Stanford University



Movies: Documentation

Gio's Movie files: DOC

Movies Database Documentation

This the Master file on [brambles]/MyDocs/mov/doc.html; copyright 1996, 1997, 1998 Gio Wiederhold

Loaded into DB web files 25 September 1997.

Updated December 1998.

This material was entered by

Gio Wiederhold

The initial objective was as test data for students, to allow non-trivial

exercises. There are fields suitable for complex joins, outerjoins, temporal

joins, and recursion. It has also been used to investigate object-structured database technologies

This is a HTML version of the description of the movies database.

It was based originally on the description from the Kamens and Wiederhold temporal paper.

It also contains literature references in appendix A.

1. Introduction

The database was used originally in implementing the temporal queries in SQL is Wiederhold's movies database (see [21]) and for a number of other projects, both in Stanford classes and by research at the Un.of Maryland and others.. The database allows testing of theories about an implementation. Since it contains "real data", it allowing checking of results for semantic as well as syntactic correctness. Finally, the tables in the database consist of both journal and history relations (see 21, section 3), allowing us to test all of the different elements of an implementation.

The Overview section (2) below contains a summary of all the files and the URL pointers to them, or their parts or sections; see Section 3 for a full schema description.

A number of the fields are unsuitable for relational implementation, because they contain sets of values. These are best used in an object-capable implementation. The schema describes when such sets are to be expected. Encodings for several of the fields are listed in Section 4.. At the end of this document, in Appendix B., are some conversion rules for converting the HTML format to fields for relational or object databases.

2. Overview:

The central file (MAIN) is a list of movies, each with a unique identifier. These identifiers may change in successive versions. The actors (CAST) for those movies are listed with their roles in a distinct file. More information about individual actors (ACTORS) is in a third file. All directors in MAIN are listed in a fourth file (PEOPLE), with a number of important producers, writers, and cinematographers. A fifth file (REMAKES) links movies that were copied to a substantial extent from each other. The sixth file (STUDIOS) provides some information about studios show in MAIN. This documentation file provides supplementary information, and is an essential part of the database. Some images are also available, but not on-line now. There are many cross-linking names throughout the files, so many in fact that web browsers have choked when trying to make them live. Currently we simply try to be careful in naming films and people consistently. More detail follows below. Counts have been made using emacs `count-matches’.

2.1 -- MOVIES --

The main movies file is

main.html.

It contains 11435 `tr/td’ table row entries (July 1999).

It is complete for Hitchcock movies and TV shows,

and has most films that can be related by topic, actors, director, history, and such to those films.

It has also many films corresponding to a variety of interests of mine, former students etc.,

with an emphasis on historical value.

MAIN is the "central" relation in the database; it is a journal relation that

contains information about the movies themselves. The relation contains

information about movies such as their titles, type, directors, and producers, as

well as their year of release.

There is also a subset file of 82

Hitchcock

full length Movies.

2.2 -- ACTORS -- The file

actors.html has

6813 `tr/td’ table row entries (July.1999) for many of the actors appearing in CASTS.

Also First part and

Second part of actors.html, not maintained.

The key of the relation is

"stagename", and there are intervals indicating the dates that the

actor worked and the actor's lifetime. Other information in this relation is

the actor's real name, background, and the type of roles he/she typically

plays. References to images are kept here too.

2.3 -- DIRECTORS -- in file

people.html

The file lists all directors, as well as some other movie people, as producers and cinematographers

(A total of 3290 `tr/td’ table row entries, 3011 `@’ directors as of July 1999).

The directors table is similar to the actors table in that it contains intervals for when the director worked and when he/she lived. The key of the relation is the field "name", which is the name under which the director directed. Director's key names do not contain any blanks. Typically the last name is used, when needed prefaced by an initial. A secondary unique key is defined for each director, up to three letters, based on the initial letters of the first, middle, and last names. This key will provide HTML HREF linkages among many of the files. As with the actors table, this table also includes the real name of the director among its fields ("lastname" and "firstname"). It also contains important producers, cinematographers, musicians, composers, etc.

2.4 -- STUDIOS -- in file

studios.html

are important studios only (203 `tr/td’ entries, sparse information).

The key of the studios relation is the name of the studio. The temporal

information that is included is an interval indicating the years the

studio was (or is) in operation, represented by the fields "startdate" and

"enddate". This is a history relation.

2.5 -- CASTS -- in file

casts.html

This is a large (too large?) file of who acted as what in which movie.

(46 009 tr/td entries, only partial for movies and roletypes, July 1999).

