My last post before The Big One: Ranking the phases of the 'Top 1000 movies' project, based on how fun they were

Greetings, reader!

Yep - we're just one week away from the big one. The single most unhinged project of my lifelong hobby of lists and rankings. The 300th post of my blog, coming next Thursday, is a ranking of every movie I've ever seen.

This week's post is a look back, while clearing up just how such a list was made. I divided the process into ten steps, and ranked them based on how fun each stage was. I hope you enjoy!

10. Step #6: Keeping track of the numbers

Yeah, this part was a pain in the ass. I was constantly paranoid that I've miscalculated some step, or accidentally pressed delete or something, and that when I finally number the entries after shifting around the rankings for the last time, I'll have 999 or 1001 movies because of some error. So, I was constantly checking the numbers, which was quite excruciating at times, as one thousand data points is a lot.

9. Step #4: Making sure I've watched exactly 1000 movies (that I can rank)

This one also got a bit messy, although it was an important part of the process. As the 1000-film mark got nearer, I really had to stay vigilant to make sure that I was going to have the exact right amount of movies on my watchlist when the time comes. This meant many things, for example:

- Making sure there aren't any movies I've forgotten to add, and updating the watchlist if such films come up (I had done a pretty good job keeping track, as I've had an IMDB account since 2013 and I have a habit of adding every new film I see, plus I've had over 10 years time to update the list with films I saw before 2013 every time such a film comes up - but there were still some cracks).

- Making sure each film qualifies for the list (for example, I had added 2020's Host because I had thought about it as a feature film, but turns out that it's 57 minutes long, so officially it counts as a short film. The distinction is a bit arbitrary, but I needed some system to draw the line for the top 1000, and the traditional 1-hour mark was the easiest line to draw).

- Making sure that it's not just 1000 films, but 1000 films that I can rank. You see, the fact that it's a watchlist of every film I've seen means that there are movies that I saw once as a child. Some of those I do remember well enough to compare them to other films, but many I remember so hazily that it's really difficult to compare them to films I remember much better. So, here's what I did: I actually broke the 1000-film milestone a few months ago, but I've watched a few new films since then. I calculated the exact amount of movies I needed to see so that I can delete those that I don't remember well enough from the list, in order for the list to be an exact top 1000 when the time comes. So, yes, I've seen slightly more than a thousand films by now - but exactly one thousand feature films that I can rank.

8. Step #3: Updating my IMDB watchlist and ratings

This was a fun stage early in the process: before I could get started on the list-making, I had to (or, let's face it, got to) scroll through my IMDB watchlist, with a special focus on combing through the ratings I've given. You see, a thousand movies is a big amount to just rank, so it helps to divide the whole thing into smaller rankings by going via rating. But, many of the ratings I had given weren't necessarily up to date - a man's taste in movies evolves with time, and I had given many of my ratings over 10 years ago.

A movie that I rated 5/10 as a teenager might be a 7/10 now that I've learned to appreciate on a new level, or a movie that I rated as a 9 when it came out might now be a 8 as I overhyped it upon seeing it first. It was quite a workload to update every rating to uphold my current opinions, but it was honestly a really fun walk down memory lane as well!

7. Step #2: Coming up with the exact concept and criteria

This was one of the more carefree steps - not as satisfying of a nerd-rush as the most fun ones, but definitely not as stressful as the least fun ones as well. For the beginning stages of the project, a lot of the work was just conceptualizing - how am I going to go about making this list, what rules will I use to determine what counts as a movie I've seen for any borderline issues, what is my deadline (the nearing instance of my 300th post helped with that one), et cetera.

The deadline helped me build a timetable, as I wanted to spread the work out across such a large period of time that it wouldn't be too much at once. Like my dear friend Olli once said: "Veikko seems like the kind of person who has too much free time at first, but once you get to know him, you realize that he's actually kind of busy and doesn't have too much free time - he just chooses to use his spare time in a really stupid way". Those words have rung truer than ever for the past six months.

6. Step #9: Proofreading the finished post

Now we're getting to the really fun ones! Now, I proofread the whole thing a few times, to smoke out typos and make sure that I stand by the exact rankings et cetera. Each read-through was divided into parts, because it would be painful to read the whole thing in one sitting - for any of the 2-3 people crazy enough to read the whole thing next week, I recommend dividing into sessions! If you read the whole thing in one sitting, that is very worrisome (but also respectable as hell, and I will buy a coffee for anyone who accomplishes that). But, yeah, this step required some energy, but felt like a big payoff after all the work put into the list, and thus quite satisfying!

