Current location:	torture chamber
Current mood:	annoyed
Current music:	Highway to Hell
Entry tags:	meta, supernatural

Supernatural Face Time Meta
Analysis of Face Time as a way to determine whether Kripke favors one Winchester brother
over the other.


Back in late January or early February of 2008, a dear friend who had been trying to get me to watch Supernatural for over two years had finally convinced me to sit down and watch the series. It took me to the sixth episode Skin to fall in love with the series by the end of the Second Season, 5 days later, I was a true fan-girl with all the plusses and minuses that entails. I haven’t been this crazy about a series since I first saw Star Trek TOS as reruns when I was 14. Star Trek is the reason I am an engineer today, which should give you an idea of how obsessive I can get.

It was after finishing the Second Season that I began to explore the Bulletin Boards and LJs and encounter the Great Sam versus Dean debate. I admit to being puzzled because I couldn’t understand why the Dean fan’s felt that Dean was being neglected when I (also a Dean fan) felt that he was the heart of the series and felt even a little sorry for Jared. But before I went on and voiced my opinion I wanted to check out my assumption and I was surprised to find that the Winchester Boys were very closely matched. I made my post about the results and then promptly forgot about it until I had the opportunity to read bowtrunckle’s marvelous meta: “Tension, Conflict, Motivation, and Plot: Why the Story is About Dean and We Do Know Sam”. I told her about the research I had done and she encouraged me to post my findings.

The measurement I used to determine which Winchester was the focus of the series was Face Time. Webster’s defines Face Time as the amount of time one spends appearing on television. Face Time is a continuous versus discrete measurement, so the measuring tools and rules I set reflect this. I also took into account that there were over 2000 minutes to view and though I am insane, I do have a real life that I enjoy participating in.

TOOLs:
The Measurement tool used was an electronic stop watch, the Bell Sport Timer.
Video source was Apple iTunes down loads of the three seasons as this gave me greater control over the video than what I was able to accomplish with a DVD.


RULES:
1) Face time will only be measured when either Dean or Sam is not sharing the
screen with their brother.
a) Sharing the screen includes telephone conversations
b) Conversations between doors and rooms
c) As well as voice-overs such as the exorcism in “Jus in Bello”
d) Or the brother is present in the room but invisible as in "My Time of Dying"


2) Exceptions to these Face time rules which would allow additional time to be counted include:
a) If the brother is unconscious or dead
b) If the brother is in their immediate death throws
c) If the camera is obviously pulling away to isolate the actor from the rest of the
surrounding events rather than panning to the other characters for their reaction as
occurred in “Dead in the Water”.
d) The final exception is if one of the Winchester’s is taking the opportunity of
being alone, although talking to their brother to engage in an activity that they
don’t want their brother to know about as in “Hell House”

3) Additional factors that apply to Face time:
a) Young Dean and young Sam count toward Face time as it is the brother’s time on the
screen rather than the actor’s time that I am counting.
b) Shape shifters count toward face time as they channel the character’s personality.
c) Possession counts towards face time as the character is present though ridden by a
demon against their will.
d) Initial recaps are not counted
e) Where ever possible commercial break blackouts (metal teeth chomp) are not counted.
These tend to be inconsistent in length sometimes less than a second other times a full
minute

Despite the rules given anyone trying to recreate the measurements taken will have difficultly, do to the fact that I did not record my exact stop and start points. This is especially true where the time difference between brothers is under 2 minutes. In addition, the time measurements taken are impacted by both by tool error and operator error. The Bell Sport timer is finicky in its response to button pressure and I as operator found myself having to retake measurements when I was distracted by the story. To reduce or at least determine the measurement error, the normal method is to take multiple measurements (32 is a standard statistical sample) to determine the capability of the process and its variability; by determining the mean, median, statistical deviation, Cp & Cpk. As, I said, I may be insane but I am not ready for the men in the white coats yet, so I did not spend time determining measurement error.

Even knowing the limitations of the data, any conclusions I make should still have validity. Errors that may sway the result one particular episode should smooth out some what over the 58 episodes reviewed, as timing errors should have a normal distribution and occur for both Sam and Dean both equally and randomly. In Season 1 out of 22 episodes Sam took the lead in 11 out of which 7 were conclusive. Dean took the lead in 10 of which 7 again were definitive. Though Sam is nominally the winner when the season is looked at as a whole I consider it to be a tie as Dean is slightly ahead in actual time on the screen. In Season 2, Dean leads in twelve of the 22 episodes and has decisive wins in ten of them; so Dean is the clear winner of Season 2. Season 3 is not over yet and the results are so close that the season could go either way. I believe that had not Sam’s plot been pushed out into Season 4 due to the writer’s strike, Sam would have been in the lead. As it stands the brothers are with in 3 minutes of each other and 1 episode for the season and so it is too early to really call.

Now it may seem that since Dean wins Season 2 that he is really the lead character in the show, but I believe that the show focus of "Supernatural" is more evenly distributed. Of the 2414 minutes, Dean has only 37 minutes more than Sam or 1.5%, of the total air time. On average that amounts approx to 38.6 seconds per episode. Hardly a conclusive case for Dean dominating the series, my expectation would have been too see one character ahead by minutes per episode if they dominated. In Summary, it is my opinion the Face Time results indicate that Sam and Dean share series focus equally.

Data can be found by clicking on the chart below: