A HISTORY FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE INTERESTED.
This all started back
in 1982 I think. I was living in Sydney Australia and I had a Commodore 64
Computer. I wanted to know how often a film came on the television. So I started
a database with four fields :- Film title, TV Channel, Date and Time. Soon I
decided to add some more fields, Director, Producer, a couple of the Stars. In
1983, I bought one of the first IBM XT computers, with a 4.77 chip and a ten
megabite disk, from Computerland (Paramatta in Sydney) where I met my very good
friend John Carbines. I used dbase 111 and as time went on, fields got added,
fields got longer, more information was put into the fields. As such, I had to
redo every film that I had already done. Through the years, I reckon most films
have been done four or five times. (This is why some films are still not
complete). I bought a new program called Clipper, and with help, made a new
program, which made the whole thing easier to use, but not much quicker. And on
I went, pounding the keyboard.
At the end of 1987, I
moved from Sydney to northern NSW. In about 1990, I had a disc crash. Oh dear !
Due to unknown circumstances, bad information on the database got copied to the
backup. By that time, I had about ten thousand records (films), of course, by
today’s standards, only the films made before 1970 were complete, that is to
say, all of the information was in that record. After working very hard, I
managed to regain about six thousand records. And on I went, pounding the
keyboard.
A few years later, I
came across an insurmountable problem, so I thought. The problem was that dbase
only allows four thousand fields per record. (At present, I my current database
has nearly fiftenn and a half thousand differently names job titles). I was
adding excess information from one field to maybe the field below, as displayed
on the screen, or the field above. By that time, there were one hundred pages
per record, in the main file, with bits and pieces of information all over the
place. I was stuck for room. The database was getting to be a total mess. My way
round it was to split off the Special Effects and Visual Effects into its own
database, separate from the main database, doing this making it all not so good.
And it took so long paging up and paging down to find the right page and the
right field to put a name in. And on I went, pounding the keyboard.
I have been wanting to
put this Database on the Internet for a long time, but of course, dbase 111 and
Clipper are both DOS programs, so this was impossible. In 2001, I met Reg
Saunders, a very able Microsoft Access programmer who has made a new database
program and spent lots of time importing all the information from the old
database, including all the odd bits and pieces. This is why some of the
information you may see in a film which is not currently completed, is not
correct. What a job and all at great cost ! And on I go, pounding the keyboard.
In 2002, I moved from my
home in northern New South Wales, to South Wales. Here I have met another Access
programmer, Rosalie Luxford, of Luxsoft, so I have my program finished of in
good working order.
Today, there are more
than fifteen and a half thousand records (films), in varying states of
completion. The file is about three hundred and seventy megs long. There are
more than two million names in the file, all by my own hand. Those records with
[Complete Credits ] under the title, are complete
with the credits in the order as they appear on the screen. Today, I get all the
information on each film, all the start credits and all the end credits, none is
left out, apart from some of the [Thanks To] at the end of the credit roll.
Records are being completed all the time, on the average about five a day. And
on I go, pounding the keyboard.
Now, Keith Luxford has
managed to realise my dream and you can see the results. He has made this
Website for me. My job does not just entail pounding the keyboard, I spend lots
of time sitting in front of the television set and video machine, waiting for a
film to start, or a film to end. I have to be there or too much videotape is
used. I guess this job would take nine hours a day, seven days a week, fifty two
weeks a year, although, I must say that I have slowed down since I have been in
South Wales. And on I go, pounding the keyboard.
Can anyone tell
me why the vast majority of stunt men and women have family names starting with
the letters A to L ?
If anyone
out there is interested in passing a constructive comment, or helping out with a
correction on a COMPLETED FILM, please feel free to contact me via the Contact
page. I am not interested in buying drugs, penis enhancers, luggage, university
qualifications, luggage or anything else. I do not need them. Please do not send
me any unwanted messages.
Arthur G. Pettifer.
Flat 4,
Knightston Lodge,
New Hedges,
Pembrokeshire,
SA70 8TL
U.K.
|