5. Step #5: Making the preliminary rankings

This took a solid while, but was an absolute blast! There were many different ways I could've gone about this step, but the one I chose was going through my IMDB watchlist (in the 'date added' order) in several sessions, usually 10 or 20 films at a time, and added each film into an ever-growing collection of preliminarily ranked films (divided into groups based on my rating) until all 1000 were there. It started out easy, and in many ways it got harder and harder with time, as the differences in quality between consecutive films became smaller and smaller with time. But on another level, it felt like it got easier, because I could use pre-existing opinions to map out the ballpark placement of a film (for example, as long as I know where a Kubrick film is placed in my ranking of Kubrick films, or where a Star Wars film is ranked in my ranking of the franchise, I know that it'll be somewhere between movie X and movie Y, and then proceed from there).

Also, there wasn't too much pressure, because I knew that these were just the preliminary rankings, something to build on, so nothing was final. But, yeah, taking a bunch of stuff and putting it into a top list format has always been one of my favorite hobbies, so doing this to a thousand movies felt like playing your favorite sport on the biggest arena you've ever entered.

4. Step #7: Finalizing the rankings

With my preliminary rankings done, I had to finalize it so I could start actually writing the descriptions et cetera. This was fun as hell - finalizing the ranking of a top 5 or top 10 list is often very easy, but the bigger the list, the more challenging it is to find the exact ranking you’re satisfied with. So, this was the ultimate challenge.

Thankfully, my good friend Inari had recently introduced me to Preference Revealer, an online tool for list geeks like myself. I often don’t need it or feel like using it for my lists, because I like the challenge of doing it all in your head instead of using an online tool to ease the process. But for this project, it was such an MVP - basically, I did the same process for each possible rating from 1 to 10, where I took every film that I’ve given the same rating to, put them into the system, and answered a fuck-bunch of 1v1 questions in order for the system to show me what my ranking would appear to be based on my answers.

Now, this in itself wasn’t the whole truth, because A) I don’t trust any computer algorithm like the human brain, and B) There’s plenty of room for human error, like saying that Movie X is better than Movie Y, and Movie Y is better than Movie Z, but somehow Movie Z is better than Movie X?! So, basically, I contrasted my original ranking (which I had also tweaked and fine-tuned from its original version, after some additional thinking, based on just eyeballing) with my Preference Revealer lists, knowing that the truth would be somewhere in between. Much of the two versions was delightfully similar, and in the parts where they differed, I had to think hard and decide which one reflects my opinions of said films more. This gave me a path to the final order, one that I was satisfied with.

3. Step #10: Clicking 'publish post'

Now, this one only happens a week from now, so I had to rank it based on its hypothetical amount of fun. I'm guessing it'll be pretty f**king satisfying to finally put this mad experiment out there.

2. Step #8: Writing the descriptions

Once the ranking itself had been finalized, it was time to write a short reasoning for each film's placement. In my typical 'Top 10' blog posts, the description for an individual movie is about 2 paragraphs long (sometimes 1, sometimes 3). But this was going to be a ridiculously gargantuan reading (not to mention writing) experience anyways, so the least I could do was keep the descriptions short.

It was tough to come up with approximately 1-sentence-long texts for each film, as there's so much I'd want to say with each one, so many factors contributing to why it is exactly in that place and not one spot higher or lower. But I really just had to narrow it down to the most essential - what's the one thing, good or bad (or neutral (or mixed-feelings)), that sets this particular film apart? Coming up with these was a blast, and for all the time it took, the writing process was a fun one.

1. Step #1: Watching one thousand movies

I mean, this is what it's all about. I sometimes ponder whether I like making lists about things even more than I enjoy the things themselves. I mean, in some cases, it definitely is so. But with something that I love as much as cinema - it's a close call, but still. I love making lists about movies to an absolutely weird degree, but I do enjoy watching said movies even more. Well, depends on the movie, obviously - but the average film (which I can mathematically say is either the first X-Men or Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, as they're ranked at #501 and #500 respectively - just a little teaser for next week!) and anything above it makes the cut.

The movies I've seen have played a major part in my taste in art, my relationship to media, and honestly, my growth as a person. Some have affected my worldview, others have made me ask important questions or realize things about myself, and some have transported me to magical worlds, which is something one really needs every now and then. Some have made me laugh, others have made me cry, while many of the best managed to do both and everything in between. So, yeah. 299 posts into this blog, I reckon that this is stating the obvious - but I just *really* love movies. And I think next week's post will make that clearer than ever.

Thank you for reading! Tune in next week for the end result.