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424 Points
What to Do When a Major New Blu-ray Release Falsifies IMDb Cast Lists and Staff Won't Accept the Corrections?
OK, here is my latest problem, one that many advanced IMDb contributors like myself have doubtless experienced.
I've corrected hundreds of release dates for IMDb by researching on various newspaper archives. IMDb almost always accepts these corrections, presumably because I link to irrefutable evidence on newspapers.com or other sites. However, it's more difficult when I'm trying to make changes to cast lists, because cast lists aren't typically put up on the internet, where they can be linked to. Yet many of the cast lists/screen credits on the IMDb are filled with errors, due to sloppy or uninformed entries by IMDb users in the past (whose erroneous data was apparently back in the day accepted by IMDb staff without requiring proof from the user), so I try to correct them. Now, I have a library of 2500+ DVDs and Blu-rays, chock full of special features, commentaries, etc. Whenever I can, I try to update or correct flawed IMDb entries based on my viewing of the movies, when I *know* I have an authentic edition of the film with the original screen credits. Yet often IMDb staff will not accept my corrections. The comment I get is "Unable to Verify" or the like. Now, it's very hard for me to prove to IMDb staff that my information is accurate when I have the actual credits screen of the film in front of me, and the IMDb staff doesn't. So how do I go about convincing an IMDb staffer that I'm not lying, that I in fact am reading the original screen credits off a Blu-ray or DVD produced by top historical film scholars? I'll give my latest example:
This Fall (2023) Flicker Alley released Laurel and Hardy: Year One, a Blu-ray collection of 15 Laurel and Hardy shorts, fully restored, with the original screen credits, and detailed commentaries on each film. I've been watching these one by one, and, naturally enough, trying to enter corrections each night as I watch a new film. The corrections are sometimes complex and laborious, and last night I spent over an hour working out a corrected cast list for "45 Minutes from Hollywood", and had the changes rejected by someone at IMDb who does not have the Blu-ray set, has never seen the original screen credits, and has no idea whether or not the current credits on the IMDb are accurate. Here is what I wrote under each of the "justification" blanks for the reordering. (The "once again" refers to a previous rejection of my corrections based on my viewing of this set.)
"Once again, I explain that I have the new (Fall 2023) deluxe Blu-ray edition of Laurel and Hardy: Year One (put out by Flicker Alley and Blackhawk films), which contains a top-level restoration, including all missing footage, the original screen credits, and commentary by silent film expert Randy Skretvedt on every minute of every film in the collection, including this one. I have the film's original 1926 opening credits on freeze-frame as I type this, and my information is 100% accurate, so I hope I won't be overruled (yet again) by someone at IMDb who has never seen the film at all and certainly doesn't have the up-to-date information I possess. The screen credits currently on IMDb for this film are wrong in several ways. First, they are out of order; second, they show some actors who don't have screen credit, and omit other actors who do. I will try to correct this. The screen credits on the restored print of the film, dating from 1926, are as follows: 1- Glenn Tryon, and on the next screen, after the word "With", 2- Oliver Hardy, 3- Edna Murphy, 4- Rube Clifford, 5- Charlotte Mineau, 6- Stan Laurel. Sally O'Neil and Jerry Mandy are NOT in the on-screen credits, and should be moved down into the lower section of the IMDb credits, whereas Stan Laurel needs to be moved up into the upper section, and the new order in the top section should be: Tryon, Glenn - 1; Hardy, Oliver - 2; Murphy, Edna - 3; Clifford, Jack Rube - 4; Mineau, Charlotte - 5; and Laurel, Stan - 6."
Along with the above justification, I entered the new ordering numbers under each of the appropriate names, using the usual form provided for cast list corrections.
All of this, which took me a long time to work out, and type up, has been rejected. So, how do I go about proving to IMDb staff what I *know* (not just think, but *know*) to be true? Is there some way of taking a picture of a Blu-ray credits screen? How can I do that? Will my computer's DVD player read a Blu-ray? I doubt it. And if I can't put the Blu-ray in my computer, how am I going to capture an image of the screen credits? And even if I could capture it, how would I get it to IMDb? I've offered in the past to send images as pdfs attached to emails, or to upload pdfs from my computer directly to IMDb, but IMDb tells me that I can't upload anything from my computer, but only from a web site. But how can I get an image from a brand-new 2023 Blu-ray onto a web site, so that I can link to it?
Can someone at IMDb walk me through the technical steps for taking images off a DVD or Blu-ray and conveying images taken from DVDs and Blu-rays and getting them to IMDb? If it could be explained here, in this forum, it would help not only me, but dozens of other contributors who must be experiencing similar problems.
If there is a way I can assure that my corrections will be accepted, I would like to know it, because it is frustrating to be in the position I'm in. I spend over a thousand hours per year not just watching films but studying them, listening to commentaries about them by professors of film studies and film historians, reading books about them, etc. I also possess a doctorate in history and know how to do detailed research and present evidence, and I'm an extremely meticulous scholar. I don't mind putting in hours of work free of charge to increase the accuracy of IMDb, but I need to know that if I put in the hours, I won't be continually overruled by people who don't have a vast collection of movies like mine, and who aren't taking the time to check my claims by actually playing 15 seconds of screen credits from the movies I'm talking about and viewing the screen credits themselves. If IMDb wants to present truly accurate information about the movies, it has to provide channels through which serious film scholars can correct the hasty and inaccurate submissions of much less careful contributors. Any help in this area would be appreciated not only by me, but by others with a similar passion for accurate film scholarship.





Ozzy
Employee
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2.6K Messages
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27K Points
2 years ago
Hi @old_film_lover,
Thank you for your problem report.
For cast corrections, you will need to provide evidence to help us verify your submissions. You can follow instructions on our help page for providing evidence to assist our processing team approve these corrections. As you'll see in the instructions, when you select the tick box to provide an explanation with your submission in the Contribution Form, you will be given the option to upload evidence via a hyperlink. Here you can attach images or screenshots of the on-screen credits to support your submissions. In this particular case, we suggest you take photos of the on-screen credits and upload them via the aforementioned method to help us verify your corrections.
I hope this helps!
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