Talk:A Midsummer Night's Rave/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 20:30, 20 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting topic. Happy to offer a review. Josh Milburn (talk) 20:30, 20 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ok; this is tricky, but I am inclined to think that this article needs to be written more like a film article. There's nothing stopping a film article having a lot of scholarly content and focussing on scholarly issues, but it still needs to cover the basics of the film itself, rather than being solely about the film as an adaptation/discussion of the film in scholarly contexts. We have an MOS page on how to write film articles, and FAs on film articles can be useful: Persuasion (1995 film), Pride & Prejudice (2005 film), Sense and Sensibility (film), or The Turn of the Screw (2009 film) might provide some inspiration (the Austen adaptation articles were written by Ruby2010; the other was mine). So, specifically:

We are lacking any information about the film's development. Where was it filmed, and when, and how? Who was involved? What companies? What was the inspiration? Casting? And so on.
The plot section is underdeveloped; we need a full description of the plot (WP:MOSFILM recommends 300 to 700 words). This section probably won't refer to the original play at all; details about how the plot does or does not mirror/relate to the play (or other films) belongs in some other section; perhaps an analysis section, or in the production section. Don't worry about finding references from the plot. Just record it; the film serves as its own reference.
We don't have anything about the release; was it a cinematic release? Select film festivals? TV? Has there been a subsequent DVD release? Other formats?
Perhaps you could include the DVD cover (or similar) in the infobox?

A few other comments:

You have some pretty long quotes; you could consider splitting them up, paraphrasing, or using blockquotes.
"A more positive take appears in the book Visual Media for Teens (2009), which in its chapter on "'Issues of Identity' Films" recommends A Midsummer Night's Rave with the description" Author?
"Similarly, Joss Whedon as Shakespearean Moralist: Narrative Ethics of the Bard and the Buffyverse (2014) lists it" Again, perhaps you could attribute the view to the author rather than the book?

What's here is, of course, good; but the focus seems to be strongly skewed towards academic analysis of the film. I'm all for that in our film articles, but there's got to be a balance! At the moment, this really doesn't read like an article about a teen film, to the point that I think some readers might literally miss that that's what the article is about! Anyway- I'll leave the review open for now; I await your response. If you're happy that you can expand the article based on the comments above, we can keep it open. Josh Milburn (talk) 21:05, 20 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review, Josh!

The reason it lacks the typical movie-article aspects you call out is primarily that I was unable to find coverage of those aspects: the coverage of it skews academic more than popcultural. Or put another way, this movie is so small and obscure that it probably wouldn't have met GNG except that it happens to have caught some attention as an exemplar among Shakespeare scholars. I actually came to the article while cleaning up List of William Shakespeare screen adaptations, expecting to AfD it but ending up rewriting and expanding it instead.

The, admittedly rather long, quotes are compressed about as much as I was able, and for a lot of them it seems inappropriate to paraphrase (both movie critics and the heavily academic criticism use language that defies easy paraphrase and summary). I might be able to use more blockquotes, but as a stylistic matter I find those tend to make the text too incoherent and "jagged". But it might be possible to split them up somewhat, and that exercise might point up new opportunities for paraphrasing as well.

I'm just back (and not yet caught up) after travelling and being effectively offline for a few weeks, so if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to take a day or two to look into the issues you have identified and whether or not I think those are fixable? --Xover (talk) 06:36, 21 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to wait. I appreciate that a lack of sources may be a problem, but sometimes there are ways around that. For example, the plot summary and the DVD cover can be done without sourcing, and a few lines of production (who was involved, for example) and release (dates, companies, formats) can often be pulled together from reviews, primary sources and database entries. I'm happy to help if that would be useful, but I haven't seen the film! Josh Milburn (talk) 08:00, 21 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Help is always appreciated! And you may have a better grasp of relevant sources and databases for a film article than I do, so you may be able to find things I missed. --Xover (talk) 08:49, 21 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@J Milburn: My apologies for a late response. I've had a chance to look into this now, and I conclude that the smaller more specific issues can probably be addressed, but the larger more fundamental issues are potentially unsolvable, and with my available wikitime for the near future I certainly won't be able to address them in any reasonable hold time for a GA nom. I therefore suggest you close this as failed, and I'll be sure to renom if at some point I am able to address the concerns you've raised. Thanks for the review though; it was very useful and much appreciated!

The issue is quite simply that the sources aren't available to fill in the aspects that are missing. I might have been able to cobble together some slim, token, sections on production and so forth (companies involved, etc., from databases like IMDB), but it'd skirt dangerously close to SYN and OR and still have very little meat to them. As mentioned, I think this reflects the lack of interest in this movie from the "film" communities (critics, pop culture, industry) and disproportionate, but still relatively small, amount of attention from the "Shakespeare" communities.

And it certainly doesn't help that I've not been able to find the movie available for streaming anywhere, so the plot summary (your assessment of which I certainly agree with) will have to remain based on other sources' plot summaries until I can dig a copy up somewhere (it used to be on Netflix in some territories, but it seems to have expired).

In any case... I'll try to fix the smaller issues as time allows, and keep an eye out for sources for the bigger issues. Thanks again for taking the time to do the review (I'll try to make sure your effort wasn't wasted)! --Xover (talk) 09:26, 23 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, no problem, I'll go ahead and close the review. It does look like the DVD is available for mere pennies on Amazon, so maybe that would be an option. As a general rule with the occasional exception (e.g., lost films), I think someone who hasn't seen a particular film will always have a tough time bringing its article to GA status. The topic is an interesting one, so I do hope you're able to get hold of a copy and give it a push back towards GAC in the future! Josh Milburn (talk) 15:19, 23 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]