About Qualia

One of our team's favorite things about movies and television is how everyone engages with them a little bit differently. So many distinct parts can stick with you, positively or negatively, and end up shaping how you feel about it.

Like so many others, reading about what people think and sharing our thoughts are some of the first instincts we have after seeing something for the first time. After a while, we started to feel frustrated with one-dimensional "1–5 or 1–10 star" rating systems, because they felt incapable of capturing a spectrum of experiences and opinions that inherently come with the medium. We couldn't shake the feeling that one metric would only serve to push a narrative that there's one objective way to measure a film or show's worth. Comedies really stood out as a category hurt by this norm. They chronically seem to have lackluster ratings, yet some people have them as their all-time favorites. Shouldn't it be easier to search for something based only on how funny people think it is, rather than how "good" people rated it?

Our reaction to this has turned into Qualia, a project we've made to include the crowdsourcing appeal of ratings and reviews, but to add depth and nuance to the ways we engage with the entire medium. While we love the feedback loop of rating things, the simple star system today just doesn't cover the depth of things we actually remember about what we watched. Want to quickly find movies based on how weird people thought they were? What about something action-packed but also thought-provoking? Maybe someone purposely wants to watch something that scores poorly in story, but is memorable. Qualia has set out to try to accomplish this by shifting the focus toward how each quality is scored independently, rather than as one package.

Rate by how it felt, search by what you're in the mood for

We include an optional "overall impression" score that displays on each ratings page, because we recognize there is value in it as a metric for many people. With Qualia you can opt in with as much depth as you'd like by rating the qualities that actually shaped your experience — and skip any that don't apply. We hope this gives you more targeted levers to find something that fits what you're in the mood for.

Why "Qualia"

Picking names is hard. Beyond just liking how it sounds, we chose Qualia because it's a word that can be used to describe a subjective experience. This felt like a perfect fit for a project setting out to bring the subjective experiences of watching media and attach them to levers that communicate those feelings more accurately.

Qualia is young, and you're one of the first people here. Chances are, you might be seeing titles that are waiting for their first ratings — that's not a bug, it's an invitation. We hope you'll join our community by giving your input on what you've seen and spreading the word for others to see what they think.

A few of the qualities

Here are a handful of the things you can rate — and remember, you can skip any that don't apply:

·Story — plot, structure, originality
·Acting — performances across the cast
·Cinematography — camera work, framing, look
·Moving — how strongly it moved you
·Sound & Music — score, sound design, soundtrack
·Rewatchable — would you watch it again

Have a look around, or make an account to start rating.