Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Proposed Social Network Analysis of the sources of financing for independent films


How are Chinese independent films being financed both during production, post-production, and during promotional phase?

Sources of financing:

Private
Public
Individual

I would pick the top 50 most successful independent films (hoping to get a 50% response rate through interviews) in the past 10 years, success judged by the following criteria:

·      Number of awards
·      International and domestic reach in terms of distribution channels
·      Most-talked about amongst critics and viewers alike, cross-cited
·      Box office revenue – to show it was actually profitable

Interview questions:

During the creation and production phase of your film, who financed your day-to-day operations?

During the post-production and promotional phase of your film, who financed your day-to-day operations?

Goal: use centrality measures (closeness, between-ness, in-degree) to determine the major sources of funding for Chinese independent filmmakers.

Show on world map the digital footprint of Chinese films at major film festivals, using films as nodes connected by lines that indicate shared source(s) of financing.

1 comment:

Christopher Tunnard said...

OK. We've discussed this, and, as we agreed, the real problem is the nature of the network itself and whether you could obtain the financing data and, even if you could, would you really be able to use centrality measures to "determine the major sources of funding?" You'd have to define what you meant by "major." In fact, you might find it more meaningful to invert the network: have funding sources as nodes connected by the films they've financed.