382 Messages
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8.7K Points
Movie Connections: Separate Category for "Making-Of" documentaries, etc.
Anyone who has used IMDb for a long time probably knows that the largest category in the Movie Connections page is almost always the "referenced in" section. It would be helpful to break that category up into smaller categories if possible.
One way to do this would be to give making-of/history/special feature documentaries their own separate category. This way they could be easily found amongst all the "referenced in dialogue" (for fiction films) entries and briefly-mentioned-in-talk-show-segment incidents.
In the past, I posted a similar idea - separating fiction from nonfiction in the "referenced in" category. The difference here is that this idea would single out works that are specifically about the title in question, as opposed to talk-shows, podcasts, film history documentaries and best-of lists that discuss a great number of movies.
Examples (making-of documentaries):
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102015/ - Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (Apocalypse Now)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115634/ - The Battle Over Citizen Kane (Citizen Kane)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4967876/ - The Making of The Empire Strikes Back (The Empire Strikes Back)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32743685/ - Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Story (Jaws)
The category could also be extended to documentaries that cover a finite number of interconnected films (e.g. a trilogy).
Examples:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395656/ - Indiana Jones: Making the Trilogy
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416716/ - Empire of Dreams: The Story of the 'Star Wars' Trilogy
Also included could be documentaries that are more about critical interpretation than behind-the-scenes history, provided that the topic of the documentary is specific enough to the film being discussed.
Example:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085910/ - Room 237 (The Shining)
Examples to not be included in this category:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6587094/ - Five Came Back (broadly film-related but not tied to any specific title)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090523/ - Siskel & Ebert (discusses a multitude of films)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13943780/ - I Am Alfred Hitchcock (mostly biographical)
The way the system is currently set up, probably all of the examples I mentioned already have connections to each other on the connections page. The trouble is that the category is so crowded that it makes them hard to single out. Implementing this idea would put all such connections in a single location and thus make them much easier to find.





majfoalbkeopaza
382 Messages
•
8.7K Points
20 hours ago
Alternatively, the referenced-in category could be divided into something like this:
The primary problem with that subdivision would be that there tends to be a substantial overlap between the first two categories (history and criticism). That's why I thought it might be more useful to group them like so:
(edited)
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