Talk:The Upper Footage

Usable and non-usable reviews
I thought I'd explain a little about reviews. The thing is, user reviews on sites such as IMDb can't show notability, as we can't verify anything about them. They're uploaded by any and everyone. The same thing goes for user ratings on sites such as Rotten Tomatoes. They're average users and we can't count them towards notability. The same thing goes for sites such as HorrorMoviesUncut. That's considered to be a blog entry as far as Wikipedia goes because we can't verify the content. Now as far as HorrorMovies.ca goes, that site is almost never used on here because we have to verify that it was written by a staff member. It's a site where people can add reviews on their own, which is why it's considered to be somewhat unverifiable. I do not see Huhn on the staff list. If you can show that they edited and vetted the review, we can add it. If not, then we can't. Now when it comes to statements such as "Out of the three negative reviews two are from sites that were duped by the production crew into reporting the facts of the film as real prior to release.", you have to prove that they wrote negative reviews because they were duped. You also have to prove that they were duped and not just reporting things as they were reported to them. That's the difficulty level in writing articles. You have to prove that something happened. Anything else is reading into things and going into original research territory. The only way we can prove that they wrote negative reviews because they were duped (which is what the statement implies) is to get one of them to admit it. Now if we had a statement from say, Jason Cole saying that he believes that the negative reviews were a result of all of that, we could include that in there as a response. But we don't have that. We have to go with what we have and what we can verify through sources considered to be reliable through Wikipedia. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   09:02, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm waiting for a reply from HorrorMovies.ca. So far I have not received a reply about how they go about posting reviews on the site. If we can show that it's a staff review, we'll be able to use it and anything by that person from here on out. However if it isn't, that's where it gets tricky. We have to be able to show that the site did do some sort of vetting with the review, meaning that they looked through it and ensured it met their standards and that the person checked out OK, etc. I'm already familiar with how some sites work (JoBlo, Dread Central, Bloody Disgusting, DVD Verdict, and so on), but HM.ca's info isn't as easily seen as the other sites' at times. Now something I can recommend since some of the people might be able to pass this on to the director: the best way to ensure that your movie gets more reviews in places we can use is to send review copies to those people. Yes, I'm directly telling you to send out review copies with the explicit intent of hopefully getting positive reviews to put on here. Places I can recommend would be say, Twitch Film, who loves these types of movies. They're usually fairly kind to indie movies in general, especially the ones that don't fit into neat little boxes. For example, this film isn't your typical found footage film, so they'll likely eat this up. DVD Verdict is a good place to go as well, although they tend to be a little harsh. Still, they have an extremely large reviewing circle so odds are you'll find someone who will be on the same wavelength. DVD Talk is another site we can use for reviews. Other sites would be Fangoria, Dread Cental, JoBlo, and Reel Film. Reel Film is another one that would be a great place to go with this movie, as they do a lot of offbeat work and your chances of getting a positive review are higher. It's not a guarantee since they can be harsh, but if you look at their reviews you'll see that they're normally much kinder on average to small indie/underground movies. Contrary to what some are trying to assert, I'm not here to push an agenda for myself or for others. The reason the reviews aren't all glowing is because the amount of reviews in places we can use are pretty slim. This went solidly under the radar for the most part. Whether that's because of some of the claims alluded to in the e-mail sent to Dread Central or not, I have no idea. Maybe- it isn't farfetched. I am not part of any agenda. Not everyone is against a film. Sometimes a film just doesn't do well for whatever reason. The only thing to do is accept that a movie's reception will differ, especially if it is offbeat, strange, or doesn't fit neat little boxes of what people expect. Accusing others of trying to deliberately malign a movie when my only goal was to add an article on something I found pretty darn cool doesn't help the movie or its director out any. Trust me on this. Sometimes it can backfire stupendously- I've seen this happen in the literary world where someone did exactly this for an author and the author's reputation suffered as a result. By this I mean people assume the author was getting people to remove negative reviews in order to hide them and accuse anyone that said anything against this of various things. The author had nothing to do with it, but became associated with bad behaviors anyway and now has to live with being a "trouble author". It doesn't go away very easily. I know you think you're helping the director, but you're not. Getting angry and accusing others of having an agenda is not the way to go about things. The best way to get more positive reviews we can list here is to get them in places we can use. I've given several places to ship review copies off to - the rest is up to them. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   07:56, 22 December 2013 (UTC)