Film

Film: Movie Subtitles

2008-08-27T19:07:48.0000Z

Hi Ian,

Don't be discouraged. What you are doing is very valuable. Many people speculate about U.S. copyright law though they are not experts.

I'm not an expert either, but I work in the area of subtitles and film captions, specifically for accessibity for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in the U.S. - 30 million people. (About as many people as the entire population of Canada!)

Regarding your efforts and copyright law, one of the main issues is whether you are aiming to be seeking any profit from your efforts. If you are just seeking to build up an index of film characters and quotes, you are probably within the Fair Use doctrine, and can carry on, as long as you indicate appropriate copyright notices on the material you post.

In this period of global cross-cultural communication, your work has many possible uses which would certainly fall within the Fair Use doctrine of copyright law, including making available information needed for making film/video accessible to Deaf in U.S., Deaf in non-English speaking cultures, and non-English language access to films/videos not otherwise subtitled or dubbed.

I just heard an interview with David Huynh, new guy at FreeBase.com, and it sure sounds like he is making interaces to browse and view specific data details exactly along the lines you mention.

You might check out some sites like:

mysubtitles.org

dotsub.com

good luck,

Greg
owner
DeafAccessFilms.com

Film actor: IMDB entry problems

2008-08-18T23:09:41.0018Z

hello,

tried to add the Film actor to the following entry:

http://www.freebase.com/view/en/chris_hemsworth

i am asked, is i thought, to enter just the number of the imdb URL. but after a few refresh, i found out that the Weblink which was created was missing the NM before the number:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1165110/

when i tried to edit the weblink, i was unable to.

when i deleted it, i was hoping the IMDB open will re-appear - it didnt.

pls fix it, and add an explation as to what this filed needs to recieve.

Thanks,

Doron.

Film: Movie Subtitles

2008-07-07T23:37:16.0012Z

Hi Ian --

Subtitles would be covered by copyright protection, so you would only be allowed to add them from films from the public domain or with an open license (such as CC-BY).

Copyright law, however, does allow small fragments from copyrighted works to be cited. I don't know what the limits are, but I imagine that many short subtitle snippets would be allowed per movie, perhaps from key scenes.

Also, aside from the contents of the subtitles themselves, what kind of metadata would you imagine having for subtitles? Freebase could store that information without restrictions.

R

Film: Movie Subtitles

2008-07-07T23:35:30.0000Z

It's great that you are finding a good use of our service! Thanks!

Our goal is to provide linkages between sets of data, not really to be a repository for data in of itself...

Thus we provide an excerpt of the associated wikipedia article as a blurb (but not recreate the entire article, that's what the linkages (and keys) back to Wikipedia are for. We allow for weblinks to sites that have specific and useful information about the topic but is of a restrictive licensed nature (IMDb for example).

Our database is not set up for large amounts of text. We encourage the use of text for specific notation about a specific property but not for than about almost a thousand characters.

Secondly, legality.

Your subtitles are a form of film script and would most likely be considered as property of the creators/owner of the film. At best they would be a grey area of legality to be made available in text form outside of the film, video tape or disc.

If it was a film you wrote and owned outright, and was published with an CC license, the providing the subtitles externally from the film would most likely be legal in that case ;)

What you could do is create your own type in your own private domain (default one or a more specifically named 'Film Subtitles' domain). The type could designed to contain what subtitles in what editions of the film (Theatrical Release/DVD/TV Broadcast) in what languages...Check out how the Film Regional Release Date is designed, though it may need not be a Compound Value Type.

http://www.freebase.com/tools/schema/film/film_regional_release_date

Film: Movie Subtitles

2008-07-07T07:50:45.0012Z

Hi all,

I have been using Freebase for a little while now to index my movie collection (where film information exist in Freebase) and, eventually, upload film information back to Freebase. I have subtitles for the majority of my films and think they would make a valuable addition to the Freebase Film schema (imagine querying for who said a particular line and in which films).

How would I go about adding a Subtitles schema to Freebase and linking it to the Films/TV schema?

Alternatively, if this schema already exists, could somebody point me at it? I searched but couldn't find it.

Cheers,

Ian

Film actor: Related question

2008-07-05T16:43:20.0000Z

I've been trying to figure out how I'd go about this, and I have looked at the TV and Broadcast domains but I'm completely confused and have absolutely no idea how to start. But thank you for the reply!

Film actor: Related question

2008-07-05T09:08:53.0000Z

There is no existing type for Performance as a character in a radio broadcast as of yet.

Radio (at this time) is a very rudimentary domain that holds great promise for those wishing to model from its existing skeletal structure. There are great examples in the current TV and Film domains to use as inpiration or templates for new types to capture episodes, performances, characters, personal appearances etc.

