The thing is I don't want to deliberate over the odd background car in a film (I know I have done sometimes, but it's more about proving a point), what I think should stop is films being done where a high percentage or even the majority of vehicles are just 1 star. Borat, which was completed today, contains 69 cars and only 6 have a rating higher than 1 star. Are all those vehicles really that noteworthy since they have so little connection to the action?

I guess that those are cars supposed to be owner by a character in the movie (the one that is in that house ?), so it is "less background" that traffic or parked cars...

J'ai voté oui. Je pense qu'il y a effectivement trop de véhicules d'arrière plan sur le site. Je l'ai dit à maintes reprises. Essentiellement sur des films que j'avais déjà traité, et pollué par d'autres avec des images sans intérêt. Je ne me permets pas d'intervenir sur les films des autres, mais je n'en pense pas moins.
Mais un fois qu'on a voté oui ou non, le problème n'est pas réglé pour autant!
Encore faut-il définir les critères qui font que l'on conservera une image, ou pas.
Personnellement, les images floues, sombres, tronquées, prises de loin donc zoomées par certains, ne devraient pas figurer sur le site. Sauf s'il s'agit de véhicules rares, c'est à dire de véhicules dont nous n'avons pas ou peu d'images sur le site. Je me permets aussi de soulever le problème des images splittées, ou coupées/collées. Je n'y suis pas favorable. J'estime que l'on doit essayer de garder l'intégrité de l'image du réalisateur, en tout cas en image principale (c'est le même argument pour les images zoomées). Par contre, le zonage effectué souvent par Ralph pour montrer de quoi il s'agit, me semble intéressant comme procédé.
Désolé, c'est en français. Antoine, si tu as le courage...

Summary of Bebert's comment:

---

He voted yes, he thinks that there are too many background vehicles, as he often said. Mostly on movies where he added pictures, that were polluted by other pointless pictures. He says that he does not do anything to others' movies (I guess "pictures added by others"?) but ... I cannot translate that French expression (something like "I agree" or "I would do it", hard to explain.
Once voted yes or no, problem is not solved. Criterias have to be defined to chose if a picture will be kept or not.
Personally he does not want blurry, dark, cropped, far & zoomed pictures of some. Except for rare vehicles, i.e. those with not many pictures on the site.
He also mentions that problem of truncated/cropped/splitted pictures, that he does not like (NTD:*).
The whole image should be kept, as the director of the movie wanted it, at least as main picture.
But the area shown in a different contrast as Ralph does it seem interesting.

---

(*) I add a note from myself that I add about cropped/splitted pictures: I only partially agree. I know that some old pictures were splitted because we were not using imageshack thumbnails, but in some cases the car is in a corner of the picture and the rest is really useless, so I still sometimes paste two pictures together with a black line between the two. Especially for non-DVD pictures, that are smaller, and so where I can put the two pictures side by side without having to cut too much of the scenery that is around the car.

About cropped pictures, I think that it may be used in some special cases to prevent to have two duplicated pictures, e.g.: I did it for http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_63323-Saturn-L-Series-2003.html and http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_63324-Chevrolet-Camaro.html
because I wanted to list the Camaro too.
But I agree that it is bad to crop a picture to zoom it just because the car was too small to be mentionned.

Another thing: I think that pasted pictures are find as long as the pasting can be done correctly, or if the car would really not be very visible. And when you watch the movie, your brain generates a "complete" picture that you cannot get as a still image without special tricks Some examples:
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_6808-Ford-Explorer-1996.html -> do you see that it is a pasted picture? there was a guy in front of the red car, but not always at the same place. I cut in the middle of continuous colors, so all the lines or color differences that can be seen are not due to the pasting.
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_28677-Chevrolet-Stylemaster-1947.html => far from being perfect, but I think that it is better than having a car partially covered and then several similar thumbnails. Same for http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_68334-Chevrolet-Master-De-Luxe-1937.html

I would say yes to pasted picture here http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_28677-Chevrolet-Stylemaster-1947.html beacause the finished image shows the complete car and quite clearly but no to http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_68334-Chevrolet-Master-De-Luxe-1937.html because the image still has pieces missing and interference from the arm.

I voted no, unless they are impossble to identify. One thing that I like on this site is trying to identify cars which are hard to see.

