During my contribution marathon (103 in the last 30 days) I have had the opportunity to face some tricky decisions in trying to follow the rules. Ken has said that one cannot write rules that cover every possible situation, so obviously some flexibility is allowed.

There is one rule that has me a bit stumped. It is - you guessed it - Country of Origin. The rule states

Quote:
Enter the country or countries in which the main feature's production company/companies are based, in the order they appear in the credits.

That seems clear enough, although establishing where a small company is based can sometimes be tricky.
But here's the thing - some movies don't have any studio listed. So if we are to follow the rule exactly, we should not assign any CoO, even though we may know where the movie was made. But is that reasonable?

Quoting GSyren:

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But here's the thing - some movies don't have any studio listed. So if we are to follow the rule exactly, we should not assign any CoO, even though we may know where the movie was made. But is that reasonable?

Yes it is reasonable to leave fields blank if you can't populate them without violating the rules.  Besides, knowing where a movie is made has nothing to do with the CoO.

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I believe the original copyright version displayed "Hughes Productions" in the credits and was released by RKO Radio Pictures/United Artists Corporation.

A Public Domain version of a movie would probably redact any credit references to the original production companies that held copyright. In the case of The Outlaw, the film went into public domain in 1971 when the copyright was not renewed.

I agree with your observations and empathise with your dilemma.

However, there's an old adage about databases, garbage in, garbage out, so leave it out if you can't verify the accuracy of your data.

Researching takes some time which most people don't have.

For example, in the case of American films, particularly older films, I will often refer to the American Film Institute (AFI) Catalog of Feature Films (1893-1993) and then corroborate with another entity, such as IMDB or Wikipedia.

For the film, The Outlaw, I also looked up the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries: Cumulative Series. Motion Pictures 1940–1949 (https://archive.org/details/motionpict19401949librrich/page/n5) and found the following entry on page 306:
_______________________________________
THE OUTLAW. Released through United
Artists, c1941. Presented by Howard
Hughes. 115 min., sd.
Credits: Director, Howard Hughes;
screenplay, Jules Furthman; music direc-
tor, Victor Young; photographer, Gregg
Toland; film editor, Wallace Grissell.
© Hughes Productions; 15Feb41; LP177.
_______________________________________

Since both AFI and IMDB list "Hughes Productions" in the production company credits:
AFI ==> https://catalog.afi.com/Film/603-THE-OUTLAW?sid=dc7acdb5-9043-4418-a5c2-403a78b60641&sr=8.778264&cp=1&pos=1
IMDB ==> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036241/companycredits?ref_=tt_dt_co

and the original copyright holder was Hughes Productions, I would submit "Hughes Productions" in the profile as the production company for the film.

Hope that helps you in some way.

Quoting GSyren:

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So if we do determine the country of origin (through research), do we ignore the "letter of the law" and enter it even though it may not actually be in the credits?

The Rules are for Ken's online database.  That's how he wants data entered into his online database.  We can do whatever we want to locally.

If Ken really has a problem with a lot of CoO fields being unpopulated he is free to change The Rules at any time.

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“In England, everything is permitted except what is forbidden. In Germany, everything is forbidden except what is permitted. In France, everything is permitted, even what is prohibited. In the USSR, everything is prohibited, even what is permitted.”
- Attributed to Winston Churchill

The question is – how strictly do we interpret the rules? It is true that the rules don’t say that we can research production companies if they are not listed in the credits. But neither do they say that we can not do that. My suspicion is that Ken didn’t even consider that there might be no production company listed in the credits.

If we were to apply the rules absolutely, a credit such as “Story: John Doe” would not be accepted. The accepted credit is “Story by”, and the “by” is not marked as optional (unlike for example “Costumes [by]”). I don’t think that’s what Ken intended.

Ken himself has said that not everything can be covered in the rules. The implication – as I see it – is that we are to use our best judgment when something isn’t covered. In the context of the Churchill quote, I lean more towards England than Germany.

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The copyright owner of a film was either the producer or a production company.

I’m sorry, that is just not correct. Ownership of a copyright is similar to ownership of other types of personal property. A copyright and copyright protection can be sold, given by designation, or transferred just like real estate.

Quoting scotthm:

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Then I'm really confused as to why this thread exists.  Just enter what  you want to and let the contribution process run its course.

Well, the reason I asked was that I wanted to find out what the general opinion among the community was on the matter. When our opinions clash I prefer to keep things local. But I feel that the best thing to do if one wants to keep Profiler alive is to contribute as much as possible.

Unfortunately, with just three users' opinions it doesn't give me much to go on. I guess I'll just keep my CoO's local when it comes to movies with no production studios.

I agree with rdodolak.