Plot Arceology

Benjamin M Schmidt Assistant Professor of History, Northeastern University Core Faculty, NuLab for Texts, Maps, and Networks

October 2015

Modeling Plots

Approaches to modeling plot

Jockers (2015)
Sentiment analysis to trace fortune/misfortune
Pre-chosen feature set from standard dictionaries
Emergent patterns of plots
Piper (2015)
Conversion narratives modeled
Feature set emergent from works
Pre-chosen plot structures
Other types of sources
Beauchamp - Political Speeches
Reiter - Fairy tales

Plot arcs

Corpus: Television shows and scripts

Method: Characterization of aggregate patterns through dimensionality reduction (topic modeling).

Applicable to other corpora

The corpus

Lazarsfeld-Stanton Program Analyzer

CBS internal program analysis

Ernst Dichter papers, Hagley Museum & Archive

Open Subtitles.org

Open Subtitles Bookworm

Linechart of different media over time

{
"database": "movies",
"plotType": "linechart",
"method": "return_json",
"search_limits": {"MovieYear":{"$lte":2020}},
"aesthetic": {
    "x": "MovieYear",
    "y": "TotalTexts",
    "color": "medium"
}   
}

View

A subtitle chunking algorithm:

Split into thirds;
While the chunk length is greater than two minutes, split each chunk in half yielding successively
6ths
12ths
24ths
etc...

{
"database": "screenworm",
"plotType": "linechart",
"method": "return_json",
"search_limits": {"6th":{"$gte":1},
"word":["love you"]},
"aesthetic": {
    "x": "6th",
    "y": "WordsPerMillion",
    "color": "medium"
}
}

View

Interactives

benschmidt.org/arceology

Plot arcs

Example topics

topic	label
2	Wait wait minute Let’s Look Hurry let’s
10	clean smell water wash use bath bathroom
11	film movie show TV movies scene play
31	hair funny look joke laugh big teeth
34	sir course Thank dear London quite Ah
60	talk talking Look crazy understand Listen problem
61	animals animal bear food wild hunting lion
74	hear voice heard sound radio noise listen
78	game play ball team playing win football
80	girl girls boy look name beautiful pretty
85	drink wine beer drunk bottle drinking glass
90	years world land water sea ago life
110	Madame de Monsieur French dear course evening
113	God cool Whoa Look look dude Wow
119	married wife wedding husband love marriage woman
121	Agent agent security FBI team CIA agents