When I tried to identify this car http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle.php?id=81474 , I couldn't find what it was at first. I had in mind an AMC Ambassador at first as AMC was already suggested but I took a few minutes searching for pictures with more details as I wasn't sure. Then I thought it could be a 1969 Buick Skylark. After a few minutes, I realized that it was a 1965 Buick just like those I have (I currently have a 1965 Wildcat and a 1965 Electra 225) The grille was clearly from either a LeSabre or an Electra 225 but other pictures provided by Tönz showed other details that confirmed what I first thought. So to me, hard to identify background cars are often the most interesting.

And even details could be interesting as in this post: http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_3023-Buick-Riviera-1973.html
Ben68 posted a picture of gauges shown in the same movie but that didn't correspond to those of a 1973 Riviera. I knew I had seen similar gauges somewhere but it took me a few seconds to notice these were the same as those in my current daily driver, a Jeep Cherokee.

Juste une précision, Antoine.
Concernant les images coupées/zoomées et coupées/collées, je ne dis pas que je suis contre. Je dis simplement, que ce n'est pas respecter le réalisateur et son travail que de charcuter ses images (même quand le raccord est parfait). Qu'on mette ces images bidouillées en commentaire ne me gêne nullement, mais pas en image principale! Et dans le cas ou plusieurs véhicules sont sur la même image, le zonage me semble une bonne solution.

Difficile de se décider (d'autant plus que pour différents problèmes de matériel, je n'ai pas encore posté d'images... ça viendra avec mon prochain ordi!)

Cela dit, le choix d'un cadrage fait très rarement intervenir le hasard. Donc l'image zoomée et redécoupée, dans la mesure où on est un site qui s'intéresse aussi au cinéma, ben... Pas terrible comme manière de rendre hommage au boulot de l'équipe de réalisation. (Mais en commentaire, why not?)

The missing parts were never seen actually. I could have posted three images rather than one with parts pasted together, but I think that such pasting allows an easier identification of the car. But I agree that it does not look very good, that's why I do not do it often.


Oui, mais comme je le disais ça permet de mettre sur le site l'équivalent de ce que le cerveau reconstitue comme image de la voiture.
Si la voiture est loin de la caméra, c'est normal qu'elle soit petite, donc pas besoin de couper/zoomer. Et la découpe/zoom ne montre pas grand chose de plus, contrairement au collage de plusieurs morceaux.
Si des personnages sont tout le temps devant, c'est pas spécialement une "volonté" du réalisateur je pense. Comme le site référence les voitures c'est normal, je pense, d'un peu tricher pour mieux montrer la voiture.

I think maybe yesterday I was coming across as being too strict and trying limit backgrounds too much.

Stuff like this http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle.php?id=81474 is fine because it seems to be set up part of the scenery. I just don't like see all all these passing traffic cars in cities and stuff just sitting parked (unless it fills the frame).
Take these two for example:

http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_43124-Buick-Century-Riviera-1957.html

http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_79248-Freight-Rover-Sherpa-300-Series-1984.html

Just to be awkward, I couldn't disagree more with this idea. Of course no-one agrees on what cars are 'important' enough to remain in the database: different people demand different levels of detail from a resource like this. The only certain way forward is to include literally every piece of data you find, as the more detail you include, the more interesting paths you can navigate through the information. For example, you could find out whether the breakdown of cars spotted in films reflects that of the time, or if the choice of vehicles has been somewhat 'stylised'. If you isolate all the cars used in back-projections (say, in Breakfast At Tiffany's or any number of Rock Hudson films), you could even find out whether some footage reappears from film to film. Deleting cars would be a fool's errand simply because you don't know what uses the database could be put to in future.

A neutral resource, such as a database, loses all worth once an editorial hand is introduced to prune its contents. It would allow all sorts of agendas and vested interests to bubble up, and forfeit its reputation as an exhaustive and impartial list. After all, isn't that the point of the star-rating? Of course there will be a disproportionate number of one-star cars, as that end of the list is more given to reporting the historical kerbscape. As a consequence, it's possibly more interesting than the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang end of things.

If the database is beginning to take up too much server space, how about buying more and establishing a paid membership, in the manner of Movie Mistakes? Their membership costs ten American dollars per year, and members are rewarded with all sorts of perks. Maybe a similar system could work here?

I do not think, that payed membersi?hip is a good idea - as the pictures are still properties of the respective movie companies, I do not think we should make a profit out of them - that will be illegal imho.

