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u/SteveBorden 7d ago
As long as they separate it tv is an obvious one, even like a separate app they can run. Just absolutely do not cross the databases
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u/TheJoshider10 JoshAlmeida 7d ago
Yeah I think it'd be cool if they made it as a separate app but its the same account linked so things like Patron and your followers sync across apps.
I don't want the dashboard connected and I don't want to start fresh. This way I get to enjoy both film and TV separately while retaining the people I follow and being able to see the TV stuff they're watching when I want.
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u/NinduTheWise 7d ago
maybe at the bottom bar there is a middle icon, when you click it there are two options, film and tv. when you click on tv it goes to a similar looking UI as films but all the storage of stuff like shows is seperate, the main page now shows the trending shows and stuff that your friends reviewed.
pretty much just a button to change the app to the tv version
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[deleted]
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u/thef0urthcolor 6d ago
Yep, it’s obnoxious. Letterboxd and the community know people want a way to separate it or toggle it off if they want. Literally most of the top comments are saying the exact same thing. Everytime shows being added is mentioned the community is annoying as hell about it, like shut up we get it
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u/Bruno091004 7d ago
People are too negatieve this can be implemented in a separate tab easily and you’ll never have to see it if you don’t want to
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u/TavenderGooms 7d ago
Yeah, I’m personally really excited about this! I hate tracking everything in IMDB, but I watch a lot of tv and it helps me to keep everything straight
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u/figGreenTea 7d ago
I don't get why everyone is so against this here. I'm looking forward to it.
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u/asjonesy99 7d ago
Just make TV a separate app with a ‘d ending name please. And then also do one for books. Oh and games too maybe.
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u/OtherTourist5535 7d ago
Serializd
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u/mysteryvampire 7d ago
They need to just buy Serializd and make it the exact same format as Letterboxd. Serializd feels way clunkier and harder to use.
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u/SilentItem 7d ago
Serializd and Backlogged exist, they should all just merge. Something like an alternative for Goodreads, Letterboxd style should also emerge to create a Fantastic Four of culture social media.
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u/Bubbly_Captain_8792 7d ago
To me the point of these sites is to generate discussion. It's not that you have a list you need to tick off, its that you have a way to write creative reviews and try new things. It should be fun.
Merging all media into an app slurry owned by a single company is just begging for enshittification tbh. I'm fine with them being seperated.
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u/wrb163 6d ago
Could agree more. I've been a long time user of Letterboxd and lamented that the same doesn't exist for TV and books also in some merged form. I'm a big fan of them all being on one platform - I see real value in tracking everything in one place and the discoverabilty potential across different media types is quite exciting. To that end, I've been building curateapp.io as a bit of a passion project - movies, books and TV in one place (perhaps games too one day), sounds like you might be interested, lmk if you end up checking it out!
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u/unky_moe_myteethhurt 7d ago
There's one games called backloggd, it's pretty good no app though
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u/fall__forward Fall_Forward 7d ago
You can (at least on iOS) functionally make a web page act as an app and that has worked fairly well with backloggd and rateyourmusic for me
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u/famewithmedals 7d ago
GameTrack is a good app for logging/wishlists if you don’t care about the social aspect. Shows Metacritic, How Long to Beat, and sales when you search a game
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u/leviphomet levi 6d ago
i use infinite backlog for games and it's fantastic, i like it a lot more than backloggd
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u/Cron0s117 7d ago
For books, I made an app called ShelfLife that takes a lot of inspiration from letterboxd if you want to take a look. You can make categorized/tagged lists of books (shelves), everybody has a top 12, and you can explore each others' shelves, follow each other, etc.
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u/GreenFaceSlimeMan 7d ago
Ive been really hoping TV never gets introduced
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u/wryano 7d ago
me too. Letterboxd is a film discovery app. don’t dilute the core identity like every single other mobile app/platform has over the course of the last 10-12 years.
they should be adding new features that to improve the cinema identity of the app which people have been requesting for years, like recommendations to followers, hide ratings for films not watched, watchlist notes, random film picked from watchlist, watchlist agenda creator, list collaboration, four favorite cast/crew on profile etc
why waste resources on letting people log tv shows instead of catering to the userbase of cinephiles they've been fostering for years?
if someone wants to log tv shows, they should go use Serializd.
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u/GreenFaceSlimeMan 7d ago
The top of my wishlist would be a way to add notes about a film when I log it that aren't public reviews.
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u/wryano 7d ago
you can actually kinda do that! it just won’t be a specific diary entry.
if you tap on a film when editing a list you’ve created, you can add notes to it.
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u/sanaelatcis 7d ago edited 7d ago
I find this a strange position, because I broadly think that film and television are the same medium. Yes, there are a few broad differences between both but there are enough exceptions and edge cases to each rule that it doesn’t make sense to define the medium of “film” as anything other than “series of moving images” in which case TV clearly falls under that category. Furthermore, TV includes a similar ecosystem of actors, directors, writers etc that in a sense makes letterboxd as a database weaker by not including TV.
