Effort Does Not Equal Views - Proof Using Blender Open Movies
There was a conversation about a film I made in Blender called Moria's Race . And the main question was "Why doesn't it have views?"
Two running theories that members of various communities proposed were:
- There was not enough Effort put into the movie.
- There was not enough Quality .
Effort and Quality are rather subjective things that are hard to put into math. But today I gave an attempt at doing just that to answer this question.
The movie was released 119 days ago on 26th of August 2023. And in those 119 days the movie gained somewhat about 617 views. Comparing the 617 views of my movie to something like 5.6 million views of say Sintel that was released way before 119 days ago, wasn't a good way to go about it. So I had to find 119 days since release estimates for the other movies.
Using the Wayback Machine I could see what was the number of views on any given recorded day. And looking for a target of about 119 days since release date I got the following numbers.
If either of the theories mentioned above are true, the effort and the quality graphs should show roughly the same distribution.
To calculate effort I used the announcement dates of the project and the publication dates to get roughly how much time the project was in development. And I multiplied it by the amount of people mentioned in the credits. Basically the thinking is, if all this work had to be done by one person, in how much time would this person do the whole project from beginning till the end?
Here is the graph for Effort:
As you can see Moria's Race is not in the bottom of the list as would be expected if effort was a kind of proxy for views. And Sprite Fright is not on the top of the list. Cosmos Laundromat, with the most effort, is about in the middle of the graph of views.
So perhaps it is not effort but rather quality that governs the views. So to find quality I did some more math. I took the length of the movie and divided the effort by the length. Getting a kind of even distribution of effort per any given second of the movie.
Here is a graph:
This time since Moria's Race is half an hour long, it is the lowest on the Quality scale. And Agent 327 is the highest, being also among the highest on the views graph. So you could theorize that quality is in fact a proxy for views. But if you look at the other examples, Wing It! is in the middle of the graph of views. Charge is also about the middle. So nothing makes sense here.
I was curious and made two more graphs representing fairness for both categories. One is Views / Effort and the other is Views / Quality. And here are the results.
Using both Effort and Quality metrics I didn't get the answer on why Moria's Race is not being watched by enough people. Judging by both graphs the views of Moria's Race should be roughly the views of Big Buck Bunny at 119 days after the release. But it is nowhere near close to it.
Big Buck Bunny at 119 days from the release had about 337,822 views. If Quality was the determining factor Moria's Race has only 0.18% of what it should have. And if Effort was the determining factor, Moria's Race has even less.
So it is neither of those things. I wonder what those things are.
15 Comments
You earned yourself a reputation some time ago for being a dumbass. It sticks.
This is a part of my name. This way I can do something stupid and still get away with it.
It wasn't just part of your name. You acted like it as well.. You still do on occasions. And while you think "you get away with it", you also lost a large number of people who could have enjoyed your moments of sanity. Those people routinely dismiss whatever you do.
Seeing a post. "Ah, it's from BlenderDumbAss. On to the next post." "it might be interesting, and good". "It probably isn't. On to the next post."
I my opinion it's the opposite. Before being Blender Dumbass I made blender tutorials on a now deleted channel. And nobody cared to see any of them. They are forgotten. As soon as I started acting stupid, people started joining to see me.
The most viewed movie on the list above is Sprite Fright. I think I know why. It's the only one of them that feature a dude dying in a puddle piss of little mushroom people. Before Moria's Race I did I'm Not Even Human ( a violent, vulgar movie with sex jokes ) it had far less quality and looked very wooden, but made a lot more views a lot quicker.
I think trying to make a sane movie with Moria's Race backfired in people not wanting to see it because it might be boring.
You might be right to some degree. However, I don't think it is a goal to strive for. Being stupid brings some sort of fame, yes. That is what reality shows are all about.
Your "Not Even Human" just showed us the real Jeison. The Jeison who thought fame was more important than decency and integrity.
As they say... Do not make stupid people famous.
You have made it your life to be stupid and thus you must content with the people you attract on your channel.
The joke of BlenderDumbass videos was that I actually was teaching something real during those tutorials. It's a meta joke. I say that I'm stupid and present myself as stupid but I'm doing something not stupid while being stupid. And I found a good following of open-minded people since then. There is nothing shameful in stupid. And if I would instead present myself as some kind of genius instead, that would be less decent in my opinion than lying that I'm more stupid than I really am.
Making following by humiliating yourself is a sacrifice. Making following by humiliating others is torture. Which one is more decent?
There is no shame in being stupid, but you are not stupid. You just pretend to be for views and... Yes. And what?
I wondered and went to watch Moria's Race.
Now you have one more view. Would I recommend it to anyone I know? No.
I can see that you have put a lot of effort into it. To paraphrase your opening title. Effort Does Not Equal Quality.
Story is OK. Story could be told in a more compelling way. There is no correlation between the action visually and the voices, actions and demeanor of the characters. Physics are wayyy off. It's all glimmer and reflections.
You should have listened to the people who tried to guide you.
All your graphs and statistics trying to prove that Moria should have scored better, neglected to look at the quality of the product. You were too focused on how unfair it is.
What the graph says is that Effort and or Quality ( two different things ) do not in any way mean Views. I could have made Avatar 3 and had 10 views. I could have made The Room 2 and had a billion views. The take away from this graph is that there are only two things that matter to get views:
Beginning to understand why you chose your name.
You have failed to see one major detail.
All of the Blender Open movies, you compare Moria to, are made by a team of highly skilled people to showcase new development in Blender.
It is therefore an absolute certainty that a large number of Blender users are going to watch them, to see what can be done with the newest version.
You would do better to compare Moria with other movies made entirely with Blender by people NOT part of the development of Blender.
Marketing and Advertising are a requirement :)
Well it seems like perhaps just copying the ways Blender Animation Studio does advertisement is not enough. They have a lot of people visiting their websites and following them on various platforms. For a mere mortal to make a movie like Moria's Race viewed, some unbelievable effort at marketing is required.
More than that. Moria's Race is been made in a purest Free / Libre Software fashion. Marketing it online by buying ads is not an option. Because it is an endorsement of surveillance advertising. Which goes against the whole idea of Libre Software.
How the hell do you even market something like this?
Sprite Fright being at a top of the views graph gives a possible suggestion. But it's a sad suggestion that limits what movies are possible to do. The suggestion is, be as shocking as possible. And people will come to see it.
Advertising and marketing is a full time job and their are some truly decent people that do a great job with that career. Everyone and everything is connected... being an artist or the best in what ever our chosen work does require a team of people if we really truly want our work to be noticed in many oceans of noise. Learn how to do all the marketing, advertising, finance, business skills or get some funds together to compensate a great team that can focus on those things while you focus on what you prefer (making blender movies).
Don't worry. You've created something good. I just remember your videos with lots of vulgar language. Maybe it's because. I don't know it. I think it's good. I have nothing against your videos. But I think that's not the best way to present yourself. Have a good time and a happy new year 2024...
Based on the views graph ( where on top you have Sprite Fright ). And based on that I'm Not Even Human ( my previous movie that was quite vulgar ) did better. I think one of the main problems with Moria's Race specifically is that it's not vulgar enough.