Buena Vista Entertainment (a partner?) of ABC Domestic Television (a unit of the Walt Disney Company) has digitized and made available online all movie reviews from its show Siskel & Ebert (later Ebert & Roeper). The site claims to be the most comprehensive video archives of movie reviews on the Web. It hosts more than five thousand movie reviews spanning over twenty years.
I could not find any information about this digitization project on the website itself. This includes the date the project was carried out, the team involved, and the selection decisions. However, I did Google the project and found more information. The site was launched just two months ago, and includes all reviews of the last 20+ years. They seem to have bypassed having to make selection decisions by digitizing everything. I assume that this is made possible by online advertisements and the “Buy the DVD” option next to each review.
Each movie review is accompanied by metadata concerning the film being reviewed. This includes three categories of brief information – Info, Synopsis, and Cast & Crew. In addition, under “Info” for each review is an image of the movie poster and users can also view the movie trailer. Users can search for films by actor, director, or movie title. The videos themselves are presented in Flash Player, probably for copyright purposes. The quality is not fantastic, but the resolution seems satisfactory for the general public. The screen size is about 4.5” by 3”.
I assume the audience for this archive is the general public. As mentioned earlier, this may account for the lack of any information about the project. They may have assumed that the general public is not particularly interested in the process of digitization that went into creating this website. The navigation and search tools are easy-to-use and the comprehensiveness of the site ought to make it attractive to many movie buffs.
I could not find any information about this digitization project on the website itself. This includes the date the project was carried out, the team involved, and the selection decisions. However, I did Google the project and found more information. The site was launched just two months ago, and includes all reviews of the last 20+ years. They seem to have bypassed having to make selection decisions by digitizing everything. I assume that this is made possible by online advertisements and the “Buy the DVD” option next to each review.
Each movie review is accompanied by metadata concerning the film being reviewed. This includes three categories of brief information – Info, Synopsis, and Cast & Crew. In addition, under “Info” for each review is an image of the movie poster and users can also view the movie trailer. Users can search for films by actor, director, or movie title. The videos themselves are presented in Flash Player, probably for copyright purposes. The quality is not fantastic, but the resolution seems satisfactory for the general public. The screen size is about 4.5” by 3”.
I assume the audience for this archive is the general public. As mentioned earlier, this may account for the lack of any information about the project. They may have assumed that the general public is not particularly interested in the process of digitization that went into creating this website. The navigation and search tools are easy-to-use and the comprehensiveness of the site ought to make it attractive to many movie buffs.
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