You can always consider drafting up your own Radio Performance, Radio Performer, Radio Episode, Radio Show/Series, etc.

Film actor: Related question

2008-07-05T02:16:25.0005Z

What type should I use for a radio actor? i.e. someone who voices a part in a radio drama?

Film: Add Box Office property to the Film type?

2008-07-03T08:32:15.0012Z

Yeah, that makes sense. So, Worldwide Box Office, and Local Box Office.

Film: Add Box Office property to the Film type?

2008-06-30T14:26:31.0012Z

How about adding box office for the country of ORIGIN and world wide? For example, a german movie doesn't often even get to US theatres, their box office would therefor not be very interesting while the german would...

Film: Extra feature for "Performances"?

2008-06-30T14:23:54.0012Z

Yes, I know I can specify the occupation there. But this doesn't completely answer my idea.

1. It would be nice to have the occupation on the moviesite too, next to the characters name as sometimes this is needed for knowing who this character is. Like finding out that Star X played the doc in the movie as "Mr Y" might not help you that easy.

2.t would be useful to view any titles of the person in a seperat column. Else the Characters ar created as "Dr. Jed Hill" instead of "Jed Hill" with "Dr." in another viewed column.

Filming location: Set In vs. Where Filmed

2008-06-07T00:04:25.0007Z

Adding the type Work of Fiction to a film will get you the "settings" property.

Filming location: Set In vs. Where Filmed

2008-06-06T22:21:32.0007Z

This could be in the notes property (see below).

Filming location: I think adding a notes property for this...What say you?

2008-06-06T22:20:53.0005Z

It would allow a brief description of scenes filmed there or activities/history of note. Like say: Hurricane Gordo forced a 6 months delay while sets were rebuilt; Sets buried in desert at end of production; Library scenes filmed on the campus. etc.

Film: Extra feature for "Performances"?

2008-06-05T16:29:19.0000Z

Johann, characters definitely do have occupations and you can certainly fill them out. There’s just a limit to how much information about the character is visible from the actor or film, especially since the same character may be played by multiple actors and appear in multiple works of fiction across multiple media. Just fill out the character’s name from the performance, then go visit it and flesh it out with occupation, gender, place of birth, and anything else you want to add.

Film: Extra feature for "Performances"?

2008-06-05T13:52:58.0005Z

I think it would be useful to have the possibility to not only be able to write the actor and its character, but also it's charakters occupation. See http://freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f80000000006dce3e for an example:

One shouldn't remove the "attorney" or "nurse", as it is necessary (or at least helpful) information tofind the character in the movie - but itwould be nicer to only have the name for the role's site.

Sorry for being so unclear, I'm not good at english... let me try once more:

If I click on the character of Alex Baldwin this will lead me to the article "Dr. Jed Hill", better would be do have the doctor (or attorney for others) in an extra box and the link therefor linking to "Jed Hill" (or "Dennis Riley" instead of "Attorney Dennis Riley" - "Attorney" would then be linked to the occupation "Attorney)

I hope at least someone could follow me ;-)

Film: Exporting

2008-06-02T22:21:17.0000Z

Here's a starter query to get all the film titles currently in the system:

[
{
    "limit" : 40000,
    "name" : null,
    "type" : "/film/film"
}
]

Film: Exporting

2008-06-02T19:39:39.0007Z

We currently don't support exporting a large set of data (approximately around a 1000) via the export to csv feature. You either must use our data dump as mikelove discovered above, or write your own MQL query.

You can see what our filter view page uses by hitting F8 key to get the debug bar and clicking on the 'View transaction log' (its the client MQL query event you want).

You can use that as a starting point (hint, modify the limit or eliminate it entirely).

Film: Exporting

2008-06-02T02:45:10.0000Z

so it's been about a month now - still no solution to the export problem?

Film: Add Box Office property to the Film type?

2008-05-21T04:34:50.0007Z

I think the box office is clearer than total gross earnings, because the latter could include DVD sales, rentals, TV rights, merchandising, etc. For example, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End domestically made almost as much in DVD sales as with ticket sales: $280 M compared to $310 M.

I guess the world box office would be good, or maybe US as it's the 40% of the world movie market, rest of the world, and world (US + rest of the world). I haven't yet come across a website that breaks it down further that that.

>I would like to have a date for the earnings total so a better more accurate comparison of over a century of grosses can be done.

Do you mean you would like to have the data adjusted for inflation?

Film: Add Box Office property to the Film type?

2008-05-21T01:19:44.0000Z

I assume total gross earnings would be appropriate? I guess it could be similar to the estimated budget. I would like to have a date for the earnings total so a better more accurate comparison of over a century of grosses can be done.