Casts is an association relation, linking actors with movies. The key of the relation is the catenation of the two fields "film_id" and "actor"; no temporal information is included in this relation.

This file was too big for Netscape in 1996. There is a smaller subset, but that one is not kept up-to-date.

casts of Hitchcock films;

2.6 -- REMAKES -- in file

remakes.html

(1278 `tr/td’ entries in July 1999).

This table (which is not extensively used in the temporal DB paper) gives information about movies that are remakes of other movies. It is very useful to test recursion in databases.

2.7 -- SYNONYMS --

Some movies are known by alternate titles, and can be accessed indirectly.

This file has been superseded. All entries are now in the main file, as Alt(T:…) in the notes field.

It’s access was synonyms.html, and it contained 379 entries in Sep 1997) This list relates to the MOVIES in main.html.

2.8 -- QUOTES -- in file

casts.html

QUOTES.

A few (26) memorable quotes from movies are listed in

quotes.html.|1.

2.9 -- AWARDS -- in file

actors.html.

Types of awards and the awarding agencies are in

awtypes.html.

2.10 -- AWARDS-RECEIVED -- is no longer a distinct file

Awards received for special occasions are listed with individual entries

in the files for ACTORS (actors.html).or MOVIE PEOPLE (people.html).

Regular awards associated with a particular movies are given in

CASTS (casts.html).

2.11 -- REFERENCES --

Books that provided material for this database are listed within this documentation file as

Appendix A.

2.12 -- GEOGRAPHY --

Codes for countries and origins are listed within this documentation file as section 4.3:

doc.html GEO.

2.13 -- CATEGORIES --

Codes for movie categories are listed within this documentation file as Section 4.4:

doc.html CATS.

2.14 -- COLOR-CODES --

Codes for color processes used for movies are listed within this documentation file as Section 4.5:

doc.html COLS.

2.15 -- ROLE-TYPES --

Codes that specify role-types for actors are listed in the preamble for

casts.html ROLES.

2.16 -- FIELD-IDENTIFIERS --

Codes that identify subfields

in various files are listed within this documentation file as Section 4.2:

doc.html

FIELDS.

2.17 - AWARD TYPES --

Lists the award types

used in MAIN, ACTORS, and PEOPLE,

with the organizations who award them, and the span of years they were awarded.

2.19 -- IMAGES --

there is a small collection of .tiff files for actors and directors.

They are kept individually in an images subdirectory.

2.20 -- ICONS --

There are about a dozan icons to be used to identify

subfiles. Some of them come from the New Yorker Magazine Jan.1993.

There are kept individually in an icons subdirectory.

3. Schema Definition for the Movies Database

Here we give a detailed description of the schema of the movies

database, which is used for all examples in this paper and was used to

implement the temporal SQL additions. General descriptions are given

in Section 2, above.

This file is being updated to desctribe the HTML version. Where

updates were made, the old material is in curly {brackets}.

3.1 The MOVIES Table

Col-Name = Description.

There is a distinct table for each director (Hitchcock has multiple tables,

one for early silent, one for British, one for American, and one for TV movies).

The tables are broken up p by year of first known film by the directors. There are some

break and header records for each year.

Each director table has two types of records:

one header record for the director, with the director id, as shown in people,

the first year known for movies by that director, prefixed by an @ symbol, matching the

people entry, and the standard name for the director, also matching the people entry.

The remainder shows the format for the data records that follow below..

The note field is often used to describe the set of detail records

For movies where the director in not known there is a dummy entry, either by topic (Unknown) or

by year (UnYear), as shown in the people file.

any number of records, one per film, formatted as shown below.

film_id = An internally generated id for the film. This is the key of the relation entries and is unique. It is composed of director_id and a sequence number. .

All movies of a director are listed together in sequence, but only for some directors have all movies been entered..

The sequence numbers often have gaps to allow insertions when all movies for this director were not known at entry time at time of entry, a common occurrence.

title = The film's title. It is preceded by T: or Tn: (earlier also \Tm,\Tmm) depending on the source of the data. This field is not neccessarily unique. In a few cases, where the title is unknown, NKT stands for `No Known Title’.

year = Year the movie was released. This is assumed to be an event (i.e., to take zero time)

director = Director of the movie, preceded by D:.

The standardized id-name is used. All directors must appear as DIRECTORS

in people.html, so that we have a proper reference constraint.

If there are multiple candidate directors the primary one or the one

who finished the movie is chosen and other candidates are given in the

notes field as CoD().

producers= Producer(s) of the movie, preceded by P: if shown in

people.html and hence referencable by id_name .

