Dan's Screen Shot Movie Quiz Faq

What?	Dan Balogh's Screen Shot Movie Quiz is an internet-based game, where four screen images are presented each week. Based only on these images, you must guess each movie's title. Normally, at the end of each month, there is a bonus question, concerning some feature which the movies have in common. For example, they may all feature the same actor, be directed by the same person, etc. Sometimes this is helpful, and other times it can lead you down a blind alley. The more difficult the movie is to guess, the higher its point value. In the event of a tie, the older movie is scored higher. Participant scores are accumulated over the month. Only those with the top 3 scores are counted in the annual tally of film scholars. The game is now into its third year. It was originally conceived around September of 1996. Dan B. says it started when he began posting screen snapshots, challenging his friends to guess the names of the movies. Last year when I stumbled across his site, I thought I knew a lot about films. Well, as the past year, has proven, I still don't know jack, but I'm fairly young and hopefully improving with time. Some of the tips and techniques other people have taught me are summarized in this FAQ. Dan also maintains his own FAQ, with interesting thoughts on how he views the game. Some folks have been playing close to three years. Erik Nelson is the all-time champ, but other good players pop in every now and then. One of them, Sheila Frankenstein, is either (a) Dan's wife or (b) Pauline Kael. I have a feeling that some other ringers are video clerks. No one knows so many movies, not even museum curators. As for the Why? - this is not a simple-minded quiz. People do not play it for a quick thrill, since it forces you to think quite extensively about the context of a shot, the plot, and the actors. I've learned about many great movies from his site, some that I might have passed over in this life time. For instance, Michael Powell's I Know Where I'm Going! is a great movie that most members of my generation are not even aware of. Amazingly, even the voting body of the British Film Institute (BFI) have not given the movie its proper recognition in their list of 100 best UK movies.
When?	The quizzes are posted on his web site every Saturday evening, after 11:30 PM, Eastern Time.
Where?	The URL is http://www.openix.com/~danb/quiz.shtml. You may ask, why is the extension of this URL shtml vs htm or html. In the past, his server supported SSI, which allowed his page to be updated automatically with the Time of Day, and a counter. Since Openix got rid of that interface, the page name extension could just as well be converted to htm or html. However, his URL is on so many other websites that changing the name would create broken links or force him to do a page re-route.
Answers	As a courtesy to other players, do NOT ever post answers to the current week's quiz. Quiz answers for the previous week are posted on Sunday, normally after 12:00 AM. As far as I know, no one (including Dan) archives previous shots and answers on the Web (see below, however). This would be useful for historical purposes.
The Past	"Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them." Except in rare instances, he does not repeat movies. Thus, all players are advised to download a list of movies which have previously been used on his site. In July 1999, the films, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Body Double, and Kalifornia were featured when I was a guest host. Another cool guest host is Matthew Kiernan. The only films I remember Dan repeating in 1999 are Dinner at Eight and Bonnie and Clyde. They were used at the end-of-the-month as part of his bonus question quiz. He advises me that he has used a dozen films twice, over the past 3 years.
Speed Kills	Each contest lasts an entire week (except when he goes on vacation, and announces an early deadline). There is no need to submit answers right away, especially if they are wrong. He does accept joke guesses, which are funny parodies of the screen shots. For example, "A Room with a View to a Kill" is a funny title for the shot in Viva Villa! where the Wallace Beery character (Pancho Villa) is assassinated by gunmen from a second story window. Wendy La Tulippe is my favorite jokester. What a name! I hope she's cute. After a year of playing this game, I thought it was time to begin collecting Funny Screen Shot Titles, so check it out.
IMDB Quandary	Dan B. clearly states: "Welcome to the first internet quiz to use actual shots from movies, which makes looking up the answers in the Internet Movie Database impossible." The word impossible should actually be changed to difficult. IMDB should be used as a research tool. Although the plot summaries are pitiful (too many adjectives, not enough nouns), there are several other ways it can prove useful. First, IMDB is an Amazon affiliate. Thus, if a movie is currently available on video, then the box cover will be shown on their site. The films, Victim (with Dirk Bogarde and Sylvia Syms) and Les Biches (with Stephane Audran and Jacqueline Sassard) have box covers that look nearly identical to the shots he selected in 1999. Use IMDB's actor search engine to put together a list of possible movies that fit a screen shot. If you don't know the performers, do a genre search at Ken Cranes (aka DVD Planet). Certain movies like Last Year at Marienbad definitely look like foreign films. Both Ken Cranes and IMDB also tell you the aspect ratios of many movies. The aspect ratio (width to height) does not tell you that a movie is the correct answer, but it does tell you that a movie is the wrong answer. You can search IMDB for 1.66:1, 1.78:1, 1.85:1, and 2.35:1 movies by clicking on the given links. Modify these links for other aspect ratios, if necessary. Another useful resource for looking up aspect ratios is Tom Orlofsky's Laser Disc Register (this you have to pay for). There are some discrepancies in his database (e.g., Kurosawa's Ran is purported to be in 1.85:1, whereas Ken Cranes says it's 2.35:1). Beware, however, that some movies are offered in more than one widescreen format (i.e., The Truman Show is available in 1.66:1 and 1.85:1). Aspect ratios of recently released DVDs are most easily found by perusing DVD Advance, a magazine published by Schwann, or paying a visit to DVD Express or Ken Cranes. If you're home bound, or don't like to drive to video stores, you might try Image Entertainment's brand new web site, DVD Planet. This is the only site on the web to offer large size images of the front and back of DVD movie packages. The images are large and clear enough to even read the word descriptions of the movies. They also have plans to offer streaming videos from certain films.
