Movingly

Inspiration

How often does it happen to you that you're looking for a movie to watch but cannot find anything that you like? And then, at some point, you find a movie that you love and wonder why it wasn't recommended to you? To us, it used to happen quite often. That's why we decided to build Movingly - it might be that tipping point for you to find something great to watch after not getting relevant recommendations from other engines.

What it does

We're adding a completely new angle to the equation: we believe that your music taste actually tells a lot about other things you prefer, such as movies. By connecting your Spotify account or just searching for a song, you get a database of movies that you're more likely to enjoy. We take into account such factors as the song's genre, lyrics, speed, mode, and even danceability, liveliness, and many more. It is lots of fun to play around and it might give you some new gems to spend your wintery evenings with!

How we built it

The system uses data fetched from three different databases: the Spotify Music Database, the Internet Movie Database, and the Wikia Song Lyrics Database. It then runs a series of calculations based on our three-step algorithm to translate a song's properties into movie recommendations.

It is currently live on a Microsoft Azure server. We use Express, JQuery, and Bootstrap3 to make the Frontend awesome. On the backend we use NodeJS in its full glory. Come talk to us to learn more about what's going on under the hood!

Challenges we ran into

It was tricky to stay below different APIs' usage limitations (e.g. max 3000 API calls / day) and still keep the results accurate. It was an ambitious project for a team of two.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We didn't really know what we were going to create at Junction or even which challenge we were going to participate, so this idea was born at some point during the opening evening and implemented shortly afterward. In a true hackathon spirit, we've spent a couple of sleepless nights, but the learning and fun we've had during the project were well worth it!

What we learned

We learned about some very well-made APIs and what they're capable of!

What's next for Movingly

Making a service you could log into that stores your movie and track data
Marking the movies you've already seen & searching for similar movies

There's already a Twitter account (@movingly), and that's how you know that we're serious about this. It might be another fun new service to try working on after a couple of our past successful projects, so we're eager to hear the feedback and improve it!