And the Oscar goes to… a computer

THE day a computer wins the Oscar for best screenplay may be one step closer.

Scientists looked at 25,777 plot devices used in over 10,000 films and TV episodes to find which tropes – recurring storytelling devices – worked particularly well together.

One example of such a trope is a ‘dramatic unmask’ – when a character wearing a mask shocks someone by removing it and revealing their identity.

This happens at the start of the 2008 Batman film The Dark Knight when the Joker reveals his face to a bank employee after a major heist.

The researchers, at the Universities of Granada and Cadiz, Spain, found that this often occured in films alongside the trope in which half a person’s face is covered in shadows.

Understanding which group of tropes lead to successful films could help screenwriters devise new hits and may one day even help computers write their own scripts, the study published in Plos One claimed.