When did colour films eclipse black-and-white films?
Stephen Follows Blog
by Stephen Follows
1w ago
Although I attended film school, (a) it was two decades ago; and (b) I shamefully skipped many of the classes on film history. As time has passed, I have become increasingly aware of just how poor of a decision it was to eschew the chance to learn more about the early days of film, and to learn from fascinating film scholars. And so, I have set myself the mission to seek out older films to watch and to teach myself about the early days of film. At the Berlin Film Festival a few weeks ago, I had the absolute pleasure of watching a new restoration of Ernst Lubitsch’s black-and-white classic ‘Lo ..read more
Visit website
How many films employ an Intimacy Coordinator?
Stephen Follows Blog
by Stephen Follows
1M ago
The film industry is pretty slow to change and usually opts to do whatever it was doing last year rather than embrace change. This is never more true than in the area of employment and the roles on-set. However, two types of roles which have popped into being almost overnight are the intrepid staff of “The Covid Department” and Intimacy Coordinators. While the former are a dying breed, the latter are going from strength to strength. I wanted to get a handle on just how prevalent Intimacy Coordinators were in modern moviemaking, so I turned to the data. I studied 385,723 live-action fiction mov ..read more
Visit website
Tips for attending the European Film Market
Stephen Follows Blog
by Stephen Follows
1M ago
In just over a week, many of the world’s film industry professionals will be trying to keep warm in Berlin. That’s because it’s the start of the annual ten-day film industry gathering in Berlin which is half film festival (the “Berlinale”) and half trade show (the “European Film Market” or EFM).  In a previous article, I looked at the films ‘In Competition’ over the past six decades of the Berlin Film Festival so today I thought I would focus on the experience of actually attending the festival and market. The EFM was steadily growing in size each year but was majorly affe ..read more
Visit website
Which country makes the sweariest movies?
Stephen Follows Blog
by Stephen Follows
2M ago
Warning: This article contains 17 uses of the f-word, 9 uses of the s-word and 8 uses of the c-word, among other examples of foul language. Even the graphs are graphic. You have been fucking warned. Like last week, this is another offshoot of my work for Guinness World Records, although the vast majority of what you’re about to read won’t make it into the 2025 World Records book for reasons that will become extremely obvious. What began as an investigation into the ‘Sweariest Movie’ grew into a much wider exploration of swearing within movies worldwide. I will post a longer explanation of my ..read more
Visit website
How often is the film title mentioned in James Bond movies?
Stephen Follows Blog
by Stephen Follows
2M ago
One of my most enjoyable side jobs is the work I do for Guinness World Records. They work with wonderful Bruce Nash at The Numbers for the headline records (Top Grossing Movie, Biggest Budget, etc) and so they look to me for the slightly… stranger World Records. One such record I delivered recently looked at James Bond movies. Specifically, the James Bond movie mentioned its own title most frequently in the dialogue. The answer is revealed later in this article, but for a bit of fun, I’d like you to spend a moment to ponder what the answer might be. It really makes you think about how movie d ..read more
Visit website
How I caught the UK government not doing their homework
Stephen Follows Blog
by Stephen Follows
1y ago
Sometimes things are so silly you just can’t make them up. The UK government is trying to bring in a policy to force all students to study maths until the age of 18. In a hurried attempt to back up this policy, they reached out to a number of people who use maths in unusual ways, including me. I agreed to share my views on why maths is important and the Prime Minister’s office planned to include me as a case study to defend their policy. The only slight problems with this plan were… I don’t agree with the policy. I only studied maths until the age of 16. They couldn’t find anyone else to do i ..read more
Visit website
Do women prefer films made by women?
Stephen Follows Blog
by Stephen Follows
1y ago
I was contacted by a reader who asked whether “female audiences respond more positively to feature films that have at their heart a female creative team? In particular, a female director and writer“. It’s a fascinating question as it speaks to the significance of the creative voice(s) behind films and how they connect with us as viewers. One of the (many) reasons why I believe passionately about equality of opportunity is that if we preordain that only one group of people get to control the creation of our shared stories then we rob everyone of interesting perspectives. The people who share th ..read more
Visit website
How has the cost of making a movie changed in recent years?
Stephen Follows Blog
by Stephen Follows
1y ago
As we start to ease out of the ‘pandemic emergency’ phase, I’m getting an increasing number of questions about the effects the pandemic had on the film business. The short answer to almost everything I’m asked is – it’s too early to tell. When the dust has settled, it’s likely that the changes we’ve experienced in the past three years will fall into one of three categories: Long-term trends. Changes which were already taking place and so once the pandemic is over, we should expect them to return to their longer-term trend. One such example is likely to be the increase in the number of films b ..read more
Visit website
How many producers is too many producers?
Stephen Follows Blog
by Stephen Follows
1y ago
Last week I investigated if there was a link between the number of people thanked in a movie’s credits and the quality of the movie. This week I am testing a related industry truism; namely, that a greater number of producers is an indication that a movie is more likely to be bad I have in the past shown that movies are increasingly less likely to generate a profit as the number of producers increases. But what of quality? Does having more people on hand to share the producing duties result in better movies? Or do too many producers spoil the set? To answer this I studied 75,903 producing cred ..read more
Visit website
Does thanking too many people in the credits indicate a movie is bad?
Stephen Follows Blog
by Stephen Follows
1y ago
David Wilkinson got in touch yesterday asking for advice on his new crowdfunding campaign. One of the topics he wanted to chat about was the ‘cost’ of offering a “Thanks” credit to his backers. This involves awarding someone who backs the film a credit on the movie under the “With Thanks” section. This name check would appear at the end of the movie and, crucially, on IMDb. On the face of it, there is no cost to offering an almost infinite number of these as it would just be a case of a longer end credit crawl and IMDb doesn’t charge for listing credits. However, David brought up an anecdote f ..read more
Visit website

Follow Stephen Follows Blog on FeedSpot

Continue with Google
Continue with Apple
OR