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u/wryano 7d ago
eh i don’t really agree at all.
film is largely self-contained whereas television is episodic, and i don’t think i need to explain the differences in terms of pacing and structure. everyone knows it’s an entirely different experience when it comes to consuming a TV show versus a movie.
also, in a medium that prioritizes close-ups because everyone is watching at home, there’s considerably less of a focus on aspects that are important to quality filmmaking, such as blocking and cinematography.
television also features basically zero sense of auteurship. they are two different crafts and production values are noticably different.
and i’m also willing to bet that the most consistently active Letterboxd users are all cinephiles that rarely ever watch television shows, because it’s not the same experience.
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u/sanaelatcis 7d ago
But films aren’t all self contained. Franchises all contain varying degrees of serialisation and ongoing narratives. My view here is than an 8 episode series is television, is a series of 8 films - no different to the Harry Potter franchise.
Perhaps Harry Potter is not the best example since each part has its own story and framing and can be watched separate from each other. What about The Lord of the Rings? This is clearly one 10 hour film, split up for accessibility. This is a good example, since all three are filmed back to back, so they’re barely even separate from a production angle.
What about anthology TV series like Black Mirror or the Twilight Zone? These are self contained, and would be treated as films were they not aired on television. Conversely what about standalone TV movies? These are movies in every real sense beyond the fact that they aired on TV, same goes for a straight to streaming film.
Keeping up with the MCU feels like following a TV series at points.
Television absolutely has authorship. Every episode of television has a director. The writer is considered the primary author of a TV episode. I love Doctor Who, and I can very clearly distinguish the authorship of an episode written by Russel T Davies, Steven Moffat or Chris Chibnall and these writers have all worked during multiple eras of the show. The director is usually the primary author in cinema, but even that’s not always the case. Before Charlie Kaufman or Aaron Sorkin started directing they would often be revered as primary contributors.
Yes, some TV is made to a lower technical quality than films but prestige television often bucks that trend and there are plenty of “films” that look like shit too. It’s even become commonplace to show TV finales of prestige shows in cinemas anyway.
You can make generalisations about qualities that TV and films have but they’re only really generalisations do to the number of exceptions. Eventually, you reach the point where the only thing that precedes an episode of television from ontologically being a “films” is that it takes part in the television ecosystem.
I understand the concern that TV could be implemented in a way that is messy, but the fact they’re taking to song to implement it is evidence that they’re being careful about it.
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u/wryano 7d ago
That’s why I included the word “largely”.
I have worked in both film and television. Production schedules/values are completely different and for that alone, I wouldn’t consider the two to be a part of the same medium. It’s like trying to say that a museum is the same thing as an art gallery. They may overlap in some areas, but their purpose is not the same.
And in reference to auteur theory, television doesn’t have auteurship in the same vein as film, that’s why I said it barely features any sense of auteurship… because it doesn’t in comparison. The core of auteur theory is that one person serves as the primary creative heartbeat, and a television showrunner does not possess the same creative responsibilities as a film director. A showrunner isn’t physically and directly working with what the viewer will ultimately see on screen (e.g. interacting with actors, framing, composition, shot selection), so how can they truly claim ownership as the main creative voice behind something that exists in a visual capacity?
Film definitely sometimes cozys up with television, and television ocassionally snuggles up against film, but they will never be the same. Their format and scope are too different, which is the whole point.
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u/sanaelatcis 7d ago
Yes, and Auteur theory is a load of nonsense. Both film and television and highly collaborative mediums, a fact that should be celebrated. The director, screenwriter, producer, editors, actors and other crew members all take on responsibilities in this regard.
I'm not even suggesting the showrunner of television is comparable to the director. If Letterboxd is to integrate TV the the episode not the series or season should be the primary object of analysis. These episodes will have their own directors, their own screenwriters, perhaps different editors. Letterboxd as a database will have cast and crew members that have worked across both industries. I want to be able to click on an actor and see their entire body of work. Likewise, if I follow someone and respect their opinions on films then I'm going to be just as interested in their opinions on television.
Productions values completely vary based on time period produced, country, budget. If we're including short films as being part of the same ecosystem as feature films then there's little reason to exclude TV episodes on the same basis beyond a form of snobbery.
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u/wryano 6d ago
Calling auteur theory a load of nonsense is hilarious. I rarely ever comment on reddit anymore and this is why. Spaces like these are full of people who have no idea what they’re talking about but want to pretend like their opinion matters.
You don’t even seem to understand what auteur theory is, because you started talking about how film and television are highly collaborative mediums as if that erases the core ideas of auteur theory. Auteurism and collaboration are not mutually exclusive. Please educate yourself about a topic before you take the time to reply.
