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Issue #5

In this issue
-------------
 - Forming titles
 - Character names
 - Locations
 - Writing credits
 - Cinematographer vs. director of photography
 - Processing cycle update
 - EPISODECORRECT-GUEST
 - Revised name filmographies
 - UNIX tool releases: 3.20, 3.21

Forming titles
--------------
One continuing source of confusion to people contributing new titles is
the way to format titles.  We have several precise rules (and some that
are admittedly a bit less precise).

The basic rules for forming a title: TV series and mini-series should be
enclosed in quotation marks; anything other than a TV series or movie
needs a description added to the end: (TV) for a made-for-TV movie;
(V) for direct-to-video; (VG) for a video game; (mini) for a miniseries.
Please note that quotation marks can only be used for TV series and
mini-series; there's no such thing as a "video series", for example.

Other factors such as whether the title is a documentary, short film, etc.
should not be included on the title (unless they appear in the title
on screen).  That brings us to the next rule: The primary title is the
title as it appears on screen, and if it differs between the beginning
and end of the film, then it's the title at the beginning of the film.
Oddities such as substituting numbers for letters (e.g., Se7en) and
intentional misspellings should be preserved.  In English, a subtitle
is set off from the main title with a colon (e.g., Lord of the Rings:
The Fellowship of the Ring, The); as that example shows, any articles
move to the very end of the title.  The exception to the article rule:
If the title is in a different language from the movie, as with Les
Girls, El Cid, or La Bamba.  Also, the French articles un/une/des and
the Portuguese articles um/uma do not move.  (In German, a subtitle
is separated with a hyphen.)

One exception to the "title as it appears on screen" rule: Author or
filmmaker possessives such as Bram Stoker's Dracula or Disney's The Kid or
Andy Warhol's Flesh are used only in alternate titles with the attribute
(complete title).  This doesn't apply to working titles, like Woody
Allen Fall Project 2000, since that's not a possessive in the same sense.

The primary title is the original title of a movie in its original
language.  If the movie is a coproduction that uses several languages,
pick the dominant language concerning dialogue, director, cast and
principal crew. If no language is dominating the others pick any one.
The title should be that used at the first public screening; a film can
have a different title at film festivals from when it goes into general
release, or be retitled on rereleases.  It's also common for titles to
be changed for television and video.  Again, these should be treated as
alternate titles with the appropriate attributes.  Other commonly used
titles, such as those on posters or reference books, should also be sent
as alternate titles.

Accents should appear as they are on screen, except that accents
omitted over upper-case letters should be restored.  Please note that
accents should be limited to those in the ISO-8859-1 character set; this
means that some accents from languages such as Turkish will have to be
omitted.  Languages using non-Roman alphabets should be transliterated;
for Japanese, use Hepburn romanization (Hyôjun-shiki).  If the title is
transliterated in the original release (films from India and Hong Kong
often include English subtitles in the original), use the on-screen
transliteration.

The year used should be the year of first public exhibition of
the final version, whether that was at a film festival, general
release, television showing, or whatever.  If that year is not known,
approximations from other sources can be used, such as copyright date.
If no good approximation is available, use ???? for the year.  If there
are two titles with the same title and year, they should be distinguished
with Roman numerals (e.g., Hamlet (2000/I)).  For this purpose, articles,
punctuation, and title type are ignored; thus, Magicians, The (2000/I)
(TV) and Magicians (2000/II).  There are cases where the /I might be
omitted, but it's best to leave those decisions to us.

A TV special should be classified as a TV movie, but with the keyword
tv-special.  That keyword, as well as the Documentary and Short genres,
causes special treatment of the title in some filmography listings.
For our purposes, a mini-series runs at least 240 minutes excluding
commercials; anything shorter is a TV movie, regardless of the number
of parts it is divided into (though in some cases it might be a series,
depending on the circumstances).  Direct-to-video and TV movie are
determined by the intent; for example, Theodore Rex (1995) went straight
to video, but it was intended for and budgeted as a theatrical release.

