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Carole Mikita ReportingA Park City computer company says it can predict which Sundance Film Festival movies are winners and which ones are losers. UNSPAM normally works with the states of Utah and Michigan, blocking pornography from children's e-mail, but as a sidebar this January, the employees have created a website titled 'Deconstructing Sundance'.
The Sundance Film Festival guide lists all 120 movies, many of them entered in the dramatic or documentary competitions. Some will win prizes and attract distributors, others will not. A small group of employees who work for UNSPAM, a Park City-based computer company, have come up with a formula to predict the good ones.
Matthew Prince, CEO & Co-Founder, UNSPAM Technology: "We took the last ten years of film guides from Sundance, we took all of that data, put it into a computer, and then we took how well those movies actually did."
Next they took this year's films, ran them through the same process, and say they are able to predict which ones will be commercially successful when they leave the festival.
Some data, they call secret tricks.
Matthew Prince: "Things like who the reviewer was, how long the movie was, whether it was shot in 35 millimeter or digital photography."
Another clue is key words used to describe the films.
Matthew Prince; "If they think twice before using the word 'riveting' in their description, It'd be awesome, I'd love it."
So what does UNSPAM predict?
UNSPAM Predicted 2006 Dramatic Best
1- Come Early Morning
2 - Flannel Pajamas UNSPAM Predicted 2006 Dramatic Worst
1 - Puccini for Beginners
2 - Steel City
UNSPAM Predicted 2006 Documentary Best
1 - God Grew Tired of Us
2 - The Grand Truth: After the Killing Ends
UNSPAM Predicted 2006 Documentary Worst
1 - Crossing Arizona
2 - Iraq in Fragments
Matthew Prince: "The proof is going to be in the pudding. We'll be able to evaluate a year from now whether our predictions are successful or not."
The employees have purchased tickets to see their predicted winner and they say so far, so good. They say it will be interesting to see if Sundance writers check out this website and next year change key words in the film guide describing movies.
