The Media Ecology Project shared spreadsheet for the Domitor / Library of Congress pilot project contains 20 fields (columns). Enter metadata for these, using the guidelines below.

If you are in the Film Historiography class, you will receive an e-mail invitation to access a spreadsheet named  MEP_LOC_titles_metadata_FHH2017_SHARED.xlsx

title: Use the title printed on the opening shot of the movie; if none appears, use the title in the copyright catalog. If they differ, note this in the field “alternateTitle.”

date: Year of release; or year of production if release date is not known.

releaseDate: Enter the day and month, or closest documented period (e.g., 25 Feb 1909; Dec 1908; Mar-Jul 1911; ca. 1901. (Default to the DD-MM-YYYY format created by Microsoft Excel.)

copyrightDate: 31-08-1899 (Default to the DD-MM-YYYY format created by Microsoft Excel.)

director: If a director is credited. In the early years of cinema, films did not always have a “director” per se. A camera operator shooting alone will sometimes get a director’s credit in reference books created years later. Before the director-driven studio system developed in the 1910s and 20s, it was not uncommon to have two directors credited on a film. Although the AFI Catalog lists the director of Three American Beauties (1906) as Edwin S. Porter, many other authoritative sources credited Wallace McCutcheon as co-director with Porter. 

producer: Leave this field empty. (For this period of film history the role of the producer was not well defined in the industry. We also did not want this field to be a confusing mix of  (a) names of people who oversaw a movie production and (b) corporate names of production companies.

writer: as credited in primary or reliable secondary sources. If a motion picture is adapted from a literary source, for example, that author’s name will go here, after a film scenarist or scriptwriter (the term used in Kemp Niver’s catalog Early Motion Pictures).

cinematography: Niver uses the term “cameraman.” I would have used “cinematographer” to be consistent with director, producer, writer, actor categories. But “cinematography” is what previous MEP contributors have been using. You may list camera operators other than the head of the camera unit, but that’s optional. Most titles will have one person listed, while a few will have two. 

actors: List any identified performers or people on screen (or on the soundtrack). I would’ve used the term “cast,” since nonfiction recordings are not generally of actors in the conventional sense.

music: if credited. Thus far, none of the silent films supplied by LOC for this project include musical scores or any other sound elements. For other films appearing in MEP classes, you might also find music that is not in official credits but which can be identified. For example, The MIRC note for Fox Movietone News Story 5-679, Massed bands — outtakes; John Philip Sousa conducts selected members of 23 bands in playing “Stars and Stripes.” Edwin Franko Goldman leads band in playing “Young America.”

editor: if credited or known.

synopsis: Paste in any pre-existing synopses, including the Niver “summary.” Other sources might appear in producer-distributor catalogs or trade magazines. Put each found source in quotation marks, followed by a citation of the source in parentheses. List more than one if you locate them. If no existing synopsis is found, create your own based on your viewing of the movie. We are no prescribing specific terms or methods. Do summarize. Don’t describe every shot unless the work is very short.

length: The total running time of the movie in hours, minutes, and seconds. Use the formula that spreadsheets require: 0:08:44. Since the running time will include video added before and/or after the movie itself, you might mention this in the notes section. (“This video file is linked to the LOC webspace for Waterfall in the Catskills (1897) www.loc.gov/item/00694329 . This embedded MP4 is 60 seconds in duration, but the images from Waterfall in the Catskills run only 25 seconds.”)

source: Use only for literary or other sources for a movie’s story or subject. This does not refer to archival sources for the films, nor to citations of printed sources of information about the film.

productionCompany:  Occasionally there might be more than one company to enter.

physicalLength: The length of the film strip. Very often, a film will be issued in more than one length. Where known, list all you can confirm. In this field, you can identify the source of the data. Where needed, clarify what the measurement refers to. The physical length of a 35mm film will usually equal the length of the paper print made from that film. But copyright deposits varied widely; some producers deposited only excerpts or stills. Others only a few frames. Note also that 16mm and 35mm copies of the same film will have different measurements (35mm always longer). List whatever you can verify. If the source says “85 ft.” enter that, even if you do not know the film gauge. If a source lists meters instead of feet, use that. No need to convert the units.

When seeking to understand the relationship between physical length and running time, you can use an online tool, such as this Film Footage Calculator from Scene Savers. (Click here.) It allows you to convert feet of film into minutes and seconds, factoring in both the film gauge (35mm, 16mm, et al.) and speed that the film would be run (through a projector or a camera). A 35mm film that is 85 feet long (running at 16fps) has a duration of 1 minute, 25 seconds.  Other tools do similar work, such as Kodak’s Film Calculator (“Speed, feet, frames, and time”) and Panavision New Zealand (“Film Footage, Frame and Running Time Calculator.” You can also determine if the number of feet you see listed in a catalog is the length of a 16mm print or 35mm print.

subjectHeadingLOC: For items in the LOC catalog, a trained moving image cataloger has assigned “controlled vocabulary” for conventional library descriptions. Copy that information if it exists. Other sources might assign a film with a genre or category, etc. (novelty, scenic, topical, etc.) using non-controlled vocabulary; but only use LOC Subject Headings (LCSH) in this MEP spreadsheet. Where such non-LOC information is useful, enter it in the notes field (e.g., Moving Picture World listed this film under the categories “Educational” and “Travel”). If you want to know about the official Subject Headings developed by LOC, there’s a lot of information here.

citations: Enter citations for the publications in which you found the metadata. Cite as you would in a footnote. Use Chicago Manual of Style. Many titles will have Niver’s catalog listed as well as the Howard Lamarr Walls copyright catalog. For these two citations, you can list the short form: Niver, Early Motion Pictures; Walls, Motion Pictures, 1894-1912. 

alternateTitle: List any published variations on the text in your title field. Even if variations are minor, list them. If translated titles are found, list them. Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, Jan. 7, 1894 (the copyright title) has the alternate titles Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze; Fred Ott’s Sneeze; The Sneeze; and simply Sneeze. Niver and the LOC catalog often identify alternate titles. You will likely encounter other variations in your research. Often sources will omit The, A, or An when listing a title. Or they will simply get a word wrong. Or misspell something. Include even those. Copyright title Circular Panorama of Horse Shoe Falls Winter (Niagara Falls), alternate title Circular Panorama of Horseshoe Falls Winter (Niagara Falls).

notes: Any other facts you find significant. The notes you create for the spreadsheet field can be of any length. There is also a Notes field in the Mediathread platform (click on EDIT THIS ITEM or the pencil icon when viewing a video). You can paste the same notes into both the spreadsheet and the Mediathread entry.

Sometimes, as you know, a source (even library catalogs and well-researched books) will get facts wrong. If you find discrepancies or errors, list whatever is the most reliable information. In the notes field, describe where errors or discrepancies are known. Examples (hypothetical): “Musser credits Porter and McCutcheon as co-directors, but all other sources omit McCutcheon.” “The NYPL catalog mistakenly lists Frank Wilson as director; all other sources credit Gaston Méliès.” “The newsreel catalog describes one of the teams in the 1930 World Series of baseball as the Oakland Athletics. It was the Philadelphia Athletics.”  These need not be in the initial notes you enter into the spreadsheet, but save this information in your off-line work. It will likely be useful in a later report or “composition” you write.