Since 2015, the China Film Archive has been conducting a survey research, known as the audience satisfaction survey, to find the most popular Chinese movies of the year among domestic cinema-goers. After years of research and data collection, the survey has grown into a long-term comprehensive project, becoming part and parcel of the Chinese film evaluation system. As of the Chinese New Year of 2019, we have covered 33 holiday movie seasons, mainly focused on 285 films and surveyed another 129 films to a lesser extent. We also made in-depth analysis on the most popular films.

The audience satisfaction survey takes a three-pronged approach: offline survey of the general audience, online scoring by professional audience and online big data analysis. Regarding the general audience survey, more than 1500 samples are collected for every holiday movie season. Specifically, we randomly interview members of the audience who then complete questionnaires to give their fresh impressions on a movie. This offline survey is conducted in 11 cities of very different sizes and populations across China. With regard to professional audience, they include experts and scholars, film workers and media insiders who go online to rate films and fill out questionnaires for our survey. As for the online big data analysis, it involves a vast array of information on ratings from various online movie platforms such as Endata, Douban, Maoyan etc. The final scores are calculated by considering all the different factors and sources in order to fully reflect the online popularity of a movie.

In our surveys, considerations are given to three aspects of a film: its artistic values, depth of thinking and reputation. Artistic values cover a film’s story, genre, acting, audiovisual effects, aesthetics and originality. Depth of thought deals with the ideas and emotions of a film and if the film inspires the audience in a positive way. The reputation aspect takes into account both the word-of-mouth praise and a movie’s online popularity.

Following each survey, the relevant data and analysis reports are timely published on mainstream media and news outlets in China, including CCTV’s daily news broadcast, People’s Daily, Guangming Daily, Xinhuanet etc. The reports are key references to China’s film industry and are conducive to more innovative stories, diverse genres and quality-oriented productions. They offer effective guidance for the healthy growth of the country’s film industry.

We have so far published the 2015 annual report. The 2016-2017 and the 2018 reports have been edited and are due to be published soon.