Music videos?
 

So, I was eating some strawberries when I found this:

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/The_Rebel_%28music_video%29

since when music videos are allowed in the database?

I didn't think they were. I just put the nuke tag on it.

They're not allowed at present, although perhaps it's an issue worthy of consideration. I've seen plenty of music videos that feature guns (i.e. when I used to listen to rap as a teenager, I saw tons of guns in old N.W.A. and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony videos). Anyone wants to create a topic for that, it's fine by me.

I would argue respectfully, "no". There are just too many, they don't release DVDs regularly for all music videos, just the most popular artists and even those are hit and miss. It's not that the videos are not legitimate popular media, but we also objected to television commercials. A member (whom I constantly object to his ideas due to their impracticality) wanted us to put a television commercial category. That's not advisable. We can't patrol it, verify it and the availability for screencaps of ALL the possible entries is very limited.

Don't create a category if you can only reasonably represent 20% or less of the actual numbers. Sure we haven't captured ALL of Movies, tv, Vgs or animes, but that is a matter of time and effort, not access to the media. We are not thwarted by the fact that the majority of our titles are just NOT commercially available as they would be with Music videos or commercials.

This is not necessarily the place to decide on the issue. I only suggested that somebody could make a topic and we could all weigh the pros and cons.

Also, with YouTube making so many videos available nowadays, the DVD release issue is almost moot. Some of them are pretty high quality, too (they appear on either the artists or the record label's official YouTube channel).

OK, I'm contradicting myself by making this topic into a discussion, but here's an example of what I'm talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaaoFbNsyf4&ob=av2n

This video is 20 years old, but the music group which owns the rights to the group's material has posted a very high-quality version on YouTube. And you can tell that they must have had an armorer during filming who handled the blank-adapted Tommy Guns, 1911s, and sawed-off shotguns. I'm sure some of the armorers on IMFDB have even supplied their weapons to music videos and can tell stories about working with the artists.

Of course, there is a very big difference between a video like this (which has the production values of a generously-budgeted Hollywood film) versus music videos that rely on collages of images. For instance, this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCkFSe3voRc&ob=av2n

...is something I'd be opposed to including, because all of the guns are just pics which look like they could have been taken from a Google search and then made into silhouettes.

At the very least, we would need to provide guidance to members about what are appropriate types of music videos to include. And in general, whenever we have to articulate complicated rules and standards for inclusion, there are always people who don't pay attention or don't care...

The Dead Weather's "Treat Me Like Your Mother" is the first thing I thought of when it comes to guns and music videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7QSkI6My1g&ob=av2e

or M.I.A's "Born Free":

http://vimeo.com/11622786

IMO, guns in music videos is a smaller category than it may seem - outside of certain genres you will never see someone displaying a gun as prominently as a car in a music video, and with the videos that do there aren't that many that have movie-quality production values. Then there's the question of whether the way guns are portrayed in music videos matches with the views of imfdb members- most of the time, guns are either glamorized as part of a criminal lifestyle or are tools of political oppression.

Also, I believe MTV came out with a rule against guns in videos some time in the early-90s. Though there are still plenty of videos that were not made for MTV airtime that have them...

We already decided long ago (though not without some dissenting voices) that we're not a political site, so politics do not factor in this debate. There are movies and TV shows with anti-gun messages that have been given IMFDB entries.