#11 Next Steps - Finding the Top 10

ellenlouise
Apr 13, 2021
3 min read

After taking a short break over Easter, I decided to refer back to my Synopsis, featured in my previous post. Within the conclusion, I discussed how I had a selection of routes for the next stage of the project. The options selected are as follows;

10 Oscar-winning films (either the last ten or two from each of the previous five decades)
The top ten from IMDB's top 100 films (based on user rating)
To follow current releases

I have decided to leave the third option for the moment. Following current releases would likely require me to select a streaming service (due to current covid restrictions) and follow their recent releases. It also may need a time frame for the work completion. As I am yet to select the form this outcome may take, this may rush the experimentation process at this early stage.

Regarding using Oscar-winning films, I think this could narrow my audience before I have had time to confirm where this project sits in the real world. Using the Oscars may also bias the film selection and results collected as the Academy have voted on all films based on their specific criteria.

Upon research on 'Top 10' films, I found they differed a lot across different sites. Due to this, I chose not to just run with IMDB and create my own using a collection of top tens I found. I selected five websites that include a top 100 films 'of all time' and created a Padlet to compare their top 20s. I chose to use the top 20 rather than the top ten in the hope this would guarantee at least ten films would appear across the lists more than once.

After I finished creating the Padlet, I allocated points to each position in the ranking, i.e. the number 1 would receive 20 points while the number 20 would receive 1 point. To save time, I only included films that appeared in at least three columns in the calculations.

I am aware that this method isn't entirely accurate as I have ignored potential data that could have changed the ranking. This is from setting criteria that the film must appear in at least three lists and reduce the list to only the top 20 rather than keeping it at 100. Overall I think the films themselves don't matter too much. I just wanted to make sure the films selected were popular in general and not just films I like.

Once I had written out the points to all the films that appeared at least three times, I added the totals. The higher the points, the higher the ranking.

The final top 10 are included below.

Once I had my top 10 I started to think about what I would be looking at when going through the list created. Below I have included the notes on what I will be looking at when watching the top 10 created. Those labelled with an arrow are the areas where I will collect data, either by tallying the amounts or time what is happening on screen. The bullets are things I want to pay attention to, so most likely, these areas will result in qualitative notes. I haven't mentioned male characters in the bulleted but will do the same for male as I do for female as I don't want bias in any of the data collected.