Ah, I was wondering why it was taking so long to get reviewed. Though I totally agree with you.

On brickfilms I have no doubt a movie like "boba fett" would have gotten in. Most of the movies rejected on brickfilms were total garbage... The movies you are rejecting have considerably more merit...

I think the recommendation system is flawed... If you are already recommending movies to the public with "standard" then what is the point of the staff favorites? It seems you are already pretty selective...

Boba Fett was not reject. we have rejected VERY FEW movies, if the reviewer cannot write a positive review about a film it is not visible by default, if someone wanted to find a Star Wars film and searched for Star Wars they would find it.  Why should films that reviewers can't comment positively about be reviewed, aren't people less likely to watch a film with a negative review then one without a review at all?

To clear up some of the confusion of what is and is not rejected or part of the directory I have removed the ability to view pages of films which have not been rated by the staff.  So if you can access the film it has been ACCEPTED.

Films which are unrated will now show a message like this:

Boba Fett DID get in, as Sloth pointed out. I made the call to not place it on the Recommended list for a number of reasons: first off, length has nothing to do with whether or not a film is any good. Boba Fett had a poorly written story; it was nothing but the titular character wandering from room to room somewhere (we have no idea where) doing something (we have no idea what) running into random characters from the Star Wars universe (we have no idea why). The animation was decent, but would you want to watch a wonderful animation of a kid dribbling a basketball for five minutes? The lightsaber blades were well done, but the laser blasts weren't. All voices were either ripped from the original movies or poorly recorded by the same pre-pubescent voice, and this fact was not played for humor like Forrestfire does. Perhaps you found it "very watchable," but I didn't.

The Staff Favorite films are the best of the best, the Recommended films are above average films that are enjoyable to a wide range of viewers, but any film that isn't flat-out terrible is going to be accepted. I'm pretty sure the number of films that have been rejected can be counted on one hand, and I haven't rejected any myself.

Oh, and for the record, I have NEVER been in contact with ANY of the other review panel members directly, instead knowing them only through the forums. So the insinuation that I (or any of the others) got the job merely because I'm a friend of the right person is, to be honest, a little insulting.

you can now rate films from inside the forums as well as see a thumbnail of the film more plans for this.

I agree, as I said the standard to be a recommended film on BiM is slightly higher here than the standard to be accepted was at brickfilms.  But it wasn't rejected.  If somebody wants to see Star Wars films, they can search "Star Wars" in the search bar and 'boba fett' is one of the results.  Having films like that on the front page would not be putting our best foot forward so IMO it is quite reasonable to make it easily searchable or, optionally, viewable on the listing page.  On the whole I would say this system is actually more accepting than the old Brickfilms system because we only reject a very small portion of submissions.

I don't agree with this, I was on the panel for years so I know that we did reject boring/unentertaining videos that were relatively well made from time to time.  I didn't review nearly as many movies as I rejected, and sometimes I would not review a film that didn't need to be rejected so as to leave it for somebody better at writing reviews, so not everyone on the panel back then would have the same idea of how many films were rejected.

As I said I would like to reword "standard," but the idea is that these are some of the best, with the staff favorites being the best of the best, or just personal favorites, for example Weirdears' 'Gold' could be a favorite even though it's not well made.  We've got 64 movies reviewed in the directory, and 7 of them are staff favorites.  That's a pretty big difference.

edit: seems Brian made a post while I was writing this.  Yes, changing 'standard' to 'recommended' was what I had in mind, hopefully that will be changed soon.

Like the thumbnail/rating inside the forum option, and the wording change from Standard to Recommended. Thanks.

Just to further emphasize that second issue, perhaps we could also change the default setting on the Films page to show All Films instead of just the Recommended ones. The front page would still show only Recommended films. Any thoughts?

Last edited by Noodle (May 17, 2009 (06:33pm))

I don't like that idea, personally.  People are likely to click 'films' if they want to see films.  If the default, labeled "All Films" is visible they probably won't even mess with it, if it says "Recommended," they'll know they're not seeing everything and may more readily look to see what the options are if they're interested in that.  The standards are low for acceptance so I'd rather not have everything that gets in publicized on the main films page.

Would you still be arguing this point if the films in question were a Pixar short and Mac & Me? Longer running time does not equal better film.

Aside from one line he recorded for a live-action project of mine, I have never been in contact with Simon. I did not "ok" a movie simply because it was by a "friend." I added a film that I thought was one of the better examples of the biggest brickfilm series to date, for the sake of history as much as for the film's quality itself. I can assure you that I won't be accepting every dictionary film that shows up in the queue, and lousy installments will be graded just as harshly as lousy non-dictionary films.

Last edited by Noodle (May 19, 2009 (12:14am))