I like making lists. A few years ago, I started making a list of every movie I watch each year. It's gotten a lot more detailed than when I started, becoming more of a chart than a list, and will perhaps continue to evolve. Here's what I currently put on the chart:
1. The date I watched the movie. I started documenting this detail in 2016.
2. The title of the movie and year it was released. I color code to signify
whether or not I watched it for the first time. If so, the title is in
black. If I've watched it before, I make it grey.
3. Any comments I find to be relevant, such as who I watched it with, if I
watched it with a commentary track, if I saw it in the theater, etc.
Then at the end of the year, because I find it interesting, I count up the feature length movies. For the total, I count repeat viewings too, including when I
watched a movie, and then rewatched it with a commentary track. I also count how many I saw for the first time, and how many I saw in the theater.
In 2014, I saw 231 movies in total, 121
of which I was seeing for the first time, and 20 of which were in the
theater.
In 2015, I saw 109 movies in total, 52 of which I was seeing for the first time, and only 3 of which
were in the theater.
In 2016, I saw 88 movies in total, 38 of which I was seeing for the first time, and 4 of which were in the theater.
Just because I wanted to see what it would look like, I decided to put together a simple line graph.
To give some context, I was unemployed in 2014, and was living much closer to my best friend / cousin, who is my favorite person to watch movies with. We went to the movie theater together quite a bit. There have been a few times where I visited him over a weekend and we saw 6 movies in the theater. At the beginning of 2015, I moved to another state, got a job, and didn't have my movie watching friend around. Since my move, due to my work schedule, the absence of my friend, and various other factors, I haven't watched nearly as many movies as I would have liked. That explains the dramatic plunge in numbers between 2014 and 2015 (as well as my lack of posts here). I intend to do better this year, and I intend to keep up with the charts for the rest of my life, creating an updated graph each year. Right now the graph looks a little sad, but I'm sure it will get more interesting as the years go on.
Do you keep track of the movies you watch? Let me know if you have any ideas for my chart and graph.
