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: 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: 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: 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.

Film: Film List

2007-08-08T01:50:50.0004Z

I wanted list the movies to AFI's Top 100 for the last 100 years. However, I need an extension to the Film Collection type. Ideally, Film List would extend Film Collection as an enumerated collection of films with a specific order. I need to state #1 is Citizen Kane for example.

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

2007-08-05T01:46:33.0007Z

Definitely for initial capture...That's what most sites that catalog movies seem to prefer.

Then later on we introduce an editions property maybe, with relevant formats for how it is viewable...35 mm film, digital (whatever formats we ever end up using, seems up in the air as you have mentioned), DVD, laserdisk, 8 mm. Then we'd get into viewing ratios :)

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

2007-08-04T02:07:16.0007Z

I used it in a demo just yesterday. I guess we would have to be clear about when the film format is used -- for filming? For initial feature presentation? Also, it seems like there are a bunch of digital standards with equivalent semantics. I wonder if there is a larger blanket term that includes both video and film?

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

2007-08-04T01:34:42.0004Z

I see it exists, but is not currently linked to within film...Is it meant to be a co-type to be applied when desired?

Film: A new Film property?

2007-08-04T01:19:16.0007Z

The Alan Smithee case is why I left the "note" field. If there are other consistent variables aside from cut ('director's cut', 'special edition') and film release region ('Russia', 'Asia'), then we can add that.

One I think might be appropriate is 'release date', which is distinct from the 'initial release date' that's directly on film.

Film: A new Film property?

2007-08-04T00:57:22.0007Z

Yes, a classic example of alternate running time versions is the Russian film War & Peace having different running times

Dune with it's many versions on film, tv, with/without David Lynch (Alan Smithee for the unauthorized re-edits).

Film: A new Film property?

2007-08-04T00:56:43.0007Z

I just changed the "film cut" CVT. Tell me what you think. Also -- the region property points to location, not a co-type.

Film: A new Film property?

2007-08-04T00:52:28.0016Z

The "film cut" CVT could be expanded. The note was a placeholder for things like "director's cut" or "special edition", which probably could be real topics. An additional property could optionally show the country or region (suggesting a new type 'film region' which could overlay any location.)

Does this sound reasonable?

Film: A new Film property?

2007-08-04T00:52:28.0007Z

Film: A new Film property?

2007-08-03T20:23:25.0007Z

Hmmm...Runtime has the note property, so I suppose you could add date and country for specific runtimes.

Film: A new Film property?

2007-08-03T19:39:35.0004Z

We need something like the Book Editions property for the variations in releases that can occur when movies have different running times for the various countries (quite common in the 30's through the 70's for foreign made films when they come to America they get edited down in running time) or when a movie is re-released later on with additional scenes and edits like "Close Encounters of the Third Time."

Film: Dub Actor

2007-07-27T22:47:45.0007Z

I just added a type (a CVT/mediator) that represents dubbing performances by actors for the non-original language. It appears as a property on Film now. You can enter the actor, the character and the language used.

http://www.freebase.com/view/schema?id=%2Ffilm%2Fdubbing_performance

http://www.freebase.com/view/schema?id=%2Ffilm%2Ffilm

Film: Dub Actor

2007-07-24T19:08:26.0011Z

So I just noticed a Japanese name in the cast for a Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western film which puzzled me until I realized he was used to dub Clint's parts for the Japanese theatrical releases. So I have added the "Seiyu" term to 'Special Performance Type' as the vocals-only performance in Japan of Anime and dubbing of foreign titles is specialized art form unique to Japan. But for dubbing maybe the artists should be listed in its own unique property distinct from Film Performance...Dubbed by? With language sub-property as well.