What do you want out of a searchable movie database?

by Eric Melin on December 17, 2008

in Blogs

3-cent stamp fargoAs you may have heard we are undergoing a pretty radical transformation here at Scene-Stealers.com. In order to make this a website where movie freaks can express their opinions freely about new and old movies alike, we need to have a badass movie database. And that is a LOT of work. What we want to do is provide you with the kind of database that reflects what YOU want. What makes you happy when you go to bed at night?

So I have some questions for all of you regular sitegoers out there. What it is about current movie databases that you love? What helpful features so they have? What kind of categories would you like movies to be grouped by?

On the other side of things, what really sucks about the ones you’ve seen? What are their limitations? What drives you crazy about them?

Examples to look at would be IMDb, RottenTomatoes, Netflix, and ComingSoon. Specific examples for features would be: classifying movies by genre (or something more specific), designating lead and supporting cast, aggregating a rating system, featuring trailers, having a site-wide Top 10 organized by genre, etc.

We are amassing as much information as we can about movies right now, but when this thing starts next March, it’s still going to be pretty small. It will be up to you, the Scene-Stealers, to correct and add important/cool info as you see fit. It will very much be a flexible wiki-style thing. If you have some extra time and want to get in on the ground floor with this project, email me at eric@scene-stealers.com. If you want to upload some of your favorite movies and the info you find important about them, let us know!This will be your site and the more personal it is to your tastes, the better! This will also give you the jumpstart on everyone else so you can be involved with Beta testing.

Please leave your comments below, and email me if you want to help out! Scene-Stealers 3.0 launches next year!!

Eric is the Editor-in-Chief of Scene-Stealers.com, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and contributor for The Pitch. He’s former President of the KCFCC, and drummer for The Dead Girls, Ultimate Fakebook, and Truck Stop Love . He is also the 2013 Air Guitar World Champion Mean Melin, ranked 4th best of all-time. Eric goes to 11. Follow him at:

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{ 8 comments }

1 Josh December 18, 2008 at 12:41 pm

you definitely need something to make you stand out from the rest. of course the movie giveaways already do that… but as far as databases go there are a lot out there. i’d love to help out, if i ever get the time. i’ll e-mail you later.

2 Josh December 18, 2008 at 12:41 pm

you definitely need something to make you stand out from the rest. of course the movie giveaways already do that… but as far as databases go there are a lot out there. i’d love to help out, if i ever get the time. i’ll e-mail you later.

3 Eric Melin December 18, 2008 at 4:40 pm

Josh- You are totally right, and our site WILL be different. What I’m looking for from you guys is suggestions on what to include/how to categorize…and some help if anyone has time. heh.

4 Eric Melin December 18, 2008 at 4:40 pm

Josh- You are totally right, and our site WILL be different. What I’m looking for from you guys is suggestions on what to include/how to categorize…and some help if anyone has time. heh.

5 Katie December 19, 2008 at 11:02 am

As far as cast and crew listings and basic movie information, IMDB is such a comprehensive source that I think it would be nearly impossible and kind of unneccessary to replicate. I would like to see more movie trivia and behind the scenes information.

Maybe you could focus on “not crap” movies, and discourage stupid posts about how cute someone is or how this person really looks like this other person. The message boards at IMDB have so many trivial tangents by really young fans.

This should be the searchable movie database for film snobs, or those who want to be! If you don’t like the word snobs, maybe film enthusiasts is better.

6 Katie December 19, 2008 at 11:02 am

As far as cast and crew listings and basic movie information, IMDB is such a comprehensive source that I think it would be nearly impossible and kind of unneccessary to replicate. I would like to see more movie trivia and behind the scenes information.

Maybe you could focus on “not crap” movies, and discourage stupid posts about how cute someone is or how this person really looks like this other person. The message boards at IMDB have so many trivial tangents by really young fans.

This should be the searchable movie database for film snobs, or those who want to be! If you don’t like the word snobs, maybe film enthusiasts is better.

7 CJ January 14, 2009 at 8:41 pm

You should totally go balls to the wall and have a database where you can search for movies, for example, with bar fights, or car chases, or even nitty-gritty stuff like scenes with people carrying brief cases. If you’re gonna have a film database it might as well be bad ass.

8 CJ January 14, 2009 at 8:41 pm

You should totally go balls to the wall and have a database where you can search for movies, for example, with bar fights, or car chases, or even nitty-gritty stuff like scenes with people carrying brief cases. If you’re gonna have a film database it might as well be bad ass.

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