The rules for capitalization depend on the language of a title, and
not what appears on screen, since the on-screen capitalization is often
chosen for design reasons.  In English, "book" rules apply: All words are
capitalized except for articles and most prepositions and conjunctions
of four or fewer letters; the first word, and the first word after a
colon, period, exclamation point, or question mark are always capitalized
(and the second word, if the first is an article).  Exceptions are made,
rarely, when needed for clarity -- for example, BUtterfield 8, where the
first two letters represent a telephone exchange.  Portuguese, Hebrew,
and Indian languages use the same rules.  In most other languages, only
the first word (first two, if the first is an article), proper names,
and the first word after certain punctuation as above are capitalized.
German uses the usual German mixed rules.

Admittedly, this seems like a lot of rules, but most of them are common
sense; in reviewing over 350,000 titles, we've had to deal with a large
number of unusual cases.

Character Names
---------------
We try to list character names as they appear in on-screen credits (i.e.,
the end titles cast listing). We make occasional exceptions when character
names are not listed onscreen or when the character descriptions in the
end titles include spoilers, but as a rule we try to stick to credits
as closely as possible.

If you don't know what the onscreen character name is or one isn't
listed, here are some guidelines to help with character name contributions:

1. Keep it simple

Please omit redundant information/irrelevant details: Ralph Fiennes'
character in Red Dragon (2002) is called Francis Dolarhyde, and that's
how he's listed in the credits. It's simply overkill to have him listed
as "Francis Dolarhyde/The Tooth Fairy/The Red Dragon" even though those
are factually correct descriptions.

Names are usually enough and character names shouldn't be descriptive,
unless absolutely necessary to identify the actor (i.e if a role doesn't
have a name, someone may be identified as 'Man in van' or 'Woman with
umbrella').

Avoid extra embellishments/repetitions/nicknames unless they are part of
the credited character name: it's enough to list Robert Patrick as John
Doggett in the "X-Files" TV series, instead of "Special Agent Jonathan Jay
'John' Doggett"; Jeri Ryan played Seven of Nine on "Star Trek: Voyager",
not "Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01, aka Annika Hansen";
Ed Norton played Will Graham in Red Dragon (2002), not "William Graham"
or "Special Agent Graham" or "FBI Special Agent William 'Will' Graham";
Matt LeBlanc plays Joey Tribbiani in "Friends", not "Joseph 'Joey'
Francis Tribbiani". You get the idea.

Whether that extra info is accurate or not doesn't matter. Robert
Englund's character in the Nightmare on Elm Street films is known as
Freddy Kruger, not Frederick Kruger or Frederick 'Freddy' Kruger, even
though Freddy is probably the diminutive form for Frederick.

2. Character descriptions must be limited to the context of the film.

Anthony Hopkins plays Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991);
Brian Cox plays Hannibal Lecktor in Manhunter (1986). Yes, they're the
same character but the spelling is different and we will stick to each
film's peculiar version.

Sigourney Weaver's character in Alien (1979) is called simply Ripley. The
fact that her first name is Ellen is not disclosed/introduced until
the sequel Aliens (1986): therefore her character name in Alien (1979)
is Ripley, not Ellen Ripley.

Including extra information that comes from other sources than the film
is especially wrong: Nichelle Nichols plays "Uhura" in the TV series
"Star Trek" and in the films. Even though, according to some Star Trek
books and novelizations, her first name is Nyota, that name is not used
in the films or TV series to the best of our knowledge.

Even if the various Star Wars books and novelizations may include name,
rank and serial numbers for every single Imperial Stormtrooper ever
shown in the films, we'll still list them all simply as 'Stormtroopers'
unless the onscreen credits have a different description.

3. No Spoilers

Ian Hart plays Professor Quirrell in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's
Stone (2001). You're not supposed to know he's also Voldemort. Ian Holm
plays Sir William Gull in From Hell (2001). His character name is not
"Jack the Ripper". Those are both supposed to be surprises.

If you haven't seen those two films, we just spoiled them for you. Sorry
about that, but imagine how our users feel when they come to the site
and see those character names before seeing the film.  Even if factually
correct, character names that constitute spoilers must be avoided at
all costs.

This is especially true for multiple character names that can be
easily omitted: it's perfectly adequate to say that Cary Grant plays
"Peter Joshua" in Charade (1963). There is no need to say that he plays
"Peter Joshua/Alexander Dyle/Adam Canfield/Brian Cruikshank", even if
that's true.

4. Language

David Prowse plays Darth Vader in Star Wars (1977). Clint Eastwood plays
Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry (1971). Even though the Italian releases
of those films changed the names to Darth Fener and Harry Callaghan,
we will stick to the character names used in the original version.

5. For TV series, use years when needed

Cast changes are the rule on long running TV series. Unless an actor has
been part of the cast for the entire run of a series, we try to include
the time frame of his/her appearances on the series.

For example, see the following character descriptions for "ER" (1994):

Noah Wyle      ...  Dr. John Carter
George Clooney ...  Dr. Doug Ross (1994-1999)
Paul McCrane   ...  Dr. Robert Romano (1997-)

Noah Wyle has been a cast member on "ER" (1994) since the first episode
and still appears in new episodes. His character name therefore doesn't
need a year attribute.  George Clooney was one of the original cast
members on "ER" (1994) but left the series in 1999.  Paul McCrane joined
"ER" in 1997 and is still a cast member to this day.  Note that these
are part of the character name, and not separate attributes.

Locations
---------
When sending location information, bear in mind that it becomes part of
a location tree (http://www.imdb.com/LocationTree), so it should make
sense within that structure.  In particular, the locations within a
country should be treated consistently; for example, within the United
States, the location must include a state, and (when possible) a city,
but not the county/parish unless no more detailed location is available.
Remember that each level of a location description is separated by a
comma; multiple locations within, say, the same state should appear as
separate location entries.

In general, smaller countries (both by area and by number of films)
should omit any political subdivision between the city and country.

Major cities and locations should be given their English names (thus,
Rome, Lazio, Italy, not Roma, Lazio, Italia); this also applies to
major international airports, etc.  Smaller towns and landmarks should
use the local names.  There is a long-range plan to allow proper use
of local names everywhere with automatic translation, but this is still
some time in the future.

Los Angeles deserves a few words of its own, both because of the number
of locations in the area and the complexity.  The city of Los Angeles has
several named neighborhoods that are actually part of the city; some of
the better known ones include Hollywood, Venice, Van Nuys, and Encino.
These are treated as divisions of the city (e.g., Hollywood, Los Angeles,
California, USA).  Named buildings are noted with their street address
at the same level -- for example, Bradbury Building - 304 S. Broadway,
Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA.

The new LOCATIONCORRECT keyword can be very convenient when cleaning
up the locations in a given portion of the location tree.  The usage:

LOCATIONCORRECT
wrong-location|correct-location|
END

There is no web form support for this keyword; it must be sent directly
to the email interface (adds@imdb.com).  Changing a location will change
all subordinate locations; for example,

LOCATIONCORRECT
Rome, Italy|Rome, Lazio, Italy|

will also change Tivoli, Rome, Italy.

Several countries have already been cleaned up; before starting on a major
cleanup project for a country, it's best to check in on the Contributors
Help message board to see if there are others working on that country
and to form a consensus on the proper subdivisions to use.

Writing credits
---------------
In the past, writing credits with no attributes were assumed to be
"(screenplay)".  This is no longer true; all writing attributes,
including (screenplay), (teleplay), and (written by), should be included
with writing credits.  In addition, the "(also story)" form should no
longer be used; instead, send separate (story) and (screenplay) credits.
For example, where you might have sent:

Doe, John|Title (2002)|(also novel)

you should send

Doe, John|Title (2002)|(novel)
Doe, John|Title (2002)|(screenplay)

If you are comfortable with sequence numbers, include them, but even
without them, credits should be split as shown here.

It's probably worth noting here that "(written by)" has a specific
meaning, at least for titles covered by the Writers Guild of America
(WGA).  It means that the same writer(s) did essentially all the
writing -- story and screenplay/teleplay -- and there is no adapted
source material (novel, short story, article, etc.).

Cinematographer vs. director of photography
-------------------------------------------
In the past, the terms "cinematographer" and "director of photography"
were used interchangeably.  While we still believe they are virtually
identical, we are now permitting "(director of photography)" as an
attribute in the cinematographer list if that is how the on-screen
credit reads.  Cinematographers should still be sent with no attributes.

Processing cycle update
-----------------------
Since the last newsletter, we have continued reducing our cycle times.
This has been most visible on the guest appearance list, where data
is now processed every other day.  Many other lists are still being
processed on a weekly cycle, but with a cycle that isn't necessarily
tied to the Thursday-to-Wednesday cycle for names and titles.

We have determined that the processing of alternate names is best
handled on a monthly cycle.

New title approval has taken great strides recently.  We have made it
possible for several staff members to help with title approval; that,
combined with new tools, has greatly reduced our backlog.  In addition,
many of the people who contributed new titles still in backlog have
received mail messages informing them of what additional information
will speed approval of their titles.  Various groups of titles have been
identified for speedier approval; some of these groups, such as titles
from the USA or UK with valid release dates, no longer have backlogs.

EPISODECORRECT-GUEST
--------------------
One of the improvements we made to processing of guest appearances is a
new keyword, EPISODECORRECT-GUEST, that makes it much easier to clean
up the episode lists for a given title.  In conjunction with some of
our contributors, we have already cleaned up the data for a number of
popular series.  Where the data for a series was fairly complete (and
the series is no longer in production), we have removed data that lacked
episode information.  This should serve as incentive to re-contribute
it with complete information.

Revised name filmographies
--------------------------
We've recently improved the name filmography pages.  Most notably,
appearances as "Himself" or "Herself" have been moved into a separate
category.  The "self filmography" will eventually be a separate category;
in the meantime, it includes appearances in Documentaries and tv-specials
(as determined by genre and keyword entries, respectively), appearances
marked (archive footage) with no character name, and appearances in
any type of project as "Himself" or "Herself."  We recognize this is
imperfect (for example, some documentaries use re-enactment actors who
are not playing themselves), which is why it's an interim approach; we
feel the benefits are significant enough, particularly for well-known
people with large "self" filmographies, to make it worthwhile.

Titles that are still in production are also being flagged.  This
area should be expanding in the future, as we are now including
more in-production data from our partners at the Hollywood Reporter.
(Subscribers to IMDbPro will note expanded company contact information
for such titles.)

UNIX tool releases: 3.20, 3.21
------------------------------
The moviedb package (a local UNIX version of the database) has again
been updated to correct various capacity problems.  Version 3.20 was
released in late January; version 3.21 was released in late March, and
is essential if you are using the current data files.  It can be found
at the usual FTP sites; see http://www.imdb.com/interfaces for details.

Installation remains the same as for earlier releases.  Note that if you
are using the X Windows interface, xregal, it cannot be compiled with
current releases of X.  While the changes in this release do not require
recompilation of xregal, some of the capacity problems will continue
to occur if you do not.  If you have a working binary of xregal, you
can keep using it, but you will probably see an increasing number of
crashes, particularly for name filmographies with long episode lists.
Alas, the author of xregal has chosen to stop supporting it, so a newer
version is not available.

To rebuild:  Extract the tar file into a directory named database.
Assuming you already have a copy of the database files, from ./database/ :

make compile
make installbin
cd imoviedb; make; make install
# If you are able to build xregal:
# cd ../xregal; make; make install
cd ..
make cleandbs
make update-local
./etc/cgencompl -all # optional

If it's not working for you, check the following things first:

 . Do you have enough disk space?
 . Are the source files for moviedb up to date?
 . Are all the binaries in database/bin/ and database/etc/ up to date?
 . Did you do *all* relevant steps above in the order listed?

For further support, contact unix@imdb.com.

Questions
---------
Q: Can people in still photos be listed in cast credits?

A: If, and only if, the person in a still photo is listed in the credits,
   they can be added to our credits list.  If they are not, they cannot be.
   If an uncredited photo is notable, then it should be listed in trivia.

Q: Do running times include commercials?

A: Ideally, no; however, particularly for older programs, this may be
   the only data available.  In this case, please add the attribute
   (including commercials).
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IMDb - Data Contributor's Newsletter - Issue 5 - THE END