Template talk:Infobox film/Archive 7

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This is an archive of past discussions about Template:Infobox film. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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Producer field

There seems to be some confusion about what can be included in the producer field. What do people think about inclusion/exclusion of associate, line, and/or executive producers? It seems that different contributors choose to not include particular types, while others choose to include them. --PhantomS 01:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

In new infoboxes, I give only (plain) producer (no associate, no executive, no line). I admit not knowing much about their functional differences/importance, but I see it as the most practiced way. I think we should be reasonably flexible to what editors consider worth mentioning. However I observe that many editors feel they should copy everything they find available in imdb. I think that if executives etc are included, it should be specified and this could create a mess with parentheses breaking lines, etc. If I see it orderly done (with bold "headings") I don't interfere, but if I see many names, all mixed with no specification, I remove the other types, just like I remove cast after the 4-5 main starring actors, making sure the rest are mentioned in the article. Hoverfish Talk 08:20, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed additions

I would like to see Costume Designer and Production Designer added to the infobox. Does anyone agree? Thank you. MovieMadness (talk) 18:18, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Discussion on professional reviews

There is discussion in WP Films talk about adding professional reviews in the infobox. Please comment there. Hoverfish Talk 08:28, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Guidelines on release

I see that someone has set the instructions for release date to read: "Insert the first public, non-festival release date of the film". I have followed all relevant discussion here and in WP Films talk and from what I see discussed, this should not be stated so. Please set it as: "Insert the earliest public release, including festivals" and if there are objections we can afterwards count voices. Hoverfish Talk 17:41, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Also there are two editors who brought up the issue of an IP user who is delinking the year in film from infoboxes and film articles. I tried to refer to the infobox instruction to link year-in-film but I see it's also gone. The last relevant discussion about it is here above, in section 8 (Year of release), and it doesn't look like we have agreed on removing the guideline. Hoverfish Talk 18:07, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed additions

I previously suggested Costume Designer be added to the infobox. and Production Designer added to the infobox. Does anyone agree? Thank you.

I think we should add a sentence explaining that the year in film should be linked. I haven't seen a consensus either way, so we should talk about it now, and add it if people feel the same. - Peregrine Fisher 18:27, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Things have been moved and I don't find the previous instructions, but a while ago it was there. Anyway, I support linking to years-in-film in the infobox, as oposed to linking there in other parts of the article where the link is not really significant. Hoverfish Talk 19:24, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I didn't notice the same discussion was going on in there (It was at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films at the same time). Please don't link full dates to 'year in film', it messes up the user-specific date formatting and therefore goes against WP:MOSDATE. In the cases where only a year is included, it doesn't really make a difference, but those should probably link to plain years for consistency, while the link to 'year in film' can be left for the article body. - Bobet 21:54, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I have to apologize to all, as I had somehow thought it was proper to link to year-in-film, so I have filled lots of infoboxes this way, including some that had month-day (followed by this link). If I find any, I will repair them. Hoverfish Talk 09:05, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Protected edit request

At the moment, {{protected template}} is included in Template:Infobox Film/doc via <includeonly>, meaning that it shows up on the template when the documentation page is transcluded, but not the documentation page itself. However, that documentation page is also included (via Template talk:Infobox Film/Syntax) in a number of userpages, and as a result those userpages are being incorrectly categorized into Category:Protected templates. To fix this, {{protected template}} should be removed from Template:Infobox Film/doc and instead added directly to Template:Infobox film, in the <noinclude> section. Thanks – Qxz 01:51, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Done - Harryboyles 02:40, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Language instruction

I have reformulated the language instructions to address a problem common also to multiple language categorization (see*). I hope there are no objections to the new formulation. Hoverfish Talk 13:54, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Rating

For some reason this won't appear and some info gets cut off. I can't fix this. BuickCenturyDriver (Honk, contribs, odometer) 23:06, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Be sure you're adding the rating to {{Infobox movie certificates}} and not {{Infobox_movie}}. --70.142.42.81 01:32, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

IMDb

There's a discussion regarding linking infoboxes here. Matthew 08:54, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

And there was a discussion about what links to have in the infobox here. The short version is that people really like the imdb link and since there isn't a policy against that it will most likely stay. On the other hand, that part of the discussion was an unadvertised straw poll that lasted for 2 days, so take it for what it's worth. - Bobet 09:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

It would be helpful to note that the IMDB number will have the preceding "tt" automatically included. --otherlleft 03:22, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

"Gross profits" is incorrect

The instructions for the new "gross" parameter ask for editors to include the gross revenue, not the profits. What Box Office Mojo reports is revenue, because only the studio knows (or would report) the actual profits (the rough estimate of "revenue divided by two minus budget" isn't always accurate). This needs to be changed immediately to "gross revenue", "worldwide gross", or simply "gross". --FuriousFreddy 15:19, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} done. CMummert · talk 15:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Certificate number

It's a minor detail, but could we add a "certificate no." field to the template? It's a serial number of sorts for most films (at least all those released in the U.S.), similar to what the ISBN number is for books. For example, Lost Horizon (1937) is shown in the opening credits as certificate number 2006. Current U.S. films are numbered somewhere around 40000. I'm not sure if this applies to non-U.S. films, though. — Loadmaster 15:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Can you look up a movie using its certificate number? This also seems more of a trivial fact than an essential piece of information that needs to be easily accessible by means of an infobox. Cbrown1023 talk 02:23, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Country

Resolved

Can country please be changed to production country or as i had to come to the infobox to find out what it was which kinds of defeats the purpose of having the box (Gnevin 04:31, 20 April 2007 (UTC))

What is your suggested choice of wording - it can't be too long or else if will disrupt the look of the overall template. I would have thought "Country" would be assumed by most readers to be where it was produced (vs say country of the production company or film studios) David Ruben ^Talk 00:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

All databases mean the same thing when they refer to Country, i.e. country (or countries) which produced (or co-produced) a film. Hoverfish Talk 17:19, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, adding a new variable name won't do any good unless we also change a few hundred (thousand?) transclusions of the template, too. Probably easier to leave it as it stands. – Luna Santin (talk) 18:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Rejected: Consensus is against changing the template. Luigi30 (Taλk) 13:06, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Two AMG ids

Prophecies of Nostradamus has two AMG ids. One as Prophecies of Nostradamus, which in the U.S. was a subtitled, very limited, art house release, and one as The Last Days of Planet Earth, which was dubbed and heavily edited for television and the only version released to home video (neither version is on Region 1 DVD). Trying to include both has messed up the infobox. How do I do it? --Scottandrewhutchins 15:47, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Include the most popular version in the infobox and both in the external links section. Cbrown1023 talk 13:59, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

cover placeholder

I think it would be beneficial for to add this placeholder when the cover/poster is missing: Image:NoDVDcover copy.png.--Esprit15d (talk ¤ contribs) 22:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Why is it beneficial? I think it's really ugly and unnecessary. And besides, we normally try to use posters, not DVD covers. Cop 663 22:23, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't like it. Some articles can't justify an image, at present. Matthew 22:24, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Tagline

Why not insert tagline in this infobox? Most movies have taglines. BlueAg09 (Talk) 06:51, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

They are also usually not interesting/encyclopedic. It's been discussed AdamSmithee 12:45, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

The discussion is pretty well scattered, though. Taglines are for promotional purposes, but their current position (in the lead paragraph of many film articles) is as unacceptable as they are unencyclopedic. This is more of a question for the Film Wikiproject overall, what to do with taglines in general. --Stratadrake 12:40, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Tag lines might have their place in articles, but they do not fit well in the infobox and are not of much value there. Prolog 15:24, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Indian Films

How about adding lyricist and singers into the template. This is crucial, especially with Indian films, where good music makes or breaks the film. I'm not comfortable with this though, and a better suggestion that I can think of is to make a new template for Bollywood films. Sniperz11 14:12, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

New template is a good idea. Jay 08:05, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Increase the width

Can the width of the infobox be increased ? When names are long, they wrap and the infobox grows long. I was looking at Plan_9_from_Outer_Space. In IE, the name of Edward D. Wood, Jr. fits into the box, but in Opera, the "Jr" gets wrapped to the next line. As a result, the box has become very long. Jay 08:05, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Add a rotten_tomatoes_id. Wiikipedian

Not uncontroversial. In a poll on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films most even wanted the amg_id out. External links are better suited in the appropriate sections in articles, and we should avoid turning infoboxes into link farms. Prolog 16:43, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Kthx for reply.

Wiikipedian

Voices field

Hey can someone add a voices field for animated films. Using "Starring" for animated film does not seem right and a "voices" field would fit better.--NeilEvans 17:25, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea. Maybe it could be added right below the "staring" field in the template. Perhaps something like

{{#if:{{{voice_actor|<noinclude>-</noinclude>}}} |
! Voices by
{{!}} {{{voice_actor}}}
{{!}}-
}}

Jecowa (talk) 01:33, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm uncertain as to what the real problem here is. What I am certain of is that if this is adopted, it will require an immense amount of retagging, so why exactly is this a pressing issue? Is there actually a misconception that animated characters are not voiced by humans? That not being shot on camera means you can't star in something? Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 03:27, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Preceded by/followed by - should they go by release or story?

Are the preceded_by and followed_by parameters supposed to go by when the films were released or where in the story they take place? In other words, if a movie was released later but took place earlier, should it be considered preceded_by or followed_by? I see the Star Wars movies use the story order but the Indiana Jones movies use release order. I personally think it should be by release, but I wanted to see if there was a consensus about it. -Joltman 16:46, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Canonical order can be ambiguous, especially when you have retellings, prequels, midquels, and reboots. E.g., would Bambi 2 be both preceded and followed by the original Bambi since it technically takes place in the middle?

Chronological order is non-ambiguous, however if there is a significant delay between two movies (e.g. original Star Wars vs. Prequel Star Wars) which would cause confusion, then it can probably be disregarded. (An alternate proposal would be to rename both params simmply to "See also", but that would be a bit unorthodox). --Stratadrake 12:21, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Taglines

I think we should add a section that displays the tagline for a flim. Karrmann 14:20, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, the template is already bulky enough. No need to add long tag lines. Matthew 14:34, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

N Not done; due to a reasonable objection, making this change boldly would be inadvisable. Please replace the editprotected if a consensus forms for this change. --ais523 15:57, 28 June 2007 (U T C)

Executive Producers

Can you add a line to the Infobox saying "Executive Producer"

Thanks,

Tovojolo 11:19, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Please write and test the code, and get consensus for it here, and then reactiviate the tag. If you would like help writing the code, you may ask at Wikipedia:Requested templates. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:46, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand this. There's a big notice saying the the Infobox is protected and we have to ask someone else to change it. Now you're saying we have to do it ourselves ? - so why protect the Infobox ?

Tovojolo 21:16, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree completely. Executive Producers should be listed. Moreover, in order to get Executive Producers in the articles, inaccurate representations (even sanctioned by the Style Guide) are being made that list the EP's with the Producers. This is found in many films, such as Schindler's List, but also in the same of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Style guidelines itself. 2 of the "Producers" listed were, in fact, Executive Producers. There is no justification for leaving out either EP's or...for that matter...AP's most of whom typically have been integrally involved in the development of a film from the earliest. There are exceptions, but credits aren't passed out at the water fountains.

Dawgknot 13:13, 21 August 2007 (UTC) Dawgknot 13:13, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I propose that the infobox be edited to provide for Executive Producers and CoProducers. Associate Producers are an option but I don't have strong feelings about it. This is a glaring deficiency as it currently stands because either important people are left out or their credit is misrepresented by being called "Producer". Example: X2, Terminator, Schindler's List and many others.

There is no good reason to leave out the names of people who have these credits. Dawgknot 15:20, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Edit-protected request: add hCalendar mark up

{{editprotected}}

As described debated and implemented for Infobox Album. Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:16, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride 15:13, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Could I trouble you to move class="description" to the tr, so that the words "directed by " are also included? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:42, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride 18:33, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Could you also add class="dtstart" to the release date? An event without a date seems a bit useless to me... Also, I think the class="description" now only spans directed by. Thanks, Bernhard Bauer 14:00, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

The former is unnecessary and potentially harmful. The date is included in the microformat by use of {{Start date}} (per this template's documentation!) which includes the necessary ISO8601 formatting and class-name. Marking up unformatted dates would cause problems. ("description" does indeed need fixing, though.) Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:51, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I've disabled the editprotected request while discussion continues. --MZMcBride 15:55, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, but we're agreed that "description" is broken, and needs fixing promptly. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 16:40, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

The way this page's code is written, it doesn't appear to be an easy problem to fix. It will certainly need testing in a sandbox before this highly-used template is updated (again). The alternative option is to have the class in the <td> tag as it was before and not in the <tr> tag. Getting the class into the <tr> tag looks difficult. Cheers. --MZMcBride 16:46, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) I would suggest changing:

{{!}}-
{{#if:{{{director|<noinclude>-</noinclude>}}} |
! class="description" {{!}} Directed by
{{!}} {{{director}}}

to:

{{!}}- class="description"
{{#if:{{{director|<noinclude>-</noinclude>}}} |
! {{!}} Directed by
{{!}} {{{director}}}

Then, if there's no director, the producer, and if not them, then the writer, would (AIUI) be used. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 17:11, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

All right, that will work. I will leave this request open for a little bit for any additional suggested changes (if any). --MZMcBride 19:54, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride 22:01, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you again! Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 23:14, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Stating language

There is an ongoing discussion in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films/Categorization#Categorization of films by language which also concerns the language stated in the Film Infobox. DieWeisseRose has brought up the issue of minority languages and endangered languages. I copy here her suggested draft. Doctor Sunshine and myself are in agreement. If there is no objection, please, adjust the instructions in Template:Infobox Film/doc. Hoverfish Talk 07:06, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

(copied suggestion - added nowiki code)

Insert the language primarily used in the film. It is usually unhelpful to list every language used in a film. However, when a film is clearly bi- or multilingual or if it contains significant portions of minority language or endangered language usage then you may enter the secondary languages separated with a line break (<br />). In addition, the language should link to its appropriate article. Ex: For a film primarily in the English language, insert [[English language|English]].

--DieWeisseRose 03:35, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

adding visual effects companies to infobox

Would it be possible to add a list of visual effects companies that worked on the film to the infobox? It seems that a large portion of the promotion for major event movies (i.e. Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest, etc) is dedicated to mentioning the contracting visual effects houses, so I think that these companies warrant a mention.

BGyss 00:34, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

This would often make the infoboxes very long. Since visual effects are relevant to only a few films, it is simpler to note the companies in the "Production" section of the article's main body. Cop 663 00:44, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Suggested change for display of language

I've noever really had much to do with the editing of this template, so I sha'n't add {{editprotected}} and I'll leave it to the regular editors to discuss the issue and edit it, if necessary, but it's occurred to me a few times that it might be useful to change the code to read

{{#ifexist: {{{language}}} language | [[{{{language}}} language|{{{language}}}]] | {{{language}}} }}

rather than just {{{language}}}, so entering English should end up with English, but without messing up if the right code (or multiple languages) were entered.

Feel free to ignore me, of course, but I just thought I'd make the suggestion :o) — OwenBlacker (Talk) 20:07, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Done. Quick test/demo:

{{Infobox film|name=abc|language = English}} →

{{Infobox film|name=abc|language = Englis}} →

{{Infobox film|name=abc|language = [[English language|English]]}} →

{{Infobox film|name=abc|language = [[def|ghi]]}} →

abc
Language	ghi

Patrick 11:36, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Other Infoboxes include Genre information so why not this one?

The Infoboxes for video games, novels and TV series include Genre: so why is Genre: not part of the film Infobox. I get that the genre that a film belongs to may not always be a solid fact but it's still a very important piece of information to leave out, especially when it's included elsewhere. This seems like a very big oversight so I'm hoping that Genre: will be added to the Film Infobox Template soon. What do you guys think? 218.215.142.116 13:29, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Please see this previous discussion. Genre is a field which is open to POV and can start edit wars. Much better to discuss the various classifications in the article than try to come up with a hard and fast genre for each film. RWardy 08:42, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

But there already are "hard and fast genres" for TV series and books and games. I haven't noticed any edit wars come about because of it. If putting Genre: into Infoboxes is so bad then shouldn't it be removed from the other Infobox templates? The fact that Genre: exists in other infoboxes wasn't mentioned in the previous discussion, which is why I thought this issue should be reconsidered. 218.215.145.49 11:40, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

If the possibility of edit wars is so unnerving, we could just agree to use IMDB's genre information instead of arguing among ourselves. 218.215.148.201 13:04, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

IMDb is user-submitted, which creates many problems with using it for any sort of reference. See the discussions on WT:CIMDB. Girolamo Savonarola 13:27, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I understand the problems with adding genre to your infobox but the same problems already exist with the following categories: Horror film, Western films, Drama films, Thriller, Thriller films, Slasher films. There are others, but I have just listed these few examples. Perhaps we should eliminate these categories. - BuffaloBob (talk) 02:12, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Image display help?

Please see Semi-Tough. How to I decrease the size of the image that is displayed in the infobox? Thank you. Curt Wilhelm VonSavage 20:45, 25 October 2007 (UTC).

Hi, I took a look and you had the parameter as imagesize rather than image_size. I have fixed this now and it has shrunk the image. Please edit the value to set the image to the size you require. RWardy 21:20, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I noticed the old "Awards" parameter is missing? Curt Wilhelm VonSavage 21:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC).

The awards parameter was removed ages ago. Awards should be mentioned in thier own section in the article usually. RWardy 11:25, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Just curious, I usually put them in their own section anyway. Thanks for the help! Curt Wilhelm VonSavage 11:26, 26 October 2007 (UTC).

Edit request

{{editprotected}} Please replace {{/doc}} by {{template doc}}. Thank you. 16@r 12:48, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I used {{documentation}}.--Patrick 13:56, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

What have I done wrong?

I have added the film infobox to numerous articles, yet on Late Fragment I seem to have done something incorrectly. It won't display properly. Can anyone tell me what's wrong? Thanks, Shawn in Montreal 14:13, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I think you fixed it already, but if you miss one square bracket from a wikilink, the whole template goes pear-shaped. Cop 663 18:16, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

It was not me. A Bot appears to have fixed it. Thanks all the same.Shawn in Montreal 22:09, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Budget

Is the budget for field production budget only? Or does it include advertising? I ask because I found an article on how Akeelah and the Bee cost $8 million produce (the number that Box Office Mojo has for the budget), but an extra $20 million to market.--SeizureDog 19:28, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I would say that it's the production budget, but I'd suggest explaining the $20 million marketing approach in a Release section for the article, which seems needed. Just mention how the studio tried to market the film, when the film was released, its box office performance (use Box Office Mojo), and the critical reaction (use Rotten Tomatoes). —Erik (talk • contrib) - 17:03, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Add category

{{editprotect}} Would an admin please add Category:WikiProject Films templates to this, attempting to propagate category correctly. SkierRMH 00:04, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

It's already there. Rigadoun (talk) 20:18, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Writers

It doesn't make sense that the person(s) who write the screenplay and the person(s) who wrote the source material should be lumped together under "Written by" so I added a separate "Based on" category to separate them. 209.247.22.166 (talk) 14:22, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I've reverted your edit, since changing the template documentation doesn't alter the template in any way. You'd have to edit {{Infobox Film}} itself for any changes to have any effect. In any case, why do you think it doesn't make sense? In general, the 'based on' field would be empty for most films, and would probably be harder to notice in cases where it was relevant. The current practice is to add a qualifier after the person's name in the writer field, eg. 'John Smith (novel)' or 'John Smith jr. (play)' when applicable. If you feel there's reason to change this, discussing it at Template talk:Infobox Film would be better, since that page gets more traffic. Thanks. - Bobet (talk) 14:34, 21 November 2007 (UTC)