Currently the hosting is paid by the Google ads, it won't be a money problem to move to a bigger server (as the current one is not the cheapest one anyway).

The goal of the site was not to list every car visible in a movie, but the cars that had a role in a movie. This was extented to background cars, but I think it is better to keep limits on that. In the same way, we didn't extend to games (unlike IMDB), and didn't extend to trains, planes or boats.
The only mistake was to extend the site to cartoons and computer-generated cars

All three car are OK for me.

Background vehicle might be useful for the person who saw the movie and tries to examine it.

Well, not making a profit, so much as remaining afloat. After all, Movie Mistakes has been running on pretty much the same basis as the IMCDb for years, with timecodes and screenshots and contibutions spanning film history, and I don't think they've ever had legal problems. The people who run it are also quite restless, coming up with all sorts of creative ways of expanding the site and displaying the mistakes. In the past few years they've added a Book Mistakes offshoot, a list of supposedly 'perfect' films, sections devoted to easter eggs and quotations, and even a few illustrative YouTube videos. This goes back to what I was saying about the need for an exhaustive database: the tiniest, most unexpected bits of data could cause you to notice odd things that grow into richer content for paying members. For example, anomalies such as cars in disguise (the Renault Alpine in Eldorado turning into Triumph TR7 before it explodes; the Aston Martin DB4 in The Italian Job suddenly becoming a Lancia Appia for the second take of its plunge into the gorge; the Buick Riviera with Jeep Cherokee instruments in Red Rock West) or some timeline feature where you pinpoint the first time a particular car appeared onscreen (just looking at the Reliant page, it's amazing to see how Regals were acceptable background vehicles in the seventies, before suddenly beoming a figure of fun in Only Fools And Horses. There's a feature in that, surely?). Coming up with interesting ways to use this exhaustive resource shouldn't be too difficult, or illegal. Since cars and films are both pretty broad in their appeal, there could be loads of takers. The memberships would fund all these excursions into presentation, which would attract more members, and so on.

EDIT: Damn, I should really have refreshed before posting all that. Do you not think, antp, that any distinctions as to what contitutes a film 'rôle' would end up being arbitrary and unnecessary? Maybe those who would rather not see pages of background vehicles could have an option to turn off one-star-rated cars?

In response to LeboviciAB84's post, the question one needs to ask about this site is is it our purpose to list any car that ever passed in front of a camera lens in the field of commercial visual entertainment (films, television, videos, DVDs), no matter how minor it's appearance is, or to focus an cars that are used in films in an interesting way? I think truth is the site was originally meant for the latter, to look at cars that are used in an entertaining, interesting way in films, but it's becoming more and more comprehensive, now we listed almost any kind of free-roaming land vehicle (ie. not trains) that a person can use to travel in.

"you don't know what uses the database could be put to in future."

Well, what kind of purpose are you thinking of? I don't think this is meant to be a deeply academic site (although we do discuss and provide a lot of detailed automotive information) that's trying to examine the sociological influence of cars or trying to examine modern history by looking at cars, more of an entertaining movie vehicle encyclopedia for those who have a passion for cars. Am I right?

I was planning to add such option, but that does not change the fact that I think that there should be a limit on which background cars are included

It is also a mistake to have document movies which have no IMDB number...

Depends which ones. Some are worth listing I think (like those about Aston Martin, etc.)
Others are less interesting IMHO (e.g. the one about the Dakar), but may still have some interest for some people.
The problem with cartoons and CGI is that these are not "real" cars.
Well, that's another debate, there are already enough things to say about background cars

Well, the database can be used as light entertainment, just as an almanac or atlas can. But I certainly think it should be as rigorous as possible, otherwise it loses any claim to its sole purpose, which is as a list of onscreen vehicles that aspires towards being exhaustive. If we know that only, say, ninety per cent of cars will be accepted, then the database could lose a lot of its credibility. Besides, there is a lot of fun reading involved discussions about the identity of certain cars.

Of course the database itself isn't academic: it's a neutral resource that has no tone or style. Those arise from the different uses that the administrators are prepared to put it to: whether trivial, sociological or even just arising from a curious story in the film's production. And with a list of (theoretically) every onscreen vehicle of all time, surely there are hundreds of interesting ways to collate it, study it, pick out trends and oddities?