If the film is released today, do we have to wait for another decade to know the where does the film stand in comparison to other great films. You may argue that released movies are rated in the first week itself my multiple critics. Though movie is rated, it is not ranked. The movie may be great for that summer or that period, but can that movie be compared to the great cinema of past or withhold its greatness with passing time.
The movie is declared blockbuster purely based on their box-office success. The box-office success is nothing but is somewhat proportional to the people who have watched the movie in theaters. This means, the movie-watchers of future generation will not be able to contribute to its box-office success. So we can say, the decisive power to declare a movie great lies with the people who have time and ability to watch it in theaters when the movie was released. Does it appear fair?
People have to pay first, then are allowed to watch the movie. This means, irrespective of movie, they are contributing to its greatness. Instead, if people are allowed to pay after they watch the movie proportional to their liking, then this will help to judge the movie in true sense, though it sounds foolish.
So, there is a need for a system, where movie viewers must have the power to judge the movie after they watch it and make their voice heard. The system should have ability to allow the recently released movie to be included in their overall ratings and ranking.
Have you heard about IMDb? IMDb stands for Internet Movie Database. It is the database in real sense as it has information nearly of all the movies made. It allows the registered users to rate any movie. The users vote gets counted, if they have at least voted for 5 movies
The formula for calculating the ratings of movies by using Bayesian estimate : (Source:www.imdb.com)
Weighted Rating(WR) = (v / (v+m)) * R+(m/(v+m)) * C
where
- R = average for the movie (mean) = (Rating)
- v = number of votes for the movie = (votes)
- m = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top 250 (currently 3000)
- C = the mean vote across the whole report (currently 6.9)
The advantage of this system is that it considers serious voters, and also has no time frame for voting. It allows voting for any movie any time. It periodically (thankfully, not a decade) refreshes the list, after considering new votes. As number of votes increase, the movie drifts toward its nearly true rating.
Each user is entitled to one vote only for each movie. he has the liberty to change it whenever he thinks so. Because ,the viewer may like particular movie instantly and give higher rating, later he may realize that particular movie is not entitled to such high rating. Similarly, viewer initially may not understand a movie and give lower rating but as his understanding of movie increases, he may want to increase the rating.
This rating system gives decisive power to people who have seen movies in DVDs and television. So this list is not a mere reflection of list of high-grossing films (Blockbusters).
Thus this rating system can be considered to be closest to what can be called as people's choice. Not Surprisingly, this list and "critics choice" list has lot of common names as compared to "blockbuster movie" list and "critics choice" list.
If you rated a particular movie will low score but it is present in top movies list, don't get disappointed, because your vote may have contributed in bringing down the median score of that movie.
Note: I am not a PR guy for IMDb.I was inspired to write this blog when I came across few discussion forums in imdb.com where people were discussing the credibility of list since their personal favorites were not in the list.
Individual rating counts, but only when it is a part of overall rating.
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