Or is it that more detail is desired?

US-centric: US Domestic & Foreign
By Region: Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Africa, Oceano-Pacific, Antartica
Other?

Film: Add Box Office property to the Film type?

2008-05-18T03:21:20.0012Z

Could someone add the Box Office or Earnings property to the Film type? http://www.worldwideboxoffice.com/ can be used to get this data for major films.

Film rating: Minimum ACCOMPANIED age in theatres?

2008-05-16T12:27:26.0007Z

I don't know if this applies to other countries aswell, but it might...

It's something very special indeed, and it applies only to "FSK 12": movies that where rated "FSK 12" can get "PG" as addition. Children 6+ can then go to cinema with their parents.

This is explained inthe description of "FSK 12", but would be good to see next to "mimimum unaccompanied age"...

Film rating: Minimum ACCOMPANIED age in theatres?

2008-05-15T23:20:16.0007Z

Seems to be a rarity, I think Canada has a strange less than for adult-accompanied age restrictions

See this site for some current rating info worldwide

Film rating: Minimum ACCOMPANIED age in theatres?

2008-05-15T23:07:20.0007Z

Hi Johann -- do you know if this is more universal than just Germany? It would be useful to understand what kinds of variants there might be before extending the model.

Film rating: Minimum ACCOMPANIED age in theatres?

2008-05-15T11:44:19.0005Z

It might make sense to have the possibility for an accompanied age aswell:

e.g. in Germany children aged 6+ are allowed to go to 12+ movies in cinema with their parents, though 5 year olds don't

Film: Exporting

2008-05-08T07:18:29.0015Z

I take it back, these have guids instead of compound values.

Film: Exporting

2008-05-08T06:10:51.0040Z

I forgot about data dumps. http://download.freebase.com/datadumps/2008-03-28/browse/film/

Personal film appearance: As it is, this compound value type seems of little importance

2008-05-07T01:53:05.0007Z

Neil Patrick Harris plays himself in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. We could model that as him playing a fictional character named Neil Patrick Harris, who is in turn based on the actor… but “As Himself” is a well-established convention.

On the other hand, when Neil Patrick Harris is on The Tonight Show, he is making a personal appearance, not playing himself.

Personal film appearance: As it is, this compound value type seems of little importance

2008-05-07T00:18:56.0007Z

I wonder if these roles can't just be part of film performance, already it has Himself/Herself (which I am not sure if there is a good distinction between itself and the default Personal Appearance role type).

Personal film appearance: As it is, this compound value type seems of little importance

2008-05-06T23:37:20.0007Z

That is weird. I can't remember our rationale, except that it probably involved the thought that "film appearances" is either too rare a property to put on "person" or would be too confusing, and that we hadn't thought of a good co-type. The personal TV appearance type probably has a similar problem. Suggestions for resolving this would be welcome.

Personal film appearance: As it is, this compound value type seems of little importance

2008-05-06T23:17:22.0005Z

As currently designed, a Personal Film appearence doesn't appear on the person topic and only appears on the film topic (Al Gore for An Inconvenient Truth is a classic example, the only film appearance currently is for a Futurama show).

I've even at times forgotten its there when entering data (THX-1138 documentary springs to mind as a recent example I need to now correct all the acting performances to personal appearances).

Film: Exporting

2008-05-05T19:29:35.0000Z

That's a bug, all right. It's being tracked internally. I'm not award of any workarounds, short of using the API.

Film: Exporting

2008-05-02T05:03:43.0012Z

I tried to export all /film/film as a csv and got only 857 rows of data. Advice?

Film: Multiple initial release dates - is this a bug?

2008-03-17T17:23:51.0007Z

Thanks Bryan!

Film: Multiple initial release dates - is this a bug?

2008-03-17T15:03:46.0007Z

It's not expected; I'll try to track down who did the update and let them know.

Film: Film production companies, distributors and other companies

2008-03-17T05:08:52.0007Z

I added these types to the production site and I reciprocated the relationships from the company types.

Film: Multiple initial release dates - is this a bug?

2008-03-17T01:33:45.0007Z

It doesn't make a lot of sense to me that the release dates would be added instead of updated. Is this expected behaviour?

Film: Multiple initial release dates - is this a bug?

2008-03-16T04:11:38.0007Z

Hmm, looks like inital release date is not restricted to one value, and if you look at the history, it looks like mw_template_bot is adding the date instead of updating.

Another good question is, what led you to check out the topic about the movie Gridlock'd!!!

Film: Multiple initial release dates - is this a bug?

2008-03-15T22:50:42.0005Z

Some /film/film instances have multiple values under "initial_release_date" property.

