plur62's profile

322 Messages

 • 

6.6K Points

Thursday, January 18th, 2024

Closed

Solved

Year of invention (title types) question

According to the screenshot below, IMDb does not accept titles for these categories before the years indicated, but currently there are:

-59 shorts before 1888

-327 video titles before 1976

-137 podcast series before 2004

-6,537 podcast episodes before 2004

and several pre-1927 TV titles

Are short films the same as the "Movie" category or do different rules apply to them?

Can this be fixed at once or should we go through the contribution process? @Col_Needham

Thanks.

Oldest First
Selected Oldest First

Champion

 • 

7.8K Messages

 • 

280.6K Points

2 years ago

Plur: There are a variety of issues here. Some of these titles are misclassified, but others are allowed in by exceptions.

Most of the pre-1888 shorts (and shorts fall within the category of Movies) are series of photographs depicting persons or animals in movement, created by Eadweard Muybridge. I don't know exactly whether it is correct to describe them as short films, but Muybridge's work is considered, at least, an important precursor to motion pictures. So I assume they're allowed into IMDb by special exception.

Some of the pre-1976 videos (although certainly not all) are actually TV commercials, such as Tootsie Pop: How Many Licks (1969) (V) and Life Cereal: Three Brothers (1972) (V). The IMDb title formatting guide does say that commercials should be submitted as follows:

Commercials 
Brand: Title of advert if known (year) (V) i.e. Chanel N°5: The One That I Want (2014) (V)
Please submit as Made for Video
Please add the keywords: commercial, the brand i.e. chanel-no.-5

I would suggest that entering TV commercials as made-for-video titles was probably done as a workaround because it would have been difficult to create an entirely new title type at the time.

The contributors who submitted pre-1976 TV commercials as made-for-video titles did so correctly, in accordance with IMDb policy. The ban on pre-1976 video titles is actually phrased a ban on pre-1976 VHS titles, as there was no titles made for release direct to VHS videocassettes before the format was introduced to the public. 

My recommendation: If you see a number of titles which have been definitely misclassified by title type, or assigned to a clearly incorrect year, please post a list of some of them here (say, 10 to 20 in one post), and comment on whether the title should be classified under a different type, assigned to a different year, or deleted altogether because it could not possibly have existed. 

I hope this helps. 

(edited)

322 Messages

 • 

6.6K Points

@gromit82​ thanks for the reply.

Yes, I know everything can't be perfect, but we're trying to make IMDb as credible as possible, right? :)

As for the titles that are marked as Video, and were made before 1976, wouldn't it be most appropriate for them to be in the "Short" or "TV Short" category, if we are talking about TV commercials?

You can see that not all commercials are in the Video category, when you select the keyword "Commercial" and then "Short", "TV Short", "Music Video", we get over 800 commercials, the most popular ones even feature actresses like Emma Stone, Natalie Portman or Ana de Armas, but nothing is marked as "Video". So there are no strict rules.

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=short,tv_short,music_video&sort=moviemeter,asc&keywords=Commercial

Not to mention that in the category of feature films (when Movie - Exclude Documentary - Exclude Short is selected in Advanced Search), there are always more than 500 short films, titles that last less than 45 minutes.

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=feature&genres=!documentary,!short&runtime=,44

It seems to me that anyone who sets out to fix this is doing a never-ending job.

(edited)