DVD Library

[CSM126]

CSM, even with my, er, "system", I still occasionally have an "Oh, forgot I bought that" moment, which I'd bet you might as well...

Oh yeah. It’s fun sometimes, especially if I find something that’s still a kevyip. Bought that four years ago, guess I should watch it!

[therewillbeblus]

Is there anyone who organizes by genre and then director?

Director trumps genre for me. For example, my noir section is missing the Premingers, because I have a director section for him - so Angel Face, Whirlpool, Laura, etc. are chronological in his area. I don’t have a Billy Wilder section, so Double Indemnity is with noirs. Like hearthesilence and apparently Glenn Kenny, I only organize by auteurs who I’d be in the mood to see a film from specifically, and would look to the director to find a film. Capra wouldn’t be one of those. Neither is Kurosawa - I’m not usually in the mood for a “Kurosawa-movie” - despite owning enough that'd warrant a space by sheer number. I only have genre sections for noir and musicals though, and the rest are alphabetical (some sub-sectioned by label, some not; again it depends. My system is confusing to anyone but me.)

[TechnicolorAcid]

Is it okay if I sort by Director and then Color?

[Finch]

I go by year and alphabetical order each year. If it's a box set it goes into the year that the oldest title is from. The oldest title right now is J'Accuse from 1919 on Flicker Alley's DVD, followed by Radiance's new Haxan edition. The newest titles are Robot Dreams from last year and Twilight of the Warriors Walled In from this summer.

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, going by director also made more sense when I looked at music - if you records are typically done by recording artist (or composer for classical music), who not director for films?

[Peacock]

Like Finch, I go chronologically with the earliest main feature title deciding where the entire box goes. I would love to go by director but there’s too many boxsets with mixed directors that it would be hard to know where to place them. Unlike Finch though I don’t display my DVD collection aside from some tv titles in my tv series selection. And possibly half of my collection is a kevyip so I have one side dedicated to separated English language films I’ve seen before but not watched the Blu, English language films I’ve never seen before, foreign films I’ve seen before but not watched the Blu and foreign films I’ve never seen before.

Sometimes I see photos in this thread where people group discs by label and get jealous of how nice it looks. There’s really no perfect way to arrange everything it seems.

[HJackson]

FWIW, going by director also made more sense when I looked at music - if you records are typically done by recording artist (or composer for classical music), who not director for films?

I do think the connection between recording artist and album is much stronger than that between director and film. If I met somebody who liked Abbey Road but didn't know it was a Beatles album, I'd think there was something seriously wrong with them - but I wouldn't have the same feeling about somebody who loved Casablanca but had never heard of Michael Curtiz. Which is why films are arranged alphabetically in shops while albums are organised by recording artist (and novels are organised by author.)

Of course we're all cinephiles here so we'd be more comfortable navigating a collection organised by director, but I still think there's a discrepancy. There isn't a single album I own where I couldn't tell you immediately who the recording artist is, but there are no doubt hundreds of films in my collection where I'd be stumped. There are even major films where I wouldn't necessarily bet on myself to know the director. I was trying to think of an example and came to The Wizard of Oz - my instinct was Victor Fleming which was correct, but I wouldn't have bet money on it and I don't think it would make sense to organise my movies in such a way that I need to go to "F for Fleming" to pull out The Wizard of Oz.

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, going by director also made more sense when I looked at music - if you records are typically done by recording artist (or composer for classical music), who not director for films?

I do think the connection between recording artist and album is much stronger than that between director and film. If I met somebody who liked Abbey Road but didn't know it was a Beatles album, I'd think there was something seriously wrong with them - but I wouldn't have the same feeling about somebody who loved Casablanca but had never heard of Michael Curtiz. Which is why films are arranged alphabetically in shops while albums are organised by recording artist (and novels are organised by author.)

Of course we're all cinephiles here so we'd be more comfortable navigating a collection organised by director, but I still think there's a discrepancy. There isn't a single album I own where I couldn't tell you immediately who the recording artist is, but there are no doubt hundreds of films in my collection where I'd be stumped. There are even major films where I wouldn't necessarily bet on myself to know the director. I was trying to think of an example and came to The Wizard of Oz - my instinct was Victor Fleming which was correct, but I wouldn't have bet money on it and I don't think it would make sense to organise my movies in such a way that I need to go to "F for Fleming" to pull out The Wizard of Oz.

Not to be flip, but the goal is merely organization and convenience rather than a statement on authorship. Just to put it in perspective, I put a Chrissie Hynde "solo" album in with the Pretenders, The Harder They Come soundtrack with Jimmy Cliff, a Robert Forster & Grant McLennan dual solo anthology with the Go-Betweens, and a Phil Spector compilation as Phil Spector even though it's arguably a "various artists" compilation (which I'd otherwise put at the very end). These were easy choices that make sense to me even though one could argue they're inconsistent with what I've done elsewhere. But it's for me and only me and how I look for specific albums, and that's the underlying rule I've applied to the film library.

