Story Analyzer and Visualizer
In journalism, visualizing data often makes good stories. I wondered how stories themselves could provide data for visualizations. You often hear of ideal graphs of story structure; of the classic three-part story made up of the introduction to the conflict, the climax, and the resolution. This structure would be represented by a slow-rising hill ending with a sharp decline. How could we graph and visualize existing stories, and would they correspond to this curve? My approach was to define the level of drama in a story with two criteria: changes in the audio and changes in the visual.
Tracking audio changes assume that louder scenes (explosions, musical crescendos, shouting) correspond to higher levels of drama. Rapid visual changes (quick motion across the screen, camera motion, or quick edits) also correspond to a quicker tempo and higher levels of drama. I measured visual change by calculating differences in adjacent RGB histograms every tenth of a second. A combined index graphed over the length of the movie represents its unique fingerprint, revealing its dramatic highs and lows.
This screenshot shows the real-time analysis of Star Wars. Click to explore the Story Analysis tool. Use it to analyze your own movies (FLV or MP4), output the data and post the results here.
Analysis of forty movies–the top ten of all time, the worst ten, the ten highest grossing films, and the previous ten Best Pictures–not surprisingly reveal no common pattern, but it does provide an objective way of tracking a film’s dramatic peaks and valleys–their position, duration, and intensity. This screenshot is a profile of Star Wars. Note the dramatic beginning when Princess Leia’s vessel is boarded, and the three dramatic peaks at the end: the rescue from the Death Star, the duel between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the destruction of the Death Star. Click to explore the Story Visualizer tool. You can choose to visualize any of the forty movies or data of your own.
The compilation of story profiles for the following categories are posted:
