Introducing: Subgenre & Plot Timeframe Keywords

I recommend adding the word "sample" to the help article language regarding subgenres, as shown in bold below:

See here for sample accepted values

Otherwise, there is an implication that the listed values are the only values that will be accepted. That would be wrong, because there are easily dozens, if not hundreds, of acceptable subgenres that are not included on the list. 

Just taking horror subgenres, for example, the list does not currently include acceptable subgenre keywords like gothic-horror, body-horror, eco-horror, war-horror, retro-horror, erotic-horror, redneck-horror, giallo, video-nasty, etc. 

Then there are numerous subgenres that can cross genres, for example creature-feature, teensploitation, nunsploitation, bikersploitation, social-guidance, drug-scare, etc.

"biographical-documentary"

All 64 titles currently with this unnecessary/repeative keyword have both Biography and Documentary as genres.

I have submitted deletions for this erroneous keyword on ALL 64 titles, and the staff HAS NOT ACCEPTED them.

Is the list of accepted values for timeframe keywords intended to be a complete list? I was wondering why so many others have been created that aren't listed as accepted values.

Currently some 160 keywords versus 25 in the list in the help page.

https://www.imdb.com/find?s=kw&q=timeframe+

"war-horror" is a bad subgenre since it combines two genres that could be more effectively listed unter genres.  Keywords that just combine genres were supposedly outlawed, weren't they?

P.S. Still waiting for "war-romance" to be deleted.

The list of subgenres continues to astound me.

First, the subgenres that combine two genres should be removed. IMDb's own guidelines prohibits them:

"Repeating genres - For example, we have the genres Romance and Drama so you can submit these as genres to the title rather than submitting the keyword romantic-drama. For an exceptional genre on an episode that does not relate to the overall series, please see the -episode special keywords below."

This outlaws:  biographical-documentary, crime-documentary, history-documentary, music-documentary, sports-documentary, tragedy-drama, sports-talk-show, crime-reality-show, comedy-talk-show and any other "bad" keyword that might combine genres.  All should be deleted from this list., 

Second, some are just superfluous and redundant:  sitcom-comedy (which should probably be situation-comedy), docudrama-drama, costume-drama-history (duh?), etc.

Third, many are just plain silly:  psychological-drama, psychological-horror, psychological-thriller (Are none of the other genres "psychological"?). suspense-mystery (Isn't every mystery suspenseful?). 

I could go on and on, but... whoever created this list needs to go to college and take a course in dramatic theory so they understand the difference between "genres"and "subgenres." As an ex-college professor, I taught such a class, and a student who came up with such an extenuated and repetitive list would surely fail.

Why, this list does not even include valid subgenres like farce, high-comedy, low-comedy, screwball-comedy, neo-screwball-comedy, melodrama, slapstick-comedy, neo-noir (for God's sake!).

I see most of these fanciful and indulgent subgenre keywords just "cluttering up" the keyword lists, with rampant inconsistencies and subjective judgements (whims?) that just invalidate any usefulness as a research tool.  Most could easily be searched by entering the keyword, and then the genre.  You are making research more difficult.

And, for any of these to be valid, you will need to define everyone and then go through the millions of title on IMDb to see where they might be applicable.  Good luck!

May I ask: Why?

Why turn perfectly satisfactory existing keywords redundant while forcing such unwieldy looking and sounding keywords down our throats? A simple keyword like "1980s" is enough to denote that the film is set in, and is in some way representative of, that decade. We don't need an additional word like "timeframe" to know that it denotes a time frame - it is self-explanatory in itself!

Worse thing is, I cannot even delete or correct these timeframe keywords. They are like those sticky posts on a forum.

I see on the keywords tool that IMDB makes reference to a number of accepted drama subgenres, they are:

These are all fine, although I know of other terms that can be used that I may wish to add:

Healing drama (a term closely associated with psychological dramas and romantic fiction, where the characters undergoing psychological healing from trauma across the series or movie)

I'd also like to propose distinctions between a theme and a specific thing that happens within a narrative. So I looked up "friendship" as a keyword, and found lots of examples of settings that have in them, well, friendships (I'm going to use TV as my term of reference): The Walking Dead, ER, Riverdale, The 100 etc. These all have characters in them that become friends across the series. That's fine. But the shows aren't specifically about friendships., and have more relevant plot keywords to primarily describe them.

To contrast, consider Gilmore Girls, or My Brilliant Friend, or Hap and Leonard. These are shows specifically about the friendship between two or sometimes more (a small group of) characters. To distinguish them I would propose a "friendship drama" keyword, of which there are none currently. Would this even be accepted?

I would make the same argument for related concepts too: relationship drama, rural drama (or small town drama), college drama. I'd also propose a "personal drama" or "life drama" for settings that primarily follow a single character and how they develop. Would all of these things be accepted?

The list of subgenres in the guide has apparently been changed recently. Comparison with a version from last week:

Removed:

river-adventure

forest-adventure

superhero-adventure

observational-comedy

sitcom-comedy

sketch-comedy

stand-up-comedy

art-and-entertainment-documentary

dramedy-drama

historical-drama

soap-opera-drama

alternate-history

operetta-musical

cozy-mystery

locked-room-mystery

cricket-sport

e-sport

golf-sport

gymnastics-sport

hockey-sport

horse-sport

hunting-and-fishing-sport

rugby-sport

swimming-sport

tennis-sport

volleyball-sport

all entries with -music

all entries with -news

all entries with -reality-tv

all entries with -talk-show

Edited:

caper-crime (from caper-mystery)

winter-sport (from winter-sports-sport)

Added:

team-action

car-action

island-adventure

live-action-animation

body-swap-comedy

raunchy-comedy

showbiz-comedy

slapstick-comedy

drug-crime

buddy-cop-crime

art-documentary 

entertainment-documentary

environmental-documentary

academia-drama

costume-drama

showbiz-drama

animals-family

kids-family

body-horror

interdimensional-sci-fi

other-sport

racket-sport

Examples and descriptions have also been added.

Please add "pov-documentary" for titles like "9:11: I Was There".  This subgenre was documented "live" from a first-person perspective and often without narration.  Other subgenres re-document mostly from a third-person perspective with lots of narration.

The list of subgenres has been changed again. There are now two lists, one for movies and one for series.

https://help.imdb.com/article/contribution/titles/keywords/GXQ22G5Y72TH8MJ5#subgenres

The movie list so far seems to be the same as the previous list.

The series list omits many of the entries, including everything in action, adventure, musical, sport, thriller and war.

Entries have been added in game-show, reality-tv and talk-show.

These have been added to the series list:

sketch-comedy

sitcom-comedy

observational-comedy

alternate-history

I am trying to Iive with the new subgenres, although most still seem very subjective and superfluous.  The "understanding" of their definitions and distinctions do not seem universal, but only specific and exacting to one or a few particular contributors.

They open up the floodgates to a deluge of additional keywords, particularly to older titles that often seem to be neglected in keyword discussions.  

I still adamately believe that:

One, subgenres should not just combine two or more genres;

and,

Two, regarding tv series, subgenres should be listed ONLY at the series level, unless, of course, if it is an anthology series, when the keyword should be subgenre-episode.

Besides these two points, I, personally, plan to avoid auditing/editing these subjective subgenre keywords for most (any? all?) titles.  I'll leave that to others.

Similarly, I have not added, corrected nor deleted any "timeframe" keywords because I have found so many mistakes, particularly those that confuse the "setting" content of a title with its release date year.  I'll leave those to the rest of you, too.

The "horde" of subjective subgenre-keywords wait on the mountaintop, ready to invade and inundate the keyword database.  There are millions and millions that need to be added.  Go for it!

In my opinion, the keyword "classical-western," which is listed on the "accepted" list of subgenre keywords, should instead be "classic-western." The latter term is much more commonly used -- about ten times more often according to Google searches. 

On the same note, it seems that the "classical-western" keyword is also being over-applied and/or is ill-defined. IMDb defines this subgenre keyword as "A western produced during the golden age of the genre, subsequently defining the genre." When exactly was that golden age? This keyword is currently applied to titles released from 1935 to 2017, and everywhere in between. That's a pretty lengthy golden age.

https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=classical-western&ref_=fn_kw_kw_2&sort=release_date,asc&mode=detail&page=1