And the winner is…
Posted by tim in Uncategorized on October 16th, 2009
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.
![[Post to Twitter]](http://contributors.blog.imdb.net/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}
Cast Attributes
Posted by tim in Uncategorized on August 28th, 2009
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)
Contribution ideas – plots and episode data
If you’ve a hankering to submit some data but don’t have a specific project in mind, we could really use some help in filling in the holes in our TV episode data.
We’ve a list in the Contributors Zone which shows TV series with missing stuff (plots, cast, crew, episode titles, etc, etc). So if you happen to be a fan and have any of those series on DVD, that’s where to find out what’s missing.
If you’re a keen plot submitter (or would like to be), try this list of popular titles with no plot information. We need plot outlines (two lines to give a flavour of the episode – the sort of thing you’d see in a TV listings magazine), plot summaries (a paragraph giving a more detailed idea of the plot but with no spoilers – the sort of thing you might want to read if you couldn’t make up your mind whether to watch), and plot synopses (ideally a complete scene-by-scene description of everything that happens).
Soundtracks (uncredited)
Posted by tim in Uncategorized on June 8th, 2009
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
“Doctor Who” (2005) Specials
Posted by tim in Data Display on May 1st, 2009
We’ve talked about this a lot, and because we don’t yet have a way of listing multiple “specials” in any kind of, as it were, “special” way, we’re going to move the special episodes that fall between seasons 4 and 5 from season 4 (where they are now) and put them, at least for now, into the “unknown” season until we can find a more suitable home for them (we’re working on some ideas).
Although the BBC production codes link them to Season 4, we don’t list special episodes this way and it’s worth noting that the BBC website also lists them in their own “specials” section rather than as part of season 4.
Any questions or comments to the Contributors Help thread, please.
Episodes that are submitted without episode numbers…
Posted by admin in Data Display, General on April 21st, 2009
Episodes that are submitted without episode numbers are automatically shown as being from an “unknown season”. Moving an episode to the correct season is easy: click on the gold Update button at the bottom of the page, scroll down to the Other Corrections section at the bottom of the page and select Correct from the pull-down beside Episode Title / Number. Once the correction has been approved by our editors, the episode will move to the correct season.
No Comments
We’ve not quite decided yet whether to post your comments here but for now we’re keeping this blog as a one-way thing and all ongoing discussions/comments/hearty praise/brickbats should go to the Contributors Help message board. For other information about the site or your account, try the Help pages.
End of Article Swapping, The (2009)
Posted by tim in Policy Change on April 6th, 2009
We’re about to make a behind-the-scenes change to the way we store titles which, to be honest, most users won’t notice but which will affect some submitters.
For years we’ve followed the standard practice of moving articles (the, a, an, etc) to the end of titles when we store them in the database. So, for instance, The Godfather (1972) has been stored as Godfather, The (1972) since… well, since forever. We even used to display it like that, although astute users will have spotted that we now swap the articles back into place for display (but only for titles in English). The advantage of all this article swapping is that it makes it easier to sort titles alphabetically but the disadvantages, especially when dealing with non-English titles, are many and varied.
The time has come, we’ve decided, to bite the bullet and store titles as written.
Little will change on the site because we display English language titles “naturally” anyway but it will make a difference in some places:
- submissions - if you refer to a title in a submission (including submitting a new title) you will now need to enter it in its “natural” form rather than swapping the article. For the majority of submitters this should be more intuitive and more straightforward.
- display - Non-English titles will display properly, so that, for instance, Buono, il brutto, il cattivo., Il (1966) will become Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. (1966) and Boot – The Making of, Das (1981) will be stored and displayed as Das Boot – The Making of (1981) just as nature intended.
- “browse” pages – we don’t sort titles alphabetically in many places, but where we do (the various Browse pages or MyMovies, for instance) The Godfather (1972) will now be sorted under T and Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo. (1966) under I.
- ftp files – if you download our list files from the ftp server you need to be aware that the sort order of the titles will change in case this affects the way you use them.
The change will affect around 10% of the 1.3 million titles in the database and we’re hoping to make the swap during the day on Tuesday 7 April so that they’ll be visible on the site when the new version is published on Wednesday 8 April.
Marriages, Civil Unions, etc
Posted by tim in Policy Change on April 6th, 2009
A little while ago we made a slight policy change in the Spouse section of our name pages. Previously we only recorded details of “marriage” in the commonly understood, old fashioned sense, but we are now accepting all legally recognized partnerships (marriages, civil partnerships, domestic unions, etc – the exact terms vary by jurisdiction). The submission guide has been updated to reflect this change but the gist is: if it’s legal, we’ll record it; if it’s not formally recognized by the local authorities, we’ll take it as a biographical trivia item.
A Belated Welcome
I’d intended to post a “hello and welcome to the new blog” a little while ago but events overtook me and we had to get the news out about the change in cast order. But here we are now. Hello.
We’re still deciding exactly how we want to use the blog (and we may never properly decide – I have a feeling it’ll just sort of evolve as we post stuff), but we’re hoping it will be a useful way of passing on news from the data team.
This week there’s encouraging stuff from the biographies manager who’s especially pleased to be receiving quite a bit of stuff about various actors’ theatre work which fits nicely into the “other works” section on the bio pages (take a look at Kevin Spacey, for instance). On the downside, he also says he’s been getting quite a few dates of birth without a country, (particularly noticeable, he says, when it’s the USA) and asks you not to forget to include the country with the place of birth.
I’ve not heard from any other list managers, so I’m assuming they’re either blissfully content or so busy that they haven’t got time to talk to the likes of me.
Cheerio for now