After reviewing literature for the past two weeks, I focused the first half of this week on identifying metrics I want to use for data collection. These were the four that I settled on: tracking 1.) the number of Chinese film submissions at Big 5 film festivals (Berlin, Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Venice), 2.) trend lines in US movie exports to China since Deng Xiaoping initiated his Reform and Opening-Up movement in 1978, 3.) the proliferation of Chinese film festivals, and 4.) the percentage of top 100 global box offices grosses attributed to Chinese productions. These four measure the strength of the domestic film industry in China, crystallize the commercial film relationship between China, and the US, and help project growth trends for the next few decades. Once these four categories were finalized, I began to scrape data by sleuthing through sources online and contacting experts who've engaged with similar datasets in the past.

            Getting through the first, third, and fourth categories required time intensive work. First, I investigated each of the Big 5 festivals to better understand their competition, out of competition, and other recognition categories. Some of the festivals (like Toronto) have upwards of 20 different submission categories, not all of which are important. After I browsed through all the categories, I decided that I wanted to have three thematic focuses: 1.) all of the official competition categories (out of which the most prestigious prizes were awarded, 2.) the out of competition categories that allowed those films to be screened at the festivals but made them automatically ineligible for the most prestigious prizes, and 3.) categories that focuses on upcoming talent and new film techniques to measure where the next wave of recognition might go. Afterwards, I started scraping each of the five websites for data which took me all the way until the end of this week. Next week, I look forward to finishing off this dataset and moving onto data collection for other categories.