Science, Sex and the Ladies Doesn't Fit IMDB's Idea of Docs, But Whatevs
Okay, since this blog is about both ladygasms and making movies (particularly making Science, Sex and the Ladies, of course), I'd like to just take a minute and speak about a tiny something I've been dealing with in relation to the movie. It involves IMDB and how Science, Sex and the Ladies just doesn't fit quite right.
Here's the deal. I added SSL to IMDB (check it here) a while ago, and I go in and update it every now and then. Well, one time I was looking around and went to one of the 3 actors in our movie who have their own IMD pages, and found that they were listed under the category "Self" for their part in SSL - as if they were just talking heads giving the audience expert information or something. After more research than I really wanted to do, I learned from another person on the IMDB message/Q&A boards that if a movie is marked as a documentary, then the default is for all people in the cast to be categorized as if they are appearing in the movie as themselves, and the only way to change that is to add the keyword "Reenactment" to your movie. Long story short, I did it, and after about 2 weeks of waiting for approval, it worked. Ellie Church, Bryan Patrick McCulley, and Joshua Ramsey, are all properly listed as Ensemble Cast Members under the Actor section on their pages.
However, I just want to point out that although I added reenactment as a keyword, I only did it to get our actors categorized properly. There are no reenactments in this movie. Honestly, SSL is not like any documentary I've ever seen, and because of that, it doesn't fit into the mold that is created for docs in IMDB or really anywhere. There are no expert talking heads. There are instead citations to back up the things said in the movie, and there's a full bibliography in the credits. The whole movie is completely scripted and the arguments are made within a series of vignettes using on-screen narrators, voice over narrators and actors. We call this style a "Visual Essay." Barnaby's sister Kora came up with that phrase for a short we did in 2005 called "Ladies and Gentleman We Assume." It was a test short for this movie. We thought she was a genius, and we've been using it ever since. Anyway, the whole ordeal was slightly annoying for me, as is most interactions I have with IMDB. However, I thought you might be very slightly interested, and I'm not sure when I last talked about what Science, Sex, and the Ladies is actually like.
