Cenário Project – The dynamics of cinema in Brazil

The increase in national production and film distribution in Brazil in recent years is visible. Research by the Motion Picture Association da América Latina (MPA-LA) in partnership with the Sindicato Interestadual da Industria do Áudio Visual, held in 2014, shows that this media moves more than R$ 19 billion per year in the brazilian economy and already generates more jobs than tourism.

The Cenário project, an interdisciplinary initiative of LabVis and the LCG (Laboratory of Computer Graphics) of UFRJ, raises questions about the dynamics of cinema in Brazil.

The curiosity about the possibility of quantitatively visualizing the national production lead us to the question: is it possible to perceive other patterns? Is there, for example, a disturbance in the constant line of US content consumption? Is the brazilian “cultural palate” changing through the years? Are we producing more movies? Watching more? Displaying more?

These, in addition to other questions, were raised based on consultations in the OCA (Observatório de Cinema da Ancine) open data web page – a department of Ancine (Agência Nacional de Cinema), a Federal Government agency responsible for studies and data collection about the brazilian cinema.

The goal of this project is to try to answer such questions using interactive data visualizations. As a premise for the development of the project, we have the challenge of bringing visualizations that, in addition to being interactive, are alternatives in their composition and have intuitive and “embedded” navigation, that is, their details will be explored at their own interface, without the need for filters and menus.

After completing the study and filtering of the data, we started our production. As methodology, we opted for a cyclical process; The ideas were hand or digitally-sketched, then they passed by the evaluation of the laboratory members and, after adjustments, interactive prototypes were programmed. During the process, we had several changes and improvements. In this final moment, we are developing an usability test to validate our graphic choices.

Access the Cenário project here. The study is ongoing. Those involved in the development of this project are UFRJ students; Pedro Reis, of Electronics and Computing Engineering, and Victória Molgado, of Visual Communication – Design.