There are many reasons why certain movies do well and why some don’t, even though the acting and storyline might be better. For example while movies like The Expendables don’t necessarily have the deepest stories or characters, they do pretty well because let’s face it, it has a star-studded cast and a ton of senseless violence which people seem to enjoy.
Rom-coms also seem to do pretty decently because while such plots have been overly fleshed out, everyone likes a happy ending. That being said, while ticket sales are one way to gauge how well a movie is doing, what if studios wanted to know what exactly it is about said movie that allowed it to do well? Turns out Hollywood has had their answer, and that answer is wearables.
According to reports, it seems that during a screening of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Revenant to a test audience, the studio used a heart rate tracking wearable with its viewers. The wearable then measured the wearer’s heart rate and from there, it was broken down into usable information by a company called Lightwave, such as how many times audiences felt a flight or fight response, or how many heart-pounding moments there were in the film.
So what does this mean? This means that based on the physical response that audiences were feeling, coupled that with how much money the movie makes, studios could rely on such data to determine what kind of movies to make in the future, or if maybe certain movies could stand to turn down the violence or scary moments, and etc.
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