The Overview Effect
OK, so maybe this is more of a quarterly publication. The truth is the last couple months have been a little more chaotic than usual so I wasn’t able to spend as much time on this as I would have liked. But I’m happy to be back at it, and despite some fits and starts, I’m excited for where this latest exploration will lead us in the coming weeks and months.
This post will be a little different in that it will result in a special kind of menu and serve as more of a macro set up for where we will go next.
It all started when I was having one of several discussions about the sensation many of us feel as an overabundance of content pours into our homes. Every year it feels like there is more than ever, and while not something anyone should ever complain about, it certainly takes on a daunting quality as we strive to keep up.
I decided it would be helpful to look at the data to try to wrap my head around the trend overall and see if any interesting insights emerge.
For starters, I wanted to simply look at the amount of films released globally per year going as far back as possible. For this, and all data presented here, I used IMDB as my central resource. Here’s what the big picture looks like.
Sort of looks like a tidal wave, huh? Feels like one too. Granted we may not be capturing every single film in those early years, IMDB does the best job of anyone out there of identifying and categorizing as many films as possible. With the exception of that obvious but anomalous downward blip in the vicinity of 2020, the trend is unmistakeable. There are more films being made and released worldwide than ever and there is no sign of a slow down.
Even though this view gives us visual validation of our feeling of inundation, it doesn’t offer much more than that. I wanted to get a better understanding of what the overall global output of film looked like from decade to decade and if contrasting those periods in time revealed any kind of narrative.
This is where things get very interesting.
I averaged out every decade’s global film output across the corresponding years and measured the increase or decrease in average from one decade to the next. This is what it looks like when we do this.
I believe this roller-coaster pattern paints a compelling picture worth spending time understanding.
Even with this wide view, some of the early story threads are revealed. We can see the massive proportional spike in output towards the beginning of the century, a clear downturn around the Great Depression and subsequent war years, a renewed uptick in the mid-twentieth century, followed by a contraction in the 80’s and 90’s.
To punctuate it all, we have a steep climb of output again in the first 20 years of the twenty-first century.
To me what’s most striking is this. Not since the 1920’s, a decade of immense disruptions in production and distribution, have we seen the level of growth from the previous decades that we are experiencing today.
And though 100 years later, here we are again, in an era of immense disruptions in production and distribution seeing similar trends.
This view gives me a variation of the overview effect and is an inspiration to better understand the stories and nuances that drive what we see in the data above.
Most importantly, it’s a reminder that though the medium of motion pictures has been around since the late 19th century, we are now in the centennial decade of what could be considered the first era of commercial global cinema.
This also comes at a time when more content is available to more people and in more places than ever before. So staying true to the fundamental mission of this newsletter, we will be looking decade by decade through the lens of what is available for us to watch across the market.
To that end, and to leave you with an alternative kind of menu, below is a rundown of the major platforms in market and how their current libraries break down by decade. If there are any specific eras of cinema you are interested in, this should help lead you in the right direction.
I’ll be back to you next time with a closer look at the first part of the 20th century.
Thanks again for your support.