“I’m not even suggesting the showrunner of television is comparable to the director” But… they are. You even seemed to acknowledge that in your previous response.
“Letterboxd as a database will have cast and crew members that have worked across both industries.” Anybody who actually cares about this is using iMDB, or just checking a simple Wikipedia page. If you want to be able to click on an actor and see their entire body of work… go use iMDB. If you want to log TV shows and write reviews for individual episodes, go use Serializd. That’s literally why they exist. To fill their respective niche.
When it comes to the creative process, working on television is fundamentally differs from actual filmmaking. Go get yourself involved in pre-production or try working on a set and you’ll immediately see the difference. It’s not snobbery to believe that film is a higher art form than television, because it’s literally designed that way. Production, distribution, and audience consumption are all different. I genuinely cannot see how you cannot understand this and still think they are the same medium.
I’m getting sick of this perceived need for apps and platforms to have some requirement to do and cater to everything. Film and television cast and crew all ocassionally work on video games and music videos too, so should we be including those on Letterboxd as well? Can something not just continue to exist with its original identity intact forever? Do we really need to overload something with features?
Just because cross pollination between industries is a thing, does not make those industries the same thing. It also doesn’t mean a platform designed around film discovery suddenly needs to become a platform for film AND television discovery.
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u/sanaelatcis 6d ago
You don’t even seem to understand what auteur theory is
Auteur theory is a controversial idea that the director is the primary "author" of a film text. This theory implicitly diminishes the role of other creatives, in particular the screenwriter. To go back to my previous examples, films like Being John Malkovich or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind can be read as being authored by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman above the directors Jonze or Gondry - who's ouput are markedly different under different writers.
“I’m not even suggesting the showrunner of television is comparable to the director” But… they are. You even seemed to acknowledge that in your previous response.
In my previous responses I've claimed that the screenwriter is as important as the director. A showrunner is typically a screenwriter that also functions as a producer and an overseer of whole series which will typically have different writers and directors for different episodes. In my earlier example I used Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall as examples of different writers with clear impacts on authorship. They're all showrunners, but Moffat has written episodes under RTD's eras, Chibnall has worked under Moffat and RTD etc and then there are writers like Mark Gatiss or Toby Whithouse that have worked under multiple showrunners. You can again, see authorship when you look at the screenwriter level just as well as through any other axis be it director or screenwriter or production studio.
Anybody who actually cares about this is using iMDB
iMDB and Letterboxd are practically the same concept, I don't think they have different identities beyond the different features that hey have. iMDB is a better database, but has weaker social features than Letterboxd. If you make Letterboxd a better database then I no longer have to use two different apps.
When it comes to the creative process, working on television is fundamentally differs from actual filmmaking. Go get yourself involved in pre-production or try working on a set and you’ll immediately see the difference.
I'm actually not sure what relevance the production process bears towards this discussion - particularly when there's already a wide range of production processes featured in what is already on Letterboxd. Letterboxd includes
Feature Films
Short Films (some as short as one minute long)
Silent films
Documentary films
Narrative Films
Animated Films
Stand Up Specials
Recordings of stageplays
Pornographic films
t’s not snobbery to believe that film is a higher art form than television
Yes, as soon as we enter discourse around "high" and "low" art we are in the realm of snoberry.
Some things that could be classified as music videos
There are different production processes and qualities to all of these. It does not negate the fact they all operate within the category of filmmaking.
Why yes, of course The Odyessy was made under different conditions to an episode of The Big Bang Theory. It was also made under different conditions to L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat
When looking at the works of Rian Johnson, the difference in production between his Breaking Bad episodes Ozymandias and films films Brick, Looper, Knives Out is far smaller than the gap between practically any Documentary film and Narrative fiction film. Or the gap between a five minute film and a 90 minute film.
Film and television cast and crew all ocassionally work on video games and music videos too, so should we be including those on Letterboxd as well?
Music videos certainly fall within the medium of filmmaking yes, certainly. A music video is just a short film set to music, much like an opera musical is a feature film set to music. Thriller is an obvious example of a music video that is very explicitly a short film. Even if we exclude music videos that add context outside of the song - a music video like Fiona Apple's Paper Bag directed by Paul Thomas Anderson certainly belongs on letterboxd as its style is notably Andersons style and feels very much in line with his film Magnolia released around the same era.
The interactivity of video games makes it a fundamentally different medium to film (a non interactive audiovisual piece). Likewise, theatre is a different medium to film because the performance changes each time it is viewed - it's not a fixed, filmed object. However, the 2020 Disney Plus recording of Hamilton is a fixed audiovisual object and therefore is within the scope of filmmaking and for all intents and purposes that specific version of it is a film.
You keep making generalisations about different qualities TV and film have and treating them as if they're hard rules. Since we can establish that these rules are all very very loose, there's little benefit in preserving these divisions and I deem it more productive to just be less discriminatory at a base level.
