[libdb-develop] Re: Still Fighting with Movie Expressions

[<joh...@no...>]

The problem is that you are trying to reify (nice word, Dan!) a work when,
in fact, there is no such thing.  A "work" has no independent existence.
You cannot see a "work", you cannot touch a "work", you cannot experience a
"work".  At best a "work" can be seen as a convenient handle for a set of
expressions that purport to be the "same thing".

 That said, "Swimfan" is of course a "work", just as "A clockwork orange"
is a "work".  How well-known the work is or how many
expressions/manifestations of it there are have NOTHING to do with the
determination that it is a work - it is a work because it is distinct from
other works.

A work does not - cannot - exist independently of an expression of that
work (and an expression cannot exist independently of a manifestation of
that expression).  There was no movie "A clockwork orange" before Kubrick
and his associates made it.  There was no novel "A clockwork orange" before
Anthony Burgess wrote it.  And the act of writing created an item, a
manifestation, an expression and a work. All rolled up in one.   Each draft
would be a different expression (and manifestation and item).

So a manifestation is an abstraction of features common to a set of items;
an expression is an abstraction of features common to a set of
manifestations; a work is an abstraction of features common to a set of
expressions.  Each of these sets can, of course, be a set of one.  In every
case, however, the properties of the manifestation flow from the properties
of the item(s), the properties of the expression flow from the properties
of the manifestation(s) and the properties of the work flow from the
properties of the expression(s).  In the simplest case the item,
manifestation, expression and work are coterminous.

My own view of movies in the FRBR world is that the work and expression are
largely co-terminous, and the various ways of publishing  (film reels, VHS
cassette, DVD, NTSC vs PAL, director's cuts, etc.)  are different at the
manifestation level.  Dubbing a film into a foreign language almost
certainly makes a new expression; I'm not so sure about adding subtitles.
This also implies that the novel "A clockwork orange" and the movie "A
clockwork orange" are different (but related) works.  It implies that a
"remake" of a movie (eg. Sabrina or King Kong or Planet of the Apes) are
different but related works.  A director's commentary would (might?) be a
different, but related work; it is not a different expression of the work
itself.  The intellectual property folks, however, take a rather different
position as can be seen from the fact that movie producers pay publishers
money for the right to base a movie on a book.  It might be reasonable for
the library community to follow this approach, but so far this has not been
the view taken in the FRBR discussions.

Note that it is not only expressions that are "difficult".  The boundary
conditions for all these sets are difficult.  We do, however, have more
experience with some (e.g. manifestations) than others.  But - suppose a
paperback novel is issued with the words "Now a major motion picture" on
the cover and later the  words are changed to "Winner of Oscar for Best
Picture 2003", but everything remains the same - is that a new
manifestation?  Or just a minor difference between subsets of items forming
the manifestation?  In the handpress era, typographical corrections could
be and were made in the middle of printing a run of sheets.  Does such a
change establish a new manifestation?  a new expression?  The boundary
conditions are subtle and require judgement calls that we can't  make
algorithmically with any great accuracy. OCLC's problem was that the
intellectual decisions on what constitutes a manifestation were already
reflected in the data (each bibliographic record represents a
manifestation), and the decisions on what constitutes a work were also
largely reflected in the data (in the form of titles proper and uniform
titles).  The intellectual decisions on what constitutes an expression were
not to be found in the data, with the exception of certain subfields in
uniform titles, so machine processing to identify expressions was difficult
and unsatisfactory.  The problem isn't so much that the concept of
expression is difficult, but that that we don't have the data to allow the
machine to make reliable determinations.

Johan Zeeman
RLG



                                                                                                                                       
                      Morbus Iff                                                                                                       
                      <morbus@disobey.c        To:       fr...@in...                                                        
                      om>                      cc:       lib...@li...                                           
                                               Subject:  Still Fighting with Movie Expressions                                         
                      01/15/2004 01:58                                                                                                 
                      PM                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                       





I'm still having conceptual problems breaking a part a movie
into WEMI. It's relatively "easy" when the movie is "known",
like with a Kubrick or Spielberg or similar. But, stuff like
SWIMFAN, MOTEL HELL, STACY, etc., I simply can't figure it out.

I originally suspected it was purely of ignorance and the fact
that no one has published their own approaches to movies under
FRBR, but the more I read, the more I see the same sort of thing
over and over again: "expressions are difficult".

Most recently (in my reading, not publication-wise)
is the Humphry Clinker examination by the OCLC:

  "While it was possible to identify works and manifestations,
   identifying expressions was problematic ... Enhanced manifestation
   records where the roles of editors, illustrators, translators, and
   other contributors are explicitly identified may be a viable
   alternative to expressions ... With the enhanced manifestation
   record ... the FRBR model provides a powerful means to improve
   bibliographic organization and navigation.

How evil and destructive is it, for the time being, to not
support expressions, at all, within an FRBRized application?

If I have a movie called SWIMFAN, is that a work? It is
a "distinct intellectual or artistic creation", but it is
also the REALIZATION: it's audio/visual committed to film.
The only way I can think to get "one higher" than "realized
through film" is the actual shooting script used. The
audiovisual elements of a shooting script are REALIZED
through the work of many people: the directory, the
cinematographer, etc., etc.

But, the shooting script won't work... because FRBR says:

  "By contrast, when the modification of a work involves a
   significant degree of independent intellectual or artistic
   effort, the result is viewed, for the purpose of this study,
   as a new work. Thus paraphrases, rewritings, adaptations for
   children, parodies, musical variations on a theme and free
   transcriptions of a musical composition are considered to
   represent new works."

Taking a script and turning it into film seems like a significant
degree of work to me, so a film would have to be a work. Treating
a film as a work is correct, because FRBR says/infers as much:

  "Translations from one language to another, musical
   transcriptions and arrangements, and dubbed or subtitled
   versions of a film are also considered simply as different
   expressions of the same original work."

An expression "exclude[s] aspects of physical form", so I can't
treat the expression of a movie as a DVD release. If I had two
different translations of the movie, I don't think there's a problem:

  W1: Swimfan
   E1: Swimfan (English language)
    M1: The DVD from Paramount Pictures.
   E2: Swimfan (German language dub)

The above seems sane to me, and seems like the answer to my
problems. In fact, FRBR says the above is sane in it's description
of the work entity, which I've already snippetted above.

But, I feel the model is "dirty" when I don't have multiple
expressions. If SWIMFAN ONLY had an English translation, then it
"feels" like there's absolutely no difference between work and
expression:

   W1: Swimfan
    E1: Swimfan (English language)
     M1: The DVD from Paramount Pictures

In the above model, there's really no difference, whatsoever, between
the Swimfan work and the Swimfan expression. Is there? Or am I being
too granular? Should I treat WEMI as buckets, with an intended
revisiability and extensibility of "always"? Should I always assume
(nay, hope!) that someone WILL translate SWIMFAN into another
language? Should I, in the face of seemingly duplicity, always
consider "language" the shining difference between a work (where
language is not defined) and expression (where it is)?

I feel like I'm running around in circles on this expression
thing - toeing the line between "yes, that's how you do it!"
and "noOOOo, you've got it alLLLl wrong, bucko!".

Any tips are appreciated.



--
Morbus Iff ( i put the demon back in codemonkey )
Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/
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