An example is Gridlock'd [ http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000086440a ]

Usually there is a full ISO format date (e.g. 1997-01-01] and a year-only date (e.g. 1997).

Is this a bug? The dates do not appear to be tied to a release in a particular country or anything like that.

Film: Multiple initial release dates?

2008-03-15T22:48:15.0012Z

Some /film/film instances have multiple values for initial_release_date property.

Example is:

Gridlock'd [ http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000086440a ]

Is this a bug? The dates do not seem tied to e.g. a release in a particular country, and generally I have noticed that there is a full ISO date and a year-only date value.

Film: Film production companies, distributors and other companies

2008-03-12T00:06:23.0007Z

Nice. I wonder if it would make sense to create the reverse properties for the production companies, film companies, and film distributors. The reverse on production companies in particular seems like it would be useful; the others perhaps somewhat less so.

Film: Film production companies, distributors and other companies

2008-03-11T22:56:38.0005Z

I added three properties to type Film on Sandbox with several supporting types that cover:

1. Production companies -- this is a simple relationship between type Film and type Production Company.

2. Distributors -- This connects type film to type Film Distributor through a Compound Relationship Type (CRT) called Film-Film distributor relationship which includes properties for the year of distribution, the film cut type (director's, special edition) and the medium of distribution (Theatrical, VHS, DVD).

3. Other film companies -- This connects film to companies other than production companies and distrubutors (which are normally accorded a special status, so therefore singled out.) Type Film here connects to "Film Company" via a CRT called "Film-Film company relationship" which includes properties for the role or service provided by that company and which film cut type it contributed to.

Note here that I'm using a couple of new naming conventions. First, I'm suggesting the use of "CRT" for Compound Relationship Type instead of CVT or Compound value Type. This distinction will become increasingly important in the upcoming months as we bake a deeper distinction between these patterns into MQL.

Second, I've named these CRTs with a new convention that describes it as a relationship between two types. For example, "Film-Film company relationship" connects the types Film and Film company.

Here's a film topic example that includes all three ne properties filled out:

http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f80000000000665b4

You'll have to scroll down to the bottom of the Film section.

Please let me know what you think.

Film rating: Minimum unaccompanied age?

2008-03-07T22:34:03.0005Z

A "minimum accompanied age" property seems useful here, to allow for comparison between the ratings of different countries and to enable searches like "all films restricted to 13-year-olds and older in any country".

Film: Created a new type (at my significant other's bequest) for Costume Design

2007-09-25T22:31:59.0012Z

Costume Design as a trade is quite distinct from Theatrical Costume Design in areas of responsibility (gentle hint to those responsible for the Theater domain)

All to find a niche for the inestimable Edith Head.

Film: When an actor plays himself...interesting edge case

2007-08-24T23:04:22.0000Z

Actually we are looking at designs for the topic view that will hopefully make it clearer which property comes from which schema. Won't solve all the problems you mention here, but should help.

Film: When an actor plays himself...interesting edge case

2007-08-24T01:51:12.0012Z

When an actor plays himself in a film, the performance entry triggers the actor topic to be co-typed as:
- Film character
- Fictional character
- Film actor
- Person
OK, a little strange, but understandably so.

But the explosion of parallel and confusing properties that then appears on the actor's page becomes rather difficult to navigate:
- Gender, Place of Birth, Parents, Children, Siblings, Quotations, all appear twice (Person, Fictional Character)
- Married To (Fictional Character) vs. Spouse(s) (Person)
- Profession (Person) vs. Occupation (Fictional Character)
- Employment History (Person) vs. Employers (Fictional Character)

What amuses me is that the Person type has an Education property missing from Fictional Character, while Fictional Character has Powers or Abilities that we didn't give to Person. There are additional properties unique to each type.

This is an extreme case, but one problem is that it's hard to figure out which property belong to which type. Perhaps the actor himself is married with kids but plays a single version of himself on screen. And if he happens to have a brilliant line in the film (Quotation property), credit should be given to the writer as well. Perhaps a UI feature to indiate/group properties by type?

Another problem is duplicate properties (that belong to the same universe) that result from co-typing. But I guess the solution to that is at the schema level rather than any UI feature.

Film: Film List

2007-08-13T04:08:55.0000Z

Great. It would be nice to view the numbering along with the value since a movie's ranking is of value.

Film: So when is film format going to be made available for films?

2007-08-13T01:03:52.0000Z

I added a property for film format. Have fun!

Film: Film List

2007-08-12T16:12:08.0000Z

Ordered lists are possible, although the freebase UI currently doesn't show the number. See this help topic:

http://www.freebase.com/view/helptopic?id=%239202a8c04000641f8000000003c1b1cc

Once you set the ordering, they will be ordered by default in any application that uses the collections.