Get the Picture?	A picture is indeed worth a thousand words, especially when it comes to playing this game. Here, the Public Library is your primary source of help. Citadel Press has published over 200 books about movies, actors, and directors. These books are chock full of screen images from thousands of movies. Some Citadel Press books I frequently consult: Films of Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn, Alfred Hitchcock, Films of the 60's, 70's, and 80's, etc. In any good library, you will also find the New York Times Film Reviews, and an index to films prior to 1968. The latter book contains several thousand mug shots of key actors and actresses. Cinemania, a Microsoft CD ROM, is also a great source of performer photos, as well as movie images. Although out-of-print, this is the one indispensable encyclopedic reference that every movie fan must have.
Self - Improvement	Follow the link at left for an analysis of snapshots from the PAST, and how you could have guessed them.
Practice	There aren't too many good screen shot games on the Web, probably because it's such a pain to maintain this type of site and add new content. However, Mr. Moviegame of AOL's Guess Movie By Plot fame, does feature a rather unique self-scoring game each month for his friends. Use Internet Explorer as a browser, since Netscape will not display the aspect ratios of widescreen pictures correctly. Playing against him at GMBP is like trying to bat against Randy Johnson. A lightning-fast typist, only speed-readers need apply. A real pro, he's given me quite a few tips on how to identify a movie from a screen image, or plot element (e.g., a hat on a bed- that would be Drugstore Cowboy). A number of other newsgroup regulars (thank you nimrod) have also given me a lot of useful advice and information. If you want to know where the smart people hang out, try the newsgroup rec.arts.movies.past-films.
His Favorites	No two people have the same viewing habits, and in the case of Mr. Dan, you absolutely have to know the kinds of movies he will or will not do. As a boomer, he is fixated on Doris Day. Visit Robbie's Doris Day Site and learn Doris's movies! The Films of Doris Day by Christopher Young (published by Citadel) is also a great reference, if you can obtain it. On eBay, this usually fetches the highest auction price ($285), for some reason. If you think Doris is too rich for your blood, you should see what Hedy Lamarr's book is fetching ($197)! You must purchase a copy of The Films of Joan Crawford, which is available used, for a very fair price. He loves Joan, maybe obsessively. In case you've been sleeping for the past 6 months, notice that he features a silent film every now and then. Take a trip to the Silents Majority and Silent Movies sites, for a real education. Forget about certain indie movies such as Mystery Train, Night on Earth, Living in Oblivion, etc. For some reason, he also has not gotten to SF gems like Blade Runner, Dark City, Men in Black, and so on. MIB had a great feline shot that might have been included on his Cat Quiz (an excellent theme quiz, nevertheless). Of course, I don't rule out such movies for eventual inclusion on his site. The dude is a laserdisc freak, so you probably have to know if a movie is available on laser or DVD before even thinking about submitting an answer. In fact, most of the really good players seem to be heavy duty laserdisc owners. To paraphrase Morgan Freeman in Kiss the Girls, "These guys are collectors". I compiled a list of 7000+ laserdiscs/ dvd's extracted from Cinemania and other sources (up to 1996), but the most complete list is available only from Orlofsky (see above). Even Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever 2000 is nowhere as complete. IMDB also has a number of glaring omissions in their database. Some caveats concerning the Cinemania list. When you unzip it, you will set that the file is organized as series of lines, each one containing six columns of data (title, year, country, color, genre(s), and media). Certain movies which were shot in Color and B&W can be identified with this listing (alas, only a paltry 27). However, if you wish to know of more color combo movies (224 to be exact), just go here. You should be able to import the Cinemania list file into a spreadsheet as a tab-delimited file. The listings beyond 1995 are sparse (not complete). Tom Orlofsky's database contains (roughly) 2 times as many movies. Unfortunately, with the base version of his program, you only get to see them one at a time, thus it's difficult to do any sophisticated year, genre, or other type of search with his Access-based program. I can understand his reservations about someone reverse engineering his database, and publishing it for free.
Dan Futures	Here I will post shots I think he will do in the future. Come closer, and peer into my crystal ball ...
Super Quiz	I sense that the top players are loathe to volunteer as guest hosts, given the fact that they would lose 10 points (in a given week) by doing so. I have a possible remedy for this situation. Dan should create a Quad-Host Quiz, featuring five shots. Four players would submit one shot each (hopefully, something fiendishly difficult). Dan supplies the 5th shot. The two easiest pictures are worth 1 point. The next three are worth 2, 3, or 4 points, depending on difficulty. The maximum total score would be capped at 10. Thus, guest hosts would not have to guess their own movies (which would be unethical, anyway), and they could still finish the week with a high score. To everyone: write the quiz master (danb@openix.com) and demand a Super Bowl Quiz!
More Advice	This space is reserved for future comments from the quizmaster and other players. In particular, if you were able to guess a tricky movie without ever having seen it, then send me (zharpomarx@aol.com) a note describing how you figured it out. Maybe we can set up a web page on film archaeology or forensics (wouldn't that be cool!).

Dan's Screen Shot Movie Quiz FAQ