Analyzing Movie Dialog Speed with Python

When David Fincher was directing The Social Network, he went over to Aaron Sorkin’s house with a stopwatch and timed how long it took Sorkin to read the script. He then wrote down the times for each scene and rigidly stuck to those scene times when filming this masterpiece. After hearing this anecdote, I decided to look at this movie’s dialogue myself from an analytical perspective.

To start my investigation, I first gathered the data. I found a site called YIFY Subtitles (https://yts-subs.com/) which provides the files movie editors use to add subtitles to a…