This week’s data visualization comes from https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/based-on-a-true-true-story/. This graphic displays a scene-by-scene breakdown of Hollywood Films and displays how much truth is behind them. These movies are all based on true stories and this visualization shows exactly how true each one is. It is color coded into five categories: True, True-ish, False-ish, False, and Unknown. The True categories are colored shades of blue, with True being a darker blue, and the False categories are shades of pink, with False being a darker pink. Unknown is gray, making it easier to see which parts of the movie are truer than others.
Each movie has a percentage of “true” next to it which was calculated based on how much of the movie is blue versus pink. Each movie is broken down by scene and each scene is color-coded based on how true it is. A user can click on any scene and see what part of the movie it is and what was portrayed in the movie versus what happened in reality. The source for each Reality description is given as well. There are three different ways of viewing the movie breakdown: clicking into a scene and seeing its Movie vs Reality descriptions, a list breaking down each scene of the movie, and images of each scene which provide a description and category when hovered over. A user can also filter each movie by category, as well as read a brief description of the film and how true it is.
A user is also able to select a Pedantry setting and pick how strict the truthness should be. There are three options, one which gives the movie some leeway, something in the middle and a very strict one. Based on all these, the most “true” movie is Selma, which is 100% true at the “Flexible - c’mon, it’s a movie!” setting. All scenes in that movie are mostly or 100% true.
The color choices of this graphic are nice because it is very easy to see the difference between the blue and the pink. The decision to make the “-ish” categories a slightly lighter color of the main categories helps the eyes understand that it is the main category, but may have some things off with it. Overall, it is very interesting to be able to see a full breakdown and be able to view so many of the movie’s details.