JAMIE FRADKINMARCH 31, 2016

THE (DATA) SCIENCE OF BINGE WATCHING ON

Source: Statista.com

binge watch·ingnoun

the practice of watching multiple episodes of a television program in rapid succession, typically by means of digital streaming.

Netflix Report Reveals Pivotal Episodes that “Hooked”* Viewers on Popular Series

Source: Netflix

Netflix Report Reveals Pivotal Episodes that “Hooked”* Viewers on Popular Series

*“Hooked” indicates that >70% of viewers proceeded to complete the full first season following this episode

Source: Netflix

Netflix Report Reveals Pivotal Episodes that “Hooked”* Viewers on Popular Series

*“Hooked” indicates that 70% of viewers proceeded to complete the full first season following this episode

Source: Netflix

"Arrow" - Episode 8"Bates Motel" - Episode 2

"Better Call Saul" - Episode 4"Bloodline" - Episode 4

"BoJack Horseman" - Episode 5"Breaking Bad" - Episode 2

"Dexter" - Episode 3"Gossip Girl" - Episode 3

"Grace & Frankie" - Episode 4"House of Cards" - Episode 3

"How I Met Your Mother" - Episode 8"Mad Men" - Episode 6

"Marco Polo" - Episode 3

"Marvel’s Daredevil" - Episode 5"Once Upon A Time" - Episode 6

"Orange is the New Black" - Episode 3"Pretty Little Liars" - Episode 4

"Scandal" - Episode 2"Sense8" - Episode 3

"Sons of Anarchy" - Episode 2"Suits" - Episode 2

"The Blacklist" - Episode 6"The Killing" - Episode 2

"The Walking Dead" - Episode 2"Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" - Episode 4

Project GoalUse Natural Language Processing tools and feature engineering to identify elements of TV show scripts that “hook” viewers and induce binge-watching.

Methods

MethodsUse web

scraping to collect TV show

scripts

MethodsUse web

scraping to collect TV show

scripts

Train word2vec

model to create word

embeddings for script text

MethodsUse web

scraping to collect TV show

scripts

Train word2vec

model to create word

embeddings for script text goodbye pilot happy birthday look at that that is veggie

bacon believe it or not zero cholesterol you wont even taste the difference what time do you think youll be home same time i dont want him dicking you around tonight you get paid till you work till no later hey happy birthday well thank you youre late again there was no hot water again i have an easy fix for that you wake up early and then you get to be the first person in the shower i have an idea how about buy a new hot water heater hows that idea for the millionth and billionth time did you take your echinacea yeah i think its getting better not me i want real bacon not this fake crap too bad eat it this smells like bandaids eat it so hows it feel to be old how does it feel to be a smart ass good eat your veggie bacon you all set yeah im fine all right see you at home okay see you chemistry it is the study of what anyone ben chemicals chemicals no chemistry is well technically chemistry is the study of matter but i prefer to see it as the study of change now just just think about this electrons they change their energy levels molecules molecules change their bonds elements they combine and change into compounds well thats thats all of life right i mean its just its the constant its the cycle its solution dissolution just over and over and over it is growth then decay then transformation it is fascinating really chad is there something wrong with your table okay ionic bonds

Isolate sections and calculate vector

ave. cosine distance from remainder of the

script

MethodsUse web

scraping to collect TV show

scripts

Train word2vec

model to create word

embeddings for script text goodbye pilot happy birthday look at that that is veggie

bacon believe it or not zero cholesterol you wont even taste the difference what time do you think youll be home same time i dont want him dicking you around tonight you get paid till you work till no later hey happy birthday well thank you youre late again there was no hot water again i have an easy fix for that you wake up early and then you get to be the first person in the shower i have an idea how about buy a new hot water heater hows that idea for the millionth and billionth time did you take your echinacea yeah i think its getting better not me i want real bacon not this fake crap too bad eat it this smells like bandaids eat it so hows it feel to be old how does it feel to be a smart ass good eat your veggie bacon you all set yeah im fine all right see you at home okay see you chemistry it is the study of what anyone ben chemicals chemicals no chemistry is well technically chemistry is the study of matter but i prefer to see it as the study of change now just just think about this electrons they change their energy levels molecules molecules change their bonds elements they combine and change into compounds well thats thats all of life right i mean its just its the constant its the cycle its solution dissolution just over and over and over it is growth then decay then transformation it is fascinating really chad is there something wrong with your table okay ionic bonds

