365 days in a row. Complete!
After 365 consecutive days and 523 movies seen, today marks the end of the DailyView here at EYG. I will say that I am very proud of the accomplishment and, honestly, I can’t remember what it was like prior to the DailyView’s origin.
Inspired by several of the YouTube reactors who watched movies that they had never seen before, I wanted to do something like that for EYG. So I decided that my summer vacation from school in 2021 would be spent watching classic films that I had never seen before, to fill a few of those gas in my viewing. My thought was that it would be a fun summer activity until school started again.
I started making a list of movies to watch including some of those that were beloved such as Saving private Ryan, The Sound of Music, Apocalypse Now, Heat, Do The Right Thing- just to name a few. Films that a true cinephile would have seen.
As I started to put together the list, I was getting excited and I started to think about starting before the summer arrived. I had to think about whether or not this was a legit possibility with school still underway. I did not want to derail the binge because of a busy career. I decided that it was possible and so, taking a personal day on April 29, 2021, I began the EYG DailyView Spring/Summer Unseen Classic Binge about a month plus early.
Things went smoothly and soon I was in June and July watching a bunch of movies that I had never seen before. Not all of them were classics, mind you, but I was getting to those excellent films as well. As August was getting close, I began to weigh the possibility of extending the binge through the end of the year. I had pretty much decided that I was going to do this before I officially made the announcement.
There were challenges, including my responsibilities as student council leader, that might cause some issues, but I was determined to see it through. So any time I felt as if there was going to be an upcoming conflict, I was forced to really do some planning. A big help was the decision to use some Charlie Chaplin shorts on HBO Max as films on those days when the schedule may not permit a full film (without me staying up really late and compromising my classroom teaching.
As I got close to December, I was in a groove with the DailyView, never really having any major issues outside of a few scheduling items, that I started to think about the chance of extending the binge one more time, for 365 full days, which would mean the binge would continue until April 28, 2022.
I loved the idea and it felt right, so I made the decision to make one more adjustment to the DailyView.
Along the way, I had set some unofficial goals (although I never officially said they were goals, if I had not accomplished them I would have been disappointed). One was to make sure that I had at least one movie a year from the earliest year through 2020. I accomplished this with at least one movie from every year between 1915 to 2020.
The second goal I wanted to reach (unofficially) was I wanted to break the 500 movies watched barrier for the 365 days, and I did that as well, several weeks ago. I was guessing we would end up somewhere in the 520s for films seen, and, sure enough, we got to 523.
I had some internet problems during the 365 days. With so much of the binge depending on the streaming services, if the internet went out for any extended period of time, it could have ruined the DailyView. However, I had a plan. I knew I had some DVDs of films that I had never seen (There are still a few Studio Ghibli films that I have not seen despite having them all on DVD) and they would be my back up. It actually happened twice. The first time I watched The Rite, with Anthony Hopkins, which was terrible and a second time I watched The Tale of the Princess Kaguya from Studio Ghibli.
Although Disney + is my personal favorite streaming service (thanks to the Marvel shows basically), it was not the MVP of the streaming services for the DailyView. That would be HBO Max, which brought me a ton of films that I could use, including the Charlie Chaplin shorts that were so valuable. Second place would go to Amazon Prime, which would include a bunch of the “channels” such as Shudder, Paramount Plus, Showtime, Cinemax, Epix etc.). Then I would go with Disney + followed by Hulu, Roku, Peacock… wow I have a ton of streaming services.
The year with the most films included in the DailyView turned out to be 2020 with 22 movies. The group of Small Axe films helped put 2020 over the top. The second place year was 2006 with 20 and then third place is 2005 with 19. 2007 was next with 18. The decade of 2000-2009 had the most overall in the decade with 130 movies. 2010-2019 is the next largest number if films watched with 97. The least amount was, of course, 1915-1919 which had 10 films.
So, with that, the DailyView is officially closed. Will I ever do this again? Never say no, but if I were to do it again, there would need to be some kind of hook. I can’t just decide to do 365 again. Going to 366 does not make much sense. However, I do have some ideas going forward. The Do Over: Sunday Morning Revisit begins this Sunday, May 1st and will be a weekly event. At some point, I will schedule a Saturday Short day when I will watch a bunch of short films on a Saturday. Then, in June there will be the month-long daily binge of movies I missed from 2021. Some cool stuff still coming from EYG.
No movie tomorrow. It’s going to feel strange.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 