How do you sort your collection? (1 Viewer)

[Doug:Li]

Wow. YOu people are all crazy!

Some interesting suggestions. Keep em coming. I particularly like the 'string' idea. heh

And hoooray for me for having started a thread that went 3 pages long! My first!

 

[Gralen]

Wow.I feel better about myself. I only have 160 dvds and growing and my best friend thinks I am normal.He is a social worker. My girlfriend who is also a social worker thinks I am crazy. I alphatize my collection in a book shelf and a dvd stand.

 

[Cees Alons]

First of all, I have every title in a complete database, along with all sorts of information, especially the correct title of the DVD, the original title of the movie (if it is that) and a "series" indication, when I decide to order certain releases like that (e.g. Bond films are grouped together that way and placed chronologically, despite their title). Furthermore I have several "themes":

Animated:Animated film, cartoon, anime
Cinemaocum. about Cinema, Film documentary
Documentaryocumentary general
Double:Superfluous DVDs
Family:Family feature film
Film:Feature Film, Musical, TV movie
Geologyocum. Geology, geography, astrology
Life:Nature documentary
Music Classic
Music Pop
Shorts:Short films, sketches
Stageure stage registrations
Technical: (e.g. AVI)
Travel:Travel documentary
TV series:TV series, TV cartoon series
TV sleuth:TV sleuth series
Western:Western movie

(A category some of you may find missing is 'XXX', it's not there in this family.)

Titles are placed according to their themes first. Family movies are on lower shelves.

Inside these theme groups, DVDs are stored alphabetically (according to "series", or else title), numbers first. Trying to translate numbers to their alphabetical form doesn't work too well, because there are different languages. Of course, another problem then is remembering if 'Twelve Angry Men' was written like that, or as '12 Angry Men'.

"Big" cases or boxes often do not fit at the alphabetical place of the title, because I prefer rather tight shelves, so they get a separate place.


Cees

 

[DustinLC]

Some of you must live by yourself or something and has absolutely no one else pick out the movies.

You might be about to find the studio for the movie or the genre because you put them there but your wife, kids, friends, ect can't.

For those who do have like 800 DVDs, I'd bet there are dozen of times you forgot which genre you put a certain movie in.

Sure way, best way, is by number and then alphabetically. Use your extra time to do something else like read this thread and laugh .

 

[george kaplan]

Well this is a whole other topic, but my wife and son don't touch my dvds and my friends have never even seen them. My son has his own smaller collection, which is mostly copies of my films I made that he liked, and those he keeps in his room. But mine are in my den. I've had lots of guests who come over to watch a film, but they've never been in my den or seen my collection.

 

[Chet_F]

I sort all of my DVDs alphebetical. I then have have 4 seperate groups: TV, Music, Criterion Collection, and movies. I do have all of the Bond films and Clint Eastwood collections grouped together.

I never knew people sorted by studio or production year but to each their own. Whenever I pick out a movie I like to look thru the entire collection before I decide what to watch.

 

[JohnRice]

For those who sort by studio, what do you do with the multitude of movies which are multi studio, like an awful lot of them are these days. Also, what do you do with the ones which have changed ownership, such as many of the MGMs or ones from defunct studios like Orion? For those who sort by "Star" what do you do with the many movies with ensemble casts? Do you put Apocalypse Now under Brando simply because he was the biggest star in the movie, even though he only appears for a few minutes?

 

[MarkHastings]

I have a separate section for the oddball studios where I don't have enough movies to make an entire section of just that studio. The HBO movies fit in this category, as well as my one Polygram title (What Dreams May Come).

 

[Justin_P]

I'm in the "sort by studio, then by color" posse with about 800 DVDs. Goes all the way back to my VHS collection. I like the way it looks. And if anyone else wants to find something, they usually just have to call me. Hehehehe...

Justin

 

[Dane Marvin]

I sort mine by year of film release (not DVD release, but the film itself). And then alphabetically within each year, of course. That's just the way I like it. When I watch a movie, I first decide if I'm in the mood for a classic or a newer film. And even if I do want to watch a certain title, it's easy for me to find because I am good at remembering release years for films. It's also very possible to do when your collection hovers around 175 DVDs most of the time.

 

[Paul_Scott]

i'm pretty much the same way.
i've been a movie buff my whole life (even as a small child i knew the difference between, say, a Universal horror film and a Hammer Horror film). i appreciate how culture is mirrored or commented on in the movies of its day and i do like to immerse myself sometimes in a particular era- whether it be the late 70s or 60s or 50s- or i like to trace the evolution (or de-evolution sometimes) of a particular genre across the years. being a movie buff i generally know about what year a film was released, at least enough to put me in the right ballpark when looking for it on the shelf.
and by genre (or class) just seems the most logical when going to look for a movie to watch.

some of my shelf divisions are;
classic drama/comedy (30s-early 70s)
70s
80s
Classic Horror(pre 60s)
Classic sci-fi (50s-60s)
exploitation/drive-in
Foreign
Contemporary (90s-present)
Superheros
action (mostly 80s onward)
TV sets
Unwatched
Pal
Snappers
Disney/family
James Bond
Box sets (that i haven't broken up)

and finally, one shelf reserved for the films that have a strong nostalgic pull and/or made the greatest impact on me. Sort of like a personal Hall Of Fame shelf.

 

[Kevin M]

For me this was one of the reasons I finally tried chronological, regardless of studio it works....of course there is the whole Director's Cut thing to deal with (for instance Star Trek TMP/The Abyss/Superman etc. being cut in different years than the theatrical) but, regardless of that, keeping them in the year of original release seems to me to be a no-brainer...for me at least, it works.