All our Submission Guides have been updated and redesigned to make them cleaner and easier to follow.

The full list of guides can be found here.

We’re looking forward to your feedback about this – all comments are warmly welcomed at the Contributors’ Board thread here.

We’ve made some minor changes to the Update forms, to make them a little bit less daunting for new users. The bulk of the form is exactly as before – we’ve only changed the explanatory text at the top of the page and the buttons at the bottom of the form.

One important thing for regular contributors to be aware of:
- We’ve removed the confirmation page that you used to see when you clicked Finish (before you clicked Submit). The Submit button has been moved directly onto the top of the form, and clicking that button really does send us the data. There’s no more “are you sure you want to submit” stage.

A couple of other changes:
- The “Continue” button is now labelled “Check these updates” or “Re-check these updates” (but the functionality is the same)
- The “Cancel” button has gone – there’s a “Save for later” button on the form instead, and a “back” link underneath.

Please let us know here if you experience any problems.

Just a quick reminder that the correct place to submit information noting connections between movies and/or TV shows is to a title’s Movie Connections list, not to its Trivia list. Any submission regarding links between titles sent to Trivia will be automatically rejected.

The full guide to submitting connections can be found here, but here’s a brief reminder of the sort of connections we’re looking for: sequels, prequels, remakes, versions, references, spoofs, spin-offs, alternate language versions, and titles which feature clips, extracts and footage from other titles.

Although it seems like the perfect place for it, there’s no need to put the MPAA reasons for a movie’s rating in the “attribute” section of the certificates form. We get that info direct from the MPAA so you can save yourself a job (and us) by leaving it out.

Here’s a note from our Awards manager, Oliver, on the correct way to enter the ranking for an Awards submission:

–

Ranking of Awards

A quite common misunderstanding related to awards data is that of the ranking to be submitted.

Quite frequently awards are submitted this way

Title: Forbach (2008)

Name: Burger, Claire

Event: Côté Court Festival

Award: Special Jury Award

Category: Best Short Film

Year: 2009

Rank: 2

Title: Tira Bakal (2009)

Name: Wurth, Scott (I)

Event: Rhode Island International Film Festival

Award: Second Prize

Category: Best Documentary Short

Year: 2009

Rank: 2

This is wrong since here the ’2′ has been used to indicate the second best ranking at the overall event. However the ranking information we need relates to the “award”, not to the “event”.

Let’s put those two above examples into words:

Claire Burger’s film Forbach (2008) has won the second place Special Jury Award in the category Best Short Film at the 2009 Côté Court Festival…

very likely not what the submitter wanted to say.

Scott Wurth’s film Tira Bakal (2009) has won the second place Second Prize in the category Best Documentary Short at the 2009 Rhode Island International Film Festival… again very likely not what the submitter wanted to say.

Both films have actually won their respective awards, they did not rank second place. The actual awards the films have won may or may not have the status of “second best” overall at those events, e.g. the Special Jury Award at the Côté Court Festival is the second best award which can be won overall at the event.

Nevertheless if the film wins the Special Jury Award, you should indicate that by putting a ’1′ into the ranking field of the submission form.

Let’s look at another example:

Title: The Woman of Ahhs (2008)

Name: Paquette, B.P.

Event: Mexico International Film Festival

Award: Bronze Palm Award

Category: Feature

Year: 2009

Rank: 3

This submission has the same problem, just here it is the third best overall award since there also is a Silver Palm and a Golden Palm to be won.

The above would be correct only and only if the festival’s listing of winners would say:

Bronze Palm – Feature category

1. place: This Film

2. place: That Film

3. place: The Woman of Ahhs

However it says

Bronze Palm – Feature category

* This Film

* That Film

* The Woman of Ahhs

There is no ranking at all for the Bronze Palm.

Summary:

The ’2′ and ’3′ for the ranking of an award are somewhat rare exceptions. If a film or person actually has won an award, the ’1′ should be used to indicate that.

The same goes for Special Mentions, Special Recognitions and the like as there are no rankings at all for those. ’1′ should be used to indicate those were won.

If the award itself has no rankings, please always use ’1′ to indicate a win.

This is just by way of being a quick reminder that we only allow a small number of “attributes” (the qualifying bit in parentheses) for cast credits.

Acceptable attributes for cast credits are:

• (uncredited)
• (credit only)
• (archive footage)
• (archive sound)
• (singing voice)
• (unconfirmed)
• (rumored)
• (scenes deleted)
• (as ……)
• (also as …..)
• (voice)
• (voice:  <language> version) – Where language is simply the name of the language in question, eg Japanese/English/German etc.

We no longer accept any other (attributes) for cast entries so things like these should not be used:

• Attached
• In Negotiations
• In Talks
• Guest Star
• Any standalone date, i.e. (2009)
• Any date range, i.e. (1998-2001)
• Any TV series info, i.e (Season 8, 9 and 10)

The manager of the Soundtracks section of the database would like remind the contributors to that area of our rules regarding the credited and uncredited use of songs/music.

Many theatrical releases in the last 30 years have credited (on screen) the use of songs in the film.  However, most television programs and early films do not.

There are many different forms a soundtrack entry can take, but for this we will only talk about a straight uncredited situation.  A song is heard, but nothing about that song is credited on-screen.  In these cases, you need to use the (uncredited) attribute after the song name.

“Song Name” (uncredited)
Written by …

The submission guide can help answer questions, and many experienced people are available to help on the contributors help message board.

Tim

We’ll keep you informed about changes to IMDb and contribution policies and technologies.

– The IMDb List Editors