[criterionsnob]

Mostly I organize by label and spine number, if applicable, otherwise alphabetically. I also break out select favorite directors chronologically for those who I want to watch their films in order. Works well for me, but my partner has no idea how to find anything.

[DeprongMori]

Unfortunately, I don’t have a unified place for my library. It outgrew the 6’x6’ glass-fronted case in my living room about a decade ago. That one has a small section for TV ordered alpha by title, with the rest being films ordered alpha by director. On top is boxed sets and anthologies. Things occasionally get moved in or out of there as mood dictates.

I have an 8’x6’ case in the garage, which I outgrew more than five years ago, which these days mostly contains miscellaneous releases I haven’t watched yet in no particular order beyond “Region A” and “Region B” groupings, for easy visual scanning. I pulled out all the boutique labels from this section for sorting into the next group.

Everything else is in bankers boxes in two major clusters — “watched” and “unwatched”, with each boxed by the issuing label or occasional catchall such as “US DVDs”. “Criterion” is sub-sorted by Spine Number in the boxes — if they are on the shelf they are by Director. I try to complete the MyMovies database entry to 100% for any release before it goes into any of the “watched” boxes. It’s all a bit unwieldy, and I’m still spending way too much time playing catch-up on the MyMovies database updating, but it mostly seems to work. (You can find me there as “DeprongMori”.) I just need more room in the garage.

My partner would never be able to find anything in this system, but she has no desire to. Occasionally I’ll provide “movie sommelier” services based on general mood/subject descriptors and pull 5-10 films to be selected from.

[domino harvey]

My setup has simplified/expanded since me posting pics of my shelves last year. A lot of my designations are dependent on space restrictions (I added one more slimmer shelving unit, but that’s the max the space can allow as my gf uses the rest of the room), but essentially:

+ TV series all together (though I stored some of my drama series where I’d have to watch the whole thing from start to finish, like Treme and Friday Night Lights)

+ Auteurs all together— minimum of three films owned by the director to be included in this section. Some auteurs I have everything available on display regardless of how much I like the lesser titles (Godard, Chabrol, Hitchcock, etc). Some auteurs are represented by just the discs of the films I like or know I’ll watch again (Wes Anderson, Welles— he did make it to the auteurs section!). Some auteurs are not represented because they’re entirely contained within a genre (Siodmak and noir). Any genre films by auteurs are housed with the director’s section, not the genre (Angel Face is with Preminger, not in Noir). All alphabetical by film or box set name within the last name of the director. Some auteurs I have like five films by on the shelves but I will never think of them director-first (Zinnemann), so they aren’t represented here

+ Film Noir (classic era), alphabetical by film or box set name

+ Modern noir & Foreign noir, ABFOBSN - I cheat on this section a lot because I’ll put marginally applicable titles like the Die Hard set here because the Noir section has the most available shelf space right now

+ Musicals, ABFOBSN

+ Westerns, ABFOBSN

+ Films that don’t fit any other category from before the 70s, ABFOBSN

+ “ “ from 70s to present, ABFOBSN

Only seen films go on the shelves. If I’ve seen part of a larger box or set, the set is on the shelf sticking out by an inch or two. I try to work through these and am mostly done, because them sticking out drives me crazy. If I have an unwatched disc by an auteur, I do not shelve it sticking out unless it is by one of my completist auteurs. My unwatched discs are down to six single layer milk crates in the closet, and God knows what I’ll do if it turns out most of them deserve to be on the shelves!

When reorganizing, the films which got cut the hardest to under the bed storage were horror films (the remaining titles are integrated into one of the above sections), and modern films

[mhofmann]

Autobiographical.

[Never Cursed]

ABFOBSN

I feel like I'm reading a Heathcliff comic - what does this mean?

[Saturnome]

ABFOBSN

I feel like I'm reading a Heathcliff comic - what does this mean?

"alphabetical by film or box set name", I gather.



I used to organize my stuff by chronological order. My friends are way more into books than movies (have I seen a single DVD collection other than mine this decade, so far?) and it look crazy to them. Nobody order their books in chronological order, it seems.

A few years ago I maybe got tired, lost track or I don't know exactly what, and now my collection is a mess where it's 50% in chronological order and 50% is "Umberto D? Yeah I think that's top shelf on the right". It feel natural now, and since nobody inspect my collection close enough to notice the lack of organization, it look neat. Why bother if I can find my way ?

I mostly have books, and it's even worse. Tall books share the tall shelf, but the tall shelf also get very small books. At least so far the films, books, video games and music are separate.