The rating a film secures can play a big part in the ultimate success of the film as it determines the size of its potential audience.  The rating process is usually done by human reviewers who make their decision based upon things such as the level of violence, sexual content, sexual abuse, and so on.

A new study from the University of Southern California highlights how artificial intelligence could provide such a rating in a matter of seconds, just from the movie’s script.  The researchers believe that their approach would allow movie executives to better understand the commercial viability of a film before they begin shooting.  It might even influence the creative direction the film takes.

Efficient classification

The researchers analyzed nearly 1,000 movie scripts, all of which included some form of violent or sexual content (as determined by Common Sense Media, which is a non-profit organization that makes media recommendations for families and schools.  This was used to train an algorithm to recognize risk behaviors, patterns, and language.

“Our model looks at the movie script, rather than the actual scenes, including e.g. sounds like a gunshot or explosion that occur later in the production pipeline,” the researchers say. “This has the benefit of providing a rating long before production to help filmmakers decide e.g. the degree of violence and whether it needs to be toned down.”

The analysis revealed a number of interesting links between how the various forms of risky behavior are portrayed in films.

“There seems to be a correlation in the amount of content in a typical film focused on substance abuse and the amount of sexual content,” they explain. “Whether intentionally or not, filmmakers seem to match the level of substance abuse-related content with sexually explicit content.”

Risque behavior

What’s more, filmmakers were often found to compensate for low levels of violence with higher levels of sexual content or substance abuse.  Indeed, it was relatively rare for a movie to have high levels of all three behaviors, perhaps in part because filmmakers are wary of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) standards.

The MPA also appeared to place less emphasis on violence and content associated with substance abuse, with movies containing a significant amount of sexual content almost guaranteed to receive an R rating, even if they have little of the other forms of risky behavior.

The researchers hope that their work can help all stakeholders in the creative business, including writers, producers, and film-makers themselves by better informing the various aspects of storytelling in film.

“Not only are we interested in the perspective of the storytellers of the narratives they weave,” they conclude, “but also in understanding the impact on the audience and the ‘take-away’ from the whole experience. Tools like these will help raise societally-meaningful awareness, for example, through identifying negative stereotypes.”