IMDB? Seriously?
Monday, June 15th, 2009I entered Censored in to a film festival that makes it IMDB appropriate. I didn’t realize that I didn’t have to actually be accepted in to the festival, I just had to submit my short film. So, I get the E-Mail that tells me I can fill out the form to create an IMDB page. I go to IMDB and start the process of filling this thing out. It was the most unnecessarily complicated thing in the history of unnecessarily complicated things I’ve ever seen. First off, every section (even the title) has it’s own guidelines page that’s roughly a page long. Really IMDB? Seriously? We need an entire page explaining how to type in the title? Are they explaining this from the point of your computer being off or what?
“OK, there should be a big power button on your computer, push it and wait for your computer to load. Once it’s loaded, open up Internet Explorer, or Firefox, perhaps Opera, any Internet browser will do. If you’re accessing this site on a cell phone, there may not be a big power button on the front of it. That’s ok, just load up the browser.”
That’s what I pictured when I first saw it. I found it hilarious, because if you were reading that, clearly your computer was already on and the browser was already open. You see what I did there? Jesus, I’m such a clever bastard. Anyway, it’s actually rules and regulations behind each section. It’s somewhat mind numbing. By the end of it your like
“What the fuck?! Am I disarming a nuke?! I just wanted to type in the title!”
It makes you question everything about what you are doing.
“Did I type in the title correctly? Does it meet all the guidelines? It looks good. Can I move on? Is everything ok? Where am I?! What the fuck is going on?! Who am I?!”
It makes you kind of afraid of the next section. And when you get something wrong it like highlights it in red. Which is just as effective as having a person stand there yelling
“You got that wrong you stupid asshole!”
So, after you fill everything out, it gets sent to a representative at IMDB to check over. So I’ll probably get an E-Mail in 2 weeks regarding all the crap I filled out wrong.
Currently, I’m waiting for responses from The Action On Film International Film Festival and Woodstock Film Festival.