but how many times a considered "of the" movie has made it through both filters.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: VFX Oscar Number Crunchin'

I didn't include the shortlist titles because I couldn't find a quick list to get them from. If someone has such a thing, I'd be happy to add them as well.

"ShadowDuelist is a god."
        -Teague Chrystie

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Re: VFX Oscar Number Crunchin'

I'm not aware of one, I dug mine up manually. :-/

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: VFX Oscar Number Crunchin'

The VFX podcast from FX Guide talked about a similar idea a while back so this might be of interest

http://fxrant.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/t … ademy.html

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Re: VFX Oscar Number Crunchin'

Mad Max wins or the category is officially a sham.