Movie Search Tips

Help & Feedback
1

Ok all, here is how I search out films:

First, google your keywords (make the words/phrases short, and use the most unique ones…it helps to stay away from gender pronouns and years) with site:imdb.com at the end of them, just like hadaway says. If the first few pages prove useless, go to the next step.

Second: Use the advanced title search in IMDB. Give/take 3-5 years for your search years, from when people say they saw it, or it came out. If they saw it, give 5 years on the max year, and either leave the least year blank, or the first year of the decade you think it could be. Just use whole years (like 1984), not full dates (like January 14, 2010). If they think it is a movie, select film, video, tv movie. You can use the others lke mini-series, documentary, short, tv episode, etc. after deselecting those, to make your next search shorter and not repetitive. I would not ever select tv series, unless that is what they are looking for. Genres are tricky, so only use one at a time, and only to what you think the movie could be, or what they suspect it is; if it is a sci-fi comedy, look under sci-fi, because it may not also be tagged with comedy. I would stay away from keywords for now, until you become very familiar with the system, so you know what people may write in there, but leave out of plot. Fill in the plot words with only one word, preferably a unique one. If the word has a synonym, search those too, after, one at a time. If they know it is of a specific language, you can select it (only one though). After that, I change the detailed number to 100 and sort it by year instead of movie meter; it is ordered better for me. Leave the rest of the fields unselected/blank, and click search. Look through and see what looks like your movie.

Third: Google unique phrases, words, etc. using combinations of quote operands for specific phrases that are supposed to be written like that, only, and - signs for things you do not want to show up, if it is in the pages at all. Do not use spaces. Read up on google operands to help you further. Add Yahoo Answers in there for a place where it may have been asked before, or referenced. If there is a specific plot style like virtual reality, for example, google virtual reality movies, and then see of there is a result from allmovies.com … they categorize movies by obscure plot points, a lot.

Fourth: Reach out to the other movie help/movie naming sites, to help your chances of finding it. Just google them.

Five: Reach out (contact through contact us link, comments in their blogs, etc.) to experts of the genre/subset, by looking up things like horror experts, slasher experts, romantic movie experts, etc., facebook pages, or websites that are based upon these things. Contacting authors that wrote the book on certain areas is of help too (ie: book on jiangshi, or silent film comedies), since they definitely know the subject. They can at least lead you in an area, if nothing else.

Six: If you say the movie you are looking for is like another film, whose name you can remember, google movies like _____ .

Seven: The user Silencioso taught me how to look up something if you have a picture of the actor (it can be used with all pictures, with varying results, I presume). You have to use google chrome: locate the picture on the web, right click, and then search by image. This will look for that picture from other sources, and could provide you a name.

Eight: If you saw it on netflix instant, go to your pc, look under profiles, then history. If it was one of the last 100 titles (I think) you watched, it should be listed there. If it was a dvd you rented, it should have your full rental history. I cannot be sure, but other services may have similar history profiles.

Nine: If you know a character name, especially the obscure, try to spell them in different ways to see what you come up with. Also, utilize the google live search, that shows other’s searches that started with the letters/words on the screen; you may recognize the word you are looking for in it, in a way you may not have spelled it.

*If looking for horror, there is a facebook group called vhs horror collectors unite, that can be of help. I know several others including experts with blogs, etc., for horror. Just comment here if you want them.

That is all I can think of right now, but if anyone needs any help, just comment, or make a thread directed at me, if it is ok with NTM. God speed.

VHS_Lives

Edit: Some of these techniques came from me, and others I have learned (unique words, site:) from hadaway and others. I do not claim to invent these search types, and apologize that I did not mention that the unique keywords was written in hadaway’s blog. This is just to show how I search, which can help people. Thanks.

edit 2024: I will be editing this and updating shortly with new techniques. Any others with search style tips please post your awesomeness.

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2

Your thread is very comprehensive, so I don’t have too many ideas, but I think that good option is PopMystic Search, because it has the biggest quote database, so if somebody remembers only quote, it is possible to find a movie or an episode according to quote. Other possibilities are message boards from native countries (eg. Polish forum is better if somebody looks for a Polish movie) - because non-English movies are less popular abroad.

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Regarding image search, you don’t need Google Chrome. Right click the image on any browser and select “copy image link”.
Go to google.com, and click on the “search by image” icon on the far right of the search field. Paste the link in “Paste image link” and it’ll look for very similar images.

BUT! Google image search, as well as TinEye and similar sites look only for the exact image. They will give you very little results.

I’ve found the russian search engine Yandex (yandex.com) to be much better regarding image search. Same process as on google.com, click “images” and then click on the icon for visual search.
It will not only look for the exact image, but will also look for very similar images, or at least very similar color palettes/clothes colors/background colors, etc.
Disadvantage is, of course, you get your results in russian. But names are often the same or very similar, and will help you find the film’s name on IMDB quickly.

Another feature of Google is that it can be restricted into only searching in IMDB using “site:imdb.com [keyword]”. This is often better than IMDB’s own search.
Regarding movie plots, I’ve found wikipedia to be far more helpful than IMDB, as their editors don’t care about spoilers.

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Thanks! Google and IMDB never worked for me but now they might work with those tips.
Out of the right answers I’ve had about only one third it’s movies I’ve actually seen and remember the titles, for the rest, most of them have been solved by using bestsimilar.com, using the search in “Find movies about / that have / with …” and lots of intuition too. The plot descriptions from Wikipedia have helped to confirm some. Also, providing a time frame helps a lot.

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You may use Boolean operators in your searches.

The plus sign (+) stands for AND.

E.g.:
If you search for: “space station”+“monster”

It will give you results which include both “space station” AND “monster”.

The vertical bar (|) stands for OR.
In my layout, Alt Gr + W is the shortcut for the vertical bar.
This can be very useful when something can be phrased in differnt ways.
If the seeker is looking for a movie that has a woman with “a pendant or something” around her neck and if you only search for “pendant” it might exclude the solution.
It’s better to widen your scope with all the plausible synonyms you can think of:

woman+pendant|locket|necklace|charm

Only use it if necessary though, because a wider search is less effective, it will give you more work.

I tend to begin my search strings with movie|film or movie|film|series|episode.

Quotation marks (“”) will only give you sites that contain your exact search sting, like how they appear between the marks.

E.g.:

Searching for “Mary is five years old” will not give you anything that doesn’t have that exact line.
Searching for the same words without quotation marks would give you sites that have some or all those words in some combination.

The minus sign (-) excludes whatever you write after it (no space).

E.g.:

movie|film+vampires -twilight

It will give you vampire movies but most likely nothing from the Twilight series.

This operator can be very useful when you want to remove those pesky top results from your searches, the ones you have already ruled out.

You can use multiple exclusions in the same search and you can combine this with quotation marks.
E.g.:

movie|film+vampires -dracula -twilight -comedy -“gary oldman”

Another thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet, is https://tvtropes.org.

It’s a database for popular concepts/memes that are often used in media.
For example, a cave that’s hidden behind a waterfall:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CaveBehindTheFalls

A character who almost never talks:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheVoiceless

You scroll down, and you will see the categories. You open the appropriate one (e.g.: “Film - Live-Action”) and start sifting.

The downsides:

  1. Their naming system is arbitrary.
    E.g.:
    https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManicPixieDreamGirl

You might want to search for a concept but you won’t know what they have it filed under.
The search function might help or you can start by searching for a movie that you know will definitely feature the concept you’re looking for.
For example you are looking for the concept of a character being dead throughout the movie without them knowing it.
You assume that The Sixth Sense (1999) will have that, so you go to the page of the movie and find that the concept is called “Dead All Along”.
And then you can click on “Dead All Along” and see a list of all the media that features that concept.

  1. The amount of media they have indexed is relatively small.

Some useful websites:

The Internet Movie Cars Database:

The Internet Movie Firearms Database:
https://imfdb.org/wiki/Main_Page

A quotes database:

HiNative has proven to be useful for me when the seeker knows the country of origin of the media they’re looking for and it’s not the US.
I’ve found some Russian, Asian, Polish or Czech movie through that site.
It can be very effective because you’re talking to a more specific audience.
You have to register though (it’s free) to ask a question.

It’s not just about language learning, it’s also about the culture of other nations and movies are certainly a part of that.
When you try to identify some media, first click “Ask” in the upper-right corner, then scroll all the way down to the last option, “Ask something else”.
You have to have the country whose people you want address in your list of interests.
You can add a country in your settings.

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Has anybody tried the American Film Institute Catalog? It has lots of data and synopsis and you can do searches by genre or subjects in their Search Film Database.

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Celebswatepig your explanation was spot on! Mainly about th “+” an “-” an the other one symbol that in my keyboard is different… lol (I’ll have to look it up) That’s exactly what I was looking for!!! And the sites were a huge plus too! Thank you sooo much!

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