Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (films)

Requesting Opinions

I've started a discussion at Talk: Wes Craven's New Nightmare#Title regarding the page name. Please come provide your opinions.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 01:20, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Precision

Following this discussion, perhaps it would be an idea for the guideline to make note of WP:PRECISION with regard to disambiguating page titles? PC78 (talk) 17:01, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC

I think it might be wise to note WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in the "Between films of the same name" section, as it appears some people are ignoring it and making unneeded disambig pages between two films. (e.g. The Day the Earth Stood Still). Harry Blue5 (talk) 13:08, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the example you just gave is exactly where there should be disambiguation - both are high profile movies, and The Day the Earth Stood Still (film) could equally apply to either movie, so there is not a clear primary topic here. Interestingly, the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC page that you mention specifically cites Solaris (1972 film) in one of its examples - a similar case to the one you mention. Rob Sinden (talk) 13:21, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

You're right, my bad. But I still think that it should that WP:PRIMARYTOPIC should be mentioned. Harry Blue5 (talk) 13:32, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Strangely enough, this topic (and this film, among others) is discussed above. Rob Sinden (talk) 14:21, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I think that the naming conventions here need to explicitly note that one film might be the primary topic for an ambiguous title, even if there are other films with the title. Then only the non-primary-topic films need to be disambiguated using the (YYYY film) format (whether the primary topic is a film or some other topic, such as Stagecoach), and the primary topic would be placed or left at the base name. For example, there's The Ladykillers/The Ladykillers (2004 film) and Miracle on 34th Street/Miracle on 34th Street (1994 film) as examples of this practice. If tomorrow someone announced a remake of On the Waterfront, for instance, I would not want to see the current primary topic bumped to On the Waterfront (1954 film) just because. The discussions in the move requests for Talk:The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 film)/Archive 1#Requested move August 2008, Talk:The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 film)/Archive 1#Requested move, and Talk:The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 film)/Archive 1#Move seem to assume that any ambiguity in film titles must result in all titles for those films being disambiguated. (I noted too that there are still cases in the wild that use "(film)" for the supposed primary film: The Postman Always Rings Twice (film) vs. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981 film).) -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with what you say here, which pretty much goes along with what Erik says in the earlier discussion. However, there could be some debate as to which is the primary topic, especially when the remake starts to come close to the popularity of or in some cases overshadows the original (as per The Day the Earth Stood Still or The Crazies above), but the logic is sound. I guess in these cases common sense will prevail and the necessary disambiguations will be made. In any case, on this basis, The Postman Always Rings Twice (film) needs to be moved. Rob Sinden (talk) 15:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I was actually considering updating these guidelines to talk about the primary topic a little more. I think Harry makes a good point about The Day the Earth Stood Still. While the 2008 film's article is more popular than the 1951 film's, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC says that an exception can be made for topics of educational value. I think in the scope of film, it has high "educational value", which can make it an exception. In other cases like The Crazies films, though, there's no real contender when neither article is much more trafficked than the other. Erik (talk | contribs) 17:54, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Article traffic and Google Web searches are two of the tools in the toolbox. Things like Google Book searches and Google Scholar searches are also in the toolbox, and they point to the educational value of the 1951 film. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:09, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Capitalizing conjunctions

The article states that each word in the title takes an initial capital, except "...coordinating conjunctions shorter than five letters". It then gives several examples, including "about", which is not capitalized. Although I have no reliable sources, the word "about" appears to contain exactly five letters, not fewer, and should therefore be capitalized. Is this a fencepost error, and if so, what is the correct rule? Cwelgo (talk) 22:10, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, that edit was made in 2007 for reasons not described in the edit summary. It's simple math that 5 is not less than 5 so "about" does not belong on this list. Nearly all existing articles capitalize the A in About for films, songs, television episodes, books, etc. Not capitalizing the A sets Wikipedia against the "official" capitalization of essentially every film that uses "About" in its title. - Dravecky (talk) 00:00, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Request for Comment

There is a discussion about what the proper name for the page should be for A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. The poster says "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge", but the actual film says "A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge". There is also another suggestion of just making it "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2" Please see the discussion at Talk:A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge#Move?  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 06:08, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

"Just Go with It"

Do we really have to call this article Just Go with It instead of Just Go With It? Does anyone else think that looks quite weird? Theoldsparkle (talk) 23:36, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Why wouldn't we? "with" is a short preposition and is lowercased. BOVINEBOY2008 23:41, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

He's right; see MOS:CAPS#Composition titles: "The first letter in the other words is also capitalized, except for... prepositions (of, to, in, for, on, with)..." I know it looks weird, though! :) Erik (talk | contribs) 00:27, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Shouldn't the official title of the film take precedence over the style guideline which is stressed that such guideline "will have occasional exceptions"? —Mike Allen 02:44, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes we have made exceptions to oddities in titles before as with BASEketball. But we usually check multiple things like the poster, the opening and/or closing credits, the official website for the film if there is one, etc. before proceeding. Off the top of my head the one that we didn't follow through with is Lindsay Anderson's film if... (If...) but - my understanding is - that is because wikisoftware won't allow and article to begin with a lower case letter. MarnetteD | Talk 03:54, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree that BASEketball is the kind of occasional exception we'd have. It's just that the title Just Go with It has a selection of words that doesn't give it a good flow. There's usually a aesthetic-seeming "dip" in letter case (e.g., Gone with the Wind), but here, we have two-letter words in title case that punctuate. Erik (talk | contribs) 14:17, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia convention vs. official capitalisation

What do we do when the official capitalisation differs from our conventions? See Bahrain: Shouting in the dark and its talk page for a recent example. --The Evil IP address (talk) 14:36, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I have participated in discussions on capitalization conventions for foreign films and it seems that the consensus in those cases developed around the idea that we should use our conventions instead of importing outside conventions. On WP, our style is WP. In the above example, 'dark' should be upper case per MOS:CT. --Ring Cinema (talk) 15:59, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Filmographies that are entirely composed of foreign-language films

I am working on transwikiing a bunch of articles from the German Wikipedia on Nazi-era producers and actors. Each of these articles has a filmography with a list of German films with German titles. Some examples are de:Otto Lehmann (Filmproduktionsleiter), de:Albert Florath, de:Peter Paul Brauer and de:Eugen Klöpfer. I noticed that the English Wikipedia article on Veit Harlan has a filmography with only the German-language titles of the films without any English translation. That seems to violate the guideline presented on this page. Most of the films mentioned in the filmographies that I want to bring over are not known to English-language speakers except a few that are known as their German titles. It seems to me that the appropriate approach would be to present the German language title first and then follow it up with the English title in parentheses.

Any thoughts on whether that is the appropriate thing to do here?

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 19:32, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation of TV films

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film#Disambiguation between feature films and TV films regarding the disambiguation of television films; Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television) advocate making a distinction between TV films and feature films, but the reasons and the criteria for when to do this are not clear. The naming conventions for television films ideally need to be reconciled with the naming conventions for films, so any opinions on this would be welcome. Betty Logan (talk) 17:59, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Movie vs Book

Because of Miracle on 34th Street (1947 novel), which I had remebered reading but which was not mentioned in the project page, I don't think "Miracle on 34th Street" is a good example. I came here to get guidance, but the example that was supposed to guide me left out an important aspect, i.e., the existence of the 1947 novel on which the 1947 film was based.

My question is really, what do you do if there are movie and book versions of the same story? Or, anyway, movie(s) and book(s) with the same title, but different years or same years?

Is it, use the year without 'book' or 'film' whenever possible? Or do we just go ahead and say '1947 film' and '1995 film' even though there was only one "Miracle on 34th Street" in 1995? --Uncle Ed (talk) 03:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

If no one can answer this, I'm planning to move the 1947 movie to Miracle on 34th Street (1947 film); and the book stub I made today to Miracle on 34th Street (novel). This way, the book will be "primary" and hence need no year; each film will have a year and the word 'film'. Is this going by the convention? --Uncle Ed (talk) 03:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed at WP:RM: Bande à part (film) → Band of Outsiders

A discussion [and ultimate vote] of interest to participants is taking place at Talk:Bande à part (film).—Roman Spinner (talk) 07:57, 3 February 2012 (UTC)