The Roundhay Garden Scene

What is the The Roundhay Garden Scene? The answer may be straightforward if you are into movies or just a trivia buff. But if you are neither, then you should start claiming that The Roundhay Garden Scene is the oldest surviving film. The Roundhay Garden Scene was recorded at 12 frames per second and runs for 2.11 seconds. It was shot at the home of Joseph and Sarah Whitley in Leeds, England (God save the Queen?) on October 14, 1888. Little did director Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince know about the significance of this historic moment.

Let’s take a look at the incredible and elephantine world of cinema starting 1888. But before we dwell into the data, I would like to quickly explain the source of data, and how the data was handled. The data is from IMDb’s AWS S3 bucket. It was cleaned up and joined using Alteryx. The visuals were generated using Microsoft’s Power BI. I am more than happy to share the data if you are into that sort of thing.

125 years of movies in one bar chart

It has been estimated that over the last century or so, over 500,000 movies have been made. And IMDb is probably the best tool out there to track this information.

Number of movies by the decade

Each bar represents the number of movies made in that decade. As expected, 1880s had the lowest number of movies compared to the 2010s wherein the young and the old made and consumed over 53 thousand movies.

So did the feelings towards the cinema change over the last century?

Or for the yelp aficionado, should I say: how did people rate the movies?

Average movie ratings by the decade

I was truly fascinated by this. But then, everything made sense. My theory is, people rated the movies in the 1880s far lesser than the movies in the noughties. And if the movies were 2 seconds long, I doubt they could get a pass from the armchair movie reviewer.

Enough of history talk, give me names

If you are in the “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” camp, let’s take a look at some of the more fascinating data points. What genre do you reckon fares the worst when it comes to ratings? Or the best? Write your answer down if you want to, odds are, you are probably right.

If you got it right: “Smile, you son of a bitch!”

With an average rating of 5.0, horror movies take the crown of being either not good enough, or just extremely tacky for the taste buds of an average IMDb reviewer.

How many movies were made in each genre? Any takers?

If you were to rank them, you should be able to guess at least the top five genres. Let’s take a look at the holy grail to verify our hunches.

If we play ’em 10 times, they might win nine. But NOT this game.

I hope you won the wager, sir.

Talking about ratings, what are some of the top voted movies of all time?

Well, as we did it earlier, let’s make it a fascinating game. I am going to give you some quotes, and if you get more than five movies right, you have seen things.

It’s funny. On the outside, I was an honest man. Straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook. See I’m a man of simple taste. I like things such as gunpowder…dynamite and…gasoline! I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom. An idea is like a virus. Resilient. Highly contagious. And even the smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Seems like you did not win. But, as a consolation, I am going to share a beautiful tree map with you.

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”

― Bruce Lee

As a final piece, I would like to pay tribute to the top directors of all time (at least on IMDb).

Does the data lie?

I am not sure if people would agree with this final chart, but I used some filters and conditions to reach this conclusion. I have troves of data analyzed, but perhaps this post is not the place to clutter. If you would like to disagree with me or compliment me, I would love to hear back from you.