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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Film/TV image reference site with tagging and great search

Tom Dowler

Tom Dowler

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The last thing I need right now is another project to take on, but I got thinking.

Recently I was trying to find some some inspiration / reference images for a particular scene I needed to shoot - a backyard at night, with people sitting around a table. I wanted to see some examples of a similar scene in film, TV, advertising, editorial, etc, then share some with the director for discussion.

And it was surprisingly hard. There are some great sites out there with frame grabs from well known films, but you have to know what you're looking for. Like, if I know I want to see the pool party scene from Boogie Nights, great, I can go find reference images. But if I've never seen Boogie Nights and just know that I need to shoot a pool party scene, it might never occur to me to look up frames from Boogie Nights.

So what I think would be awesome - (**assuming it doesn't already exist - if it does, then I'd love to know about it**) - is a site that hosts still frames from a bunch of different sources, and has extensive and well-thought out meta-data. Not just keywords, but also binary/multichoice things like INT/EXT, DAY/NIGHT, so that I can then search and say "only show me images that are nighttime exteriors" and then also add in keywords like "backyard" "friends" "table" to find the images I want.

If anyone else thinks this is a worthwhile idea, I'd love to chat. The basic ingredients to make it reality would be someone who could program the backend, and then many people who could feed in the images and metadata. It could even pull from existing sources of images, as long as the metadata was added on top.

Thoughts?
 
Terry VerHaar said:
Copyright issues?
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Covered by fair use if there's an element of education or criticism.

There are other sites that already have the images - like Film Grab that Homer mentioned - but none with the kind of metadata and search I'm talking about. So I don't think copyright is an issue here.
 
It is absolutely a great idea. I forget the term, but it can be one of those projects where anyone can contribute. The problem is quality control - you don't want a bunch of imbeciles who think they know what they're doing adding inaccurate tags and uploading crappy screen grabs. I'd say it should be invitation-only. Or something like that.

Frinkiac is an interesting model, as it combines transcripts with screengrabs:

https://frinkiac.com/

It does not include script notes like EXT or NIGHT, but it's a step in the right direction.
 
I've actually written platforms very similar to this for advertising production companies in the past - creative treatments are such a big part of their process for winning jobs, so having a database of searchable imagery (film screencaps, fashion images, etc) is super valuable. They're all internal-only though as each company's image library is part of their secret sauce.

Probably the biggest hurdle is the initial setup/tagging of imagery, that's a lot of data entry work for someone.... after there's a large enough base maintaining it isn't so bad, but it was hell for some poor intern for a few weeks in most cases.
 
Well if there would be such a site, and everybody is using the same references, a lot of films would look kinda exactly the same. I watched a 1 or more films per day for 15 years straight, before I was even shooting anything, and now it has become a library skillset in my mind which I use on projects for gathering references or giving suggestions to Directors for a specific look. I have friends calling me, I am looking for a shot like @#{[@#, and I go, like oh yeah, you might want to check out this and this movie. In return they hire me for projects where they need help. So I might even loose jobs if such a site would exist.
 
Joe Cage said:
Well if there would be such a site, and everybody is using the same references, a lot of films would look kinda exactly the same.
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I disagree. My hope is that for any given type of scene you searched for, there would be a bunch of very different looking examples that would spur the imagination and lead to greater diversity.


Joe Cage said:
So I might even loose jobs if such a site would exist.
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Well no-one wants to put you out of a job, but I think you're probably underselling yourself if you think your only worth is your encyclopedic knowledge and not also your taste, talent and skill.
 
So follow up question. Would anyone be up for putting something like this together, as a group effort - building the platform, generating the content and the metadata...?
 
I tried to do something similar for myself in adobe bridge and found that it was uninitiative to accurately tag everything using the controls given.

However, I am absolutey interested in working with a group of people to figure this out! Especially if we can make this publicly available!

I can offer the collection of tags that I build to get the database started!

P.S. It would be great if we could also attach certain pieces of informational publicity to each film! Like an ASC article or similar professional publications. The more info the better!
 
Marcus Friedlander said:
P.S. It would be great if we could also attach certain pieces of informational publicity to each film! Like an ASC article or similar professional publications. The more info the better!
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Like lighting diagrams if they're available...
 
Tom Dowler said:
Like lighting diagrams if they're available...
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Yes! Exactly! The more info the better! We just need to make sure that it is credible and verifiable.
 
Any technically inclined folks who might be able to build the backend for such a site?

I'm happy to provide the hosting.
 
awesome idea, only real assistance I can offer is some financial.

but I'd love to have a resource like this
 
Anyone who is interested in bringing this to life, please DM me your email address and I'll start a group email so we can put heads together.

Also suggestions for names? If only Cinematography Database wasn't taken.... (and used incorrectly ;))
 
For coming up with a name, we should probably look at all the terms we have:
- Shots
- Metadata
- Scene
- Lighting
- Database
- Cinematography
- Resource
- Shotlist
- Reference
- Inspiration
- Stills
- Frames
- Library
- Collective

From that, some possible names that stick out to me are things like "The Shotlist" or "The Cinematographer's Library".
A lot more names could be made from that list too. Just a matter of searching to see which ones are being used.

I will note though that theshotlist.com is taken and if you go to it currently is listed as being under construction.
Looks like pre-2007 if was a business for buying copies of indie films that took a nose-dive and never came back.

If you do decide on that one, though, I'm sure there is some form of URL you could get for it like theshotlist.tv
 
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