Isolate sections and calculate vector

ave. cosine distance from remainder of the

script

Search text for sentiment for hypothesized

“hook” moments

MethodsUse web

scraping to collect TV show

scripts

Train word2vec

model to create word

embeddings for script text goodbye pilot happy birthday look at that that is veggie

bacon believe it or not zero cholesterol you wont even taste the difference what time do you think youll be home same time i dont want him dicking you around tonight you get paid till you work till no later hey happy birthday well thank you youre late again there was no hot water again i have an easy fix for that you wake up early and then you get to be the first person in the shower i have an idea how about buy a new hot water heater hows that idea for the millionth and billionth time did you take your echinacea yeah i think its getting better not me i want real bacon not this fake crap too bad eat it this smells like bandaids eat it so hows it feel to be old how does it feel to be a smart ass good eat your veggie bacon you all set yeah im fine all right see you at home okay see you chemistry it is the study of what anyone ben chemicals chemicals no chemistry is well technically chemistry is the study of matter but i prefer to see it as the study of change now just just think about this electrons they change their energy levels molecules molecules change their bonds elements they combine and change into compounds well thats thats all of life right i mean its just its the constant its the cycle its solution dissolution just over and over and over it is growth then decay then transformation it is fascinating really chad is there something wrong with your table okay ionic bonds

Isolate sections and calculate vector

ave. cosine distance from remainder of the

script

Search text for sentiment for hypothesized

“hook” moments

Create features for various script elements based

on genre

! ? …

MethodsUse web

scraping to collect TV show

scripts

Train word2vec

model to create word

embeddings for script text goodbye pilot happy birthday look at that that is veggie

bacon believe it or not zero cholesterol you wont even taste the difference what time do you think youll be home same time i dont want him dicking you around tonight you get paid till you work till no later hey happy birthday well thank you youre late again there was no hot water again i have an easy fix for that you wake up early and then you get to be the first person in the shower i have an idea how about buy a new hot water heater hows that idea for the millionth and billionth time did you take your echinacea yeah i think its getting better not me i want real bacon not this fake crap too bad eat it this smells like bandaids eat it so hows it feel to be old how does it feel to be a smart ass good eat your veggie bacon you all set yeah im fine all right see you at home okay see you chemistry it is the study of what anyone ben chemicals chemicals no chemistry is well technically chemistry is the study of matter but i prefer to see it as the study of change now just just think about this electrons they change their energy levels molecules molecules change their bonds elements they combine and change into compounds well thats thats all of life right i mean its just its the constant its the cycle its solution dissolution just over and over and over it is growth then decay then transformation it is fascinating really chad is there something wrong with your table okay ionic bonds

Isolate sections and calculate vector

ave. cosine distance from remainder of the

script

Use tf-idf weighting and NMF to focus on

key topics

Search text for sentiment for hypothesized

“hook” moments

Create features for various script elements based

on genre

! ? …

Topics

Supporting Character Development

Joining Forces

Demonstration of Leadership

Topic: Supporting Character DevelopmentEx) Mad Men Hook Episode (Season 1, Episode 6)

FRED

Your girl. Full of surprises. Oh Pretty Peggy Sue.

DON Peggy? If you say so. I avoid eye contact to avoid being blinded by the earnestness.

FRED

Actually, she really stood out—brainstorming wise…While the rest of the hens were busy tearing out each other’s feathers, that one saw the benefit, not the feature. She said she didn’t want to be one of a hundred colors in a box. That’s interesting, right?

”Hook” SceneRemainder of Episode

t-SNE Plot: 2D representation of word clusters

Topic: Joining ForcesEx) Breaking Bad Hook Episode (Season 1, Episode 2)

JESSEYou're not You're not serious? You're

serious? Who's gonna do that? And don't look at me!

WALT

I guess we'll both do it together. JESSE

No, Mr. White, okay, I'm not good with dead bodies. We're in this 50/50,

okay?

WALTI guess the only other fair way to go about this would be that one of us

deals with the body situation, while the other one of us deals with the

Krazy-8 situation. In a scenario like this, I don't suppose it is bad form

to just flip a coin.

”Hook” SceneRemainder of Episode

t-SNE Plot: 2D representation of word clusters

Topic: Demonstration of LeadershipEx) House of Cards Hook Episode (Season 1, Episode 3)

FRANKYou know what no one wants to

talk about.Hate.

I know all about hate.It starts in your gut, deep down here, where it stirs and churns.

And then it rises.Hate rises fast and volcanic.It erupts hot on the breath.Your eyes go wide with fire.You clench your teeth so hard you think they'll shatter.

I hate you, God.I hate you! Oh, don't tell me you haven't said those words

before.I know you have.

We all have, if you've ever felt so crushing a loss.

”Hook” SceneRemainder of Episode

t-SNE Plot: 2D representation of word clusters

Conclusion

Conclusion• Analysis led to 3 central themes in shows that “hook”

viewers:• Supporting character development• Characters joining forces• Demonstration of leadership

Conclusion• Analysis led to 3 central themes in shows that “hook”

viewers:• Supporting character development• Characters joining forces• Demonstration of leadership

• word2vec proved to be a useful tool to establish text sections’ divergence from document

Conclusion• Analysis led to 3 central themes in shows that “hook”

viewers:• Supporting character development• Characters joining forces• Demonstration of leadership

• word2vec proved to be a useful tool to establish text sections’ divergence from document• Incorporating sentiment analysis, tf-idf, and other script

features help target pivotal scenes

jmfradkin@gmail.com

linkedin.com/in/jamiefradkin

github.com/jmfradkin

jamiefradkin.wordpress.com

Thank you!

Jamie Fradkin