Critique of:

The Hollywood Insider (by David McCandless )

This visualization allows users to explore data from over 1200 Hollywood movies from 2008 to 2016. Based on the various data collected, this interactive visualization helps users view and compare statistics about major Hollywood movies that otherwise would have been impossible to access in one place. This is a tool that can be used by movie enthusiasts and/or researchers to compare statistics that will allow them to draw conclusions about major films and access vast amount of information all in one click.

The concept and design was credited to David McCandless. The research was done by Stephanie Smith, Pearl Doughty, Ella Hollowood and the code by Tom Evans and Neil Muralee.

In this critique, we will take a look at the different features of this visualization and see what works and what improvements could be made.

The data for this visualization was taken from various sources:

• BoxOfficeMojo.com
• TheNumbers.com
• RottenTomatoes.com
• Metacritic.com

All the data used for The Hollywood In$ider was retrieved on December 31st, 2016. Under the visualization, it clearly states that some of the budgets for some of the movies were estimated. However, it does not mention on how these estimations were calculated.

The Hollywood In$ider is an excellent visualization that fulfills it intention of allowing user to explore many different statistics about a movie, as well as compare them with other movies.

Interactive

• The makers of this visualization did an exceptional job in allowing the user to control the information they would like to view on the graph. There are more than 20 graphs that users can choose to display. Instead of creating multiple graphs to be viewed, users are allowed to click on the axis labels and choose whatever they would like to view just in one graph. One disadvantage of this freedom is that users may not know what the graph being displayed is trying to convey. Due to the immense amount of data available, it may take a some tries for a first time user to use all the features offered to get to the information they are looking for.
• One of the best features of The Hollowood In$sider is the information users can access about the movie by hovering over each bubble. Instead of changing the axis label each time to view this information one by one, users can just hover and view five different statistics. This is highly efficient and allows users to find details in one go and compare easily as well.

Aesthetics

• Overall, the display of this visualization makes good use of the screen, and uses colors that are pleasing to the eye. The bubbles that are plotted are all distinct colors and its not challenging to try and differentiate them.
• There is almost little to no white space. The graph takes us most of the visualization as it should due to the immense amount of data being plotted.
• All the different labels are on top of the graph except for the x axis. Since there are multiple labels, keeping them all in one place shows all the available features and nothing is missed. Users can get full use out of the visualization is used to its maximum.

Data

• There is an immense amount of data presented in the visualization. If used the right way, there is profusion amount of information that can be learned. It can be a very tough task to analyze all this together. The Hollywood In$ider does an excellent job in breaking down the data and allowing users to choose what they would like to view.
  • An example of breaking down the mass amount of data is shown by having the option of viewing movies for all the years possible or filtering out which year would like to be plotted. This is only one of the many examples of how the data is broken down in this visualization to make it easy for users to view what they would like.

• This visualization is a very handy tool that can be used by a movie enthusiast or anyone who is interested in the money side of the movie industry. There are many questions that this tool can be the answer for.
  • For someone who may want to compare the ratings of the movies based on the budget or the gross or the audience percentage, can do so with this tool.
  • If one would like to compare the gross amount movies has made compared to their budgets for a certain year, this visualization is an excellent to answer this question.
  • If a movie enthusiast wants to compare the budgets of movies based on their genre, they can accomplish this by using this tool
  • This can be used if people want to see if a movie is hit or not or what the critics rated a movie and what the budegts where for those. someone who wants to find trends
• There are many, many questions that the Hollywood In$ider can answer. It is a powerful tool with an immense amount of data that can help with finding trends and much more all in one place. While there are some minor improvements that could be made to improve user's experience, this visualization is an excellent example of how to display enormous amount data while still being aesthetically pleasing.