P: alone shows that there was no specific producer.

If prefaced by PN: then the full name(s) is(/are) given;

if prefaced by PS: then the spelling is uncertain.

In both cases no reference to people can be expected..

PN: is common, since only few id-names for producers exist yet in the people.html files, except for producers who also were DIRECTORS

:PU alone means the producer is unknown to me.

Multiple producers are permitted and common.

studios = Studio(s) where the movie was filmed. Common studio names appear in STUDIOS. If the studio is not known or uncommon its location may be given as SL:{COUNTRY-CODE}.

Unknown studios are prefixed by SU:

sometimes the distributing studio, where the distributor differs from the production studio, is shown prefixed by SD:.

prc = Process used to make the movie (e.g. black and white as `bnw', col).

Color processes may by specified as \COLOR-CODES. The code `cld' is used for black-and-white movies that have been colorized.

Unknown is coded prc.

cat = Category of the film (e.g., suspense, mystery), as given in the

list of CATEGORIES. Unknown is coded Ctxx.

awards = Awards received by the film, separated by commas. The awards are

listed in AWARD (optionally followed by keywords such as 'Special')

and included actual awards as well as favorable (mostly) mentions

in compendia as Halliwell and Roger Ebert's books, with the

appropriate number of stars. A + symbol is a half star and

a - after the awardee code indicates a negative mention.

Unknown is coded aw. -H means not in Halliwell [4].

lc = Location where the film plays. Multiple locations are separated

by semicolons (;), multiple levels in any location hierarchy are

separated by commas, as `high-school, csd, CA'; indicating movie

location is a California high-school in the countryside. Codes used are

listed in the preamble of main.html. For countries other than the

USA the country name is given as well. Alternatives for country

names are `space' or `xxx ocean'. Unknown is lc.

If the period of the film is significant it is given as

T([[dd]mmm]yyyy).

notes = Here a variety of notes is kept. The preferred order is

chronological, as Book before Writer before Cost before Rating,

but this has not been entered consistently.

. All entries have a FIELD-IDENTIFIER

designator, as W(writer), R(rating), ... .

Fields as writers can have multiple entries, separated by commas.

If an award is associated with an entry, as an academy award for the

writers of a movie, it follows the name(s) after a semicolon (;).

For authors (also music directors), the title is specified as

B(author:book: "title")

Alt(T:title; reason) lists alternate titles, with a reason or date for the change, if known.

There is a general Notes field (Nt) which mainly record firsts,

as first sound movie, etc.

. Er() means possible error in the record, to be checked sometime in the

future from some source..

These note fields can be used to demonstrate the flexibility of

object-based structures, but are best place in distinct fields in relational

models.

Note entries SEEN and VT are private, indicating `when seen' or `have video

tape' information.

3.2. The ACTORS Table

There is one record for each actor listed, but not all actors listed in CAST are documented.

There are also break and header records for each letter of the alphabet.

Col-Name = Description

stagenm = Stagename of the actor. This is nearly the key of the table.

When an actor has used multiple names the last one used is preferred.

There are a few actors with identical names. Then the birthyear

(dob) becomes important.

dowstrt = Beginning of the "dates of work" interval: year of first movie

dowend = End of "dates of work" interval.

birthnm = Original last name.

firstnm = Original first name. Nick-names or other assumed names

in ().

gender = coded as M,F, and X for unknown, G for group, and A for Animal.

dob = Date of Birth. If not found in [ref]. If found, but date unknown *.

dod = Date of Death, if unknown or alive coded as \UN. Year+ indicates

also still alive in that year, mainly used for oldies.

type = Types of roles played by the actor; e.g., leading man, hero.

origin = Country of origin using COUNTRY-CODES

photo = Photos in reference books may be cited as [book.page(s)]

notes = Used mainly for Marriages(Mt), Lived-with(Lw), and Worked-with(W).

A code Cit(n) indicates how frequently the actor is cited in

CASTS.html. This field is used for maintenance, as a weight

of importance for completion of the data.

3.3 The PEOPLE Table

Directors are the major subset of the general people.html table.

Other entries are significant producers, writers, art directors and some authors.

Being a director is indicated in the Pcode field, and has some effect on

other fields.

There are also break and header records for each letter of the alphabet.

Col-Name = Description

id-name = The name of the movie person in standardized form.

These names are made to be unique. Intials may be prependended, and

special character codes omitted. This field is referenced by the

"director" field and by P:{references} in the MOVIES table.

Pcode = Codeletters {PDWACGV} indicating that the movie person a Producer, Director, Writer, Actor, Cinematographer, choreoGrapher, or a Visual or art director. They are often arranged chronologically.

Just being an actor does not justify an entry here, for those see the ACTORS table.

Did = If the person is a director (Pcode includes D), then this field contains an internally defined, unique 1, 2, or 3 letter identification code for the director, the director_id. It is made up by taking one or two letters of the first name, no or one letter of the middlename and one or two letters of the family name of the director. Because of the high frequency of `John', it is encoded as `I'.

This code is used a prefix to generate unique film_id's for all films directed by this director.

yearstart= First year of work, for directors the first year he/she directed a movie, it is preceded by a @. (start of the years interval).

yearend= Last year of work, or that the director directed.

lastnm = Given last name of the movie-person, may be spelled more precisely here than in the id-name field.

firstnm = Given first name of the movie-person. Nick-names or other assumed names in ().

dob = Date of Birth. If not found in [ref]. If found, but date unknown *

dod = Date of Death, or 190x, to indicate when known to be alive

backgrd = The director's birth country. If unknown \Un.

notes = This field is as in "actors". Female movie-people are identified as Ge(F), as a partial index. Special awards (not associated with a film) are shown as Aw().

3.4 The STUDIOS Table

Col-Name = Description

----------- -------------

name = Short name of the studio, may be standarized for reference.

company = Company that owns the studio.

city = City where the studio is located.

country = The studio's country.

fddate = Date the studio was founded or first opened.

enddate = Last date represented by the studio.

founder = The studio's founder.

successor = The fate of the studio.

notes = co founders, etc.

3.5 The CASTS Table

The large CAST file is broken up into sections by initial letter(s) of the directors identifying code.

In each section will be a number of directors, ordered by code. There is a distinct table for each director.

Col-Name = Description

Each director table has two types of entries

one header record giving the director's id, name, and format information.

multiple records for each movie and listed actor. There are no headers for distinct movies.

film_id = Identifier of the film. All film_ids used here appear in

MOVIES, and can be used as references.

title = Title of the movie, prefixed by T.

A prefix of TZ is used when he entry is uncertain, as the actor's name.

The title field is actually redundant here, because

is also given in MOVIES with the film_id. It is used to reduce the

the chances of errors and to reduce requirements for "joins".

actor = Name of the actor in this role, always using the standardized

stage_name, if the actor is listed in ACTORS.html

This field presents only a partial reference, illustrating dangling pointers.

If unknown, but role is important, then `sa' is used for `some actor'.

roletype= Type of the role. Similar to the "type" field in the ACTORS

table, but always encoded by a ROLE-TYPE. \Und means unassigned.

role = short description of the role prefixed by R:

If the trole is uncertain, the RZ: is used as the prefix

If the name used in the role is significant (as in Biographical Movies),

this role name follows in “quotes”, as R:king “Henry V”

If only the role name is known, then the prefix is RN:

If the role is unknown, then only RU: is entered.

awards = Awards given to this actor for this role. Optional field.

notes = Rarely used; only for something exceptional in the performance, as

`Nt(Garbo laughs)'. or Debut

3.6 The REMAKES Table

Col-Name = Description

film_id = Identifier of the remake. All film_ids used here appear in MOVIES.

title = Title of the remake; redundant., but essential for maintenance

year = Year when the remake was made. Note that this MUST be after the

year the original was made.

part = A fraction indicating how similar the remake is to the original.

The semantics used appear in the preamble of remakes.html

wasfilm = Identifier of the original film. All film_ids used here appear in

MOVIES; \UN is used where the film has not been identified,

wastitle= Title of the original movie, also redundant.

wasyear = Year of the original.

3.7 -- SYNONYMS table

This file has been superseded. All entries are now in the main file, as Alt(T:…) in the notes field.

Col-Name = Description

film-id = Unique film identifier

s-title = > Secondary, synonymous, title >

s-country = Country for secondary title

p-country = Country for primary title

p-title = Primary title; redundant

3.8 -- QUOTES table

Col-Name = Description

----------- -----------

film-id = Identifier of film where quote was taken.

title = Redundant title.

speaker = Actor selivering the quote.

role = Role of quoted actor.

listenr = Role of adressee.

quote = Text of quote.

3.9 -- AWARDS table

Col-Name = Description

----------- -----------

award = code of award used

agency = awarding agencies or authors

place = location or reference where award is given

3.10 -- AWARDS table

Col-Name = Description

----------- -----------

recepnt = Movie-person receiving the award, stage-name or id-name

award = Award type

year = Year awarded

reason = This table is mainly for awards not associated with films,

so that reasons my be `lifetime', `honorary', etc.

notes = as needed.

3.11 -- REFERENCES table

Col-Name = Description

----------- -----------

no. = Unique reference number in []

author = Author(s) name(s), up to colon (:)

title = Title of book

pub-inf = Publication information.

3.12 -- GEOGRAPHY table

Col-Name = Description

----------- -----------

code = Two- or three letter code for each country, as \Hu.

See 4.1 for the encoding used.

country-name = Full name, as `Hungary'

c-adjective = Adjectival form, as `Hungarian'

3.13 -- CATEGORIES table

Col-Name = Description

ctcode = Four-letter code

Movie categories

codecategory|codecategory|codecategory |

Ctxxuncategorized|

Actnviolence|Advtadventure|AvGaAvant Garde|

Campnow - camp|Cartcartoon|CnR Cops and Robbers|

Comdcomedy|

DisaDisaster| Docudocumentary| Dramdrama|

Epicepic|Famlfamily |Histhistory | Horrhorror|

Muscmusical|Mystmystery|

Noirblack|

Pornpornography|Romtromantic|

ScFiscience fiction|

Surlsureal|Suspthriller |

Westwestern|

3.14 -- COLOR-CODES table

Col-Name = Description

----------- -----------

color-code = Code following \

full = Full name for color process used for movies,

prc = unknown process, likely bnw prior to 1945, col after 1955

bws = black and white silent

bnw = black and white

TV = film made for TV – various processes

col = unknown color process

cld = recolored black and white

specific color processes

\Tcol = Technicolor – the best – three distinct layers

\DeLuxe = DeLuxe – a high intensity low-cost color process

\DuArt = DuArt

\Ecol = Eastmancolor by Kodak

\Mcol = Metrocolor – used by MGM

\Mlab = Movielab

\Wcol = Warnercolor used by Warners

\Acol = Anscocolor – another color process by Kodak?

\Agcol = Agfacolor

\Fcol = Fujicolor

\CS = Cinemascope -- widescreen, mostly color, 72mm film

\Trama = Technirama -- widescreen color

\Pan = PanaVision -- compressed wide screen, only noted at times.

\Vst = Vistavision

They are listed in the preamble for movies.macros.

3.15 ROLE-TYPES table

Col-Name = Description

----------- -----------

role-codes = Three-letter macro codes to specify role-types for actors.

They are listed in the preamble for casts.html.

Und means unassigned.

3.16 FIELD-IDENTIFIERS table

Col-Name = Description

----------- -----------

codes = Codes identifying subfields in various files.

They are listed below in Section 4.4..

Some general codes, appearing in many files, are:

Nt(note about something unusual)

Er(Possible error in some field, to be checked)

4: CODE TABLES

A fair amount of the information is encoded for consistency of reference.

Directors' names are always treated as codes, and many other movie people as

well. Names with out spaces are codes, and can be found in the PEOPLE relation.

Actors names are treated as codes as well, although here first names have

been retained. Many actors can be found in the ACTORS relation.

All movies have been assigned a code by catenating a director's identifier,

found in the PEOPLE relation with sequence digits.

Several code tables appear below, other used are

Remote code tables

-- ROLE-TYPES -- Codes that specify role-types for actors are listed in the preamble for

casts.html ROLES.

Local code tables

4.1 -- FIELD-DESIGNATORS --

These codes are used in certain filed to further identify the contents.

Check this, much changed when moving to HTML.

codedefinition|

T:film title|

T2: redefinition of title in

main.html SYNS.|

T3: title used for locale file in MAIN |

T4: title used for License plate list in MAIN|

T5: title |

T6: title used in

casts.html SAYINGS.|

T6: title used in

quotes.html.|

TS:not sure of actor spellingused in CASTS obsolete |

TZ:title from Movies-dir.html|

TZ:not sure if actor in this filmused in CASTS|

P: producer in PEOPLE|

PN: producer full name not yet classified|

PU: unknown producer not yet classified|

St: listed studionot yet consistent|

SN: studio name|

SU: studio name unknown|

SL: country or city of studio|

SD: distributor old codes: Dtr, Ds, Dis{\Dtr|

R: roleused in CASTS|

RZ: role uncertainused in CASTS|

RU: role unknownused in CASTS|

RN: only name in roleused in CASTS|

RS: spelling of actor's name unsureused in CASTS|

D: ................
................

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