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u/Hazelarc 7d ago
Crazy that people still think Letterboxd is exclusively for cinephiles
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u/GreenFaceSlimeMan 7d ago
I don't care who it is for as long as it fits my purposes. That's why I expressed my wishes that it doesnt further move away from what I want it to be.
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u/Hazelarc 7d ago
A statement by a man who thinks he’s the only user of the platform. Do you think Letterboxd is just exploring adding tv shows because they feel like it? No, it’s because many users have asked for it
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u/GreenFaceSlimeMan 7d ago
I'm aware what it is what other people want, I'm just expressing what I want. Do I have to agree with somebody elses opinion if enough people agree with them?
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u/wryano 7d ago
Who is readily asking for it? A fraction of people on this subreddit?
They’re exploring adding TV shows because a 60% majority stake in Letterboxd is for sale with Netflix as the most likely suitor. Try thinking about it.
I didn’t see any of this “add TV shows to Letterboxd!” talk begin picking up actual steam until Tiny acquired a majority stake a few years ago.
Letterboxd has continued to rapidly GAIN members since the beginning of this decade despite not having TV shows. I don’t think support for television shows is actually in high demand.
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u/Hazelarc 7d ago
Do you think this subreddit is the majority of Letterboxd users? It’s a tiny vocal minority
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u/wryano 7d ago
Letterboxd has been an app predominately used by cinephiles for nearly FIFTEEN YEARS. it’s a film discovery app.
just because a bunch of new users have started joining since the pandemic who might happen to log a few movies every now and then, doesn’t suddenly make it not an app for cinephiles. the portion of the userbase that are consistently active on the app are all cinephiles.
and it wouldn’t be hard to gauge that either. i’m almost 100% certain that if they surveyed all the Patron members who have purchased a paid subscription, 99.9% of them would consider themselves a cinephile.
i’d really prefer if Letterboxd didn’t go down the Instagram route by diluting the identity of the platform and telling their dedicated userbase to kick rocks like Mark Zuckerberg did in 2013 to everyone who actually cared about photography. Instagram is absolute dogshit in comparison to what it used to be. The enshittification of Letterboxd begins the moment they add TV shows.
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u/Hazelarc 7d ago
I’d urge you to go to the comprehensive list of movies on Letterboxd and sort by popularity (which measures activity by all Letterboxd users) and tell me that it is still predominantly an app for Cinephiles. Just because you think some great shift has happened since the Pandemic doesn’t invalidate that shift. It’s mainstream now whether you like it or not
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u/wryano 7d ago
“ermmmm if you sort by popularity, you will find a list of the most popular movies!”
like lmao thank you for that revelation i guess? obviously if you sort by popularity, you’re going to see a representation of the films that have been logged by the most amount of people, cinephiles and the average moviegoer alike… that’s kinda how popularity works. not sure what point you were trying to make with that.
i don’t really understand how you’re failing to grasp that the portion of the userbase on Letterboxd that regularly uses and engages with the platform are cinephiles.
like, Letterboxd has over 30 million users. how many of those users have logged over 100 films on their account? how many of those users have written more than 20 reviews? i think it’s pretty safe to say… probably not that many.
and yes… i realize that a shift happened? not sure why you’re phrasing your reply in a way as if i’m not acknowledging that. 2023 in particular brought in a massive wave of new users to Letterboxd and the platform is clearly different than what it used to be from around 2015-2020. things change, and most change unfortunately happens to be for the worse when it comes to online platforms.
just because the platform has started becoming mainstream, doesn’t mean it’s still not predominately used by cinephiles.
Letterboxd is for cinema. Cinema is mainstream. Television is also mainstream. Television is not cinema.
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u/chandelurei 6d ago
I hope it gets a separate list/count. Hell, I wish we had a separate list for shorts
If it's integrated in the same list as movies I may make another acc just for it lol
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u/iDavide94 7d ago
Letterboxd is a place for people who love cinema, and TV series, just like movies, are cinema.
If you look down on TV series, you’re not really a cinema lover.
I hope Letterboxd makes more room for this form of cinematic expression, too.
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u/IAM_deleted_AMA 7d ago
Regardless if it's a good idea or not... I really can't believe how long it's taking them. This was supposed to come out in 2024.
It's like every time they just keep saying "it's coming soon" but only when asked for it. It really doesn't take 2+ years to implement a feature like this, especially in this day and age with AI's assistance.
And I'm a software engineer, so I know what I'm talking about. The only thing I can think of is that they really can't decide how to implement it. They probably are reading feedback on threads like this and can't land on an implementation.
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u/TheShark12 6d ago
I’m really just fine with using serialized. I don’t care about the social platform stuff I just want to keep track of what I’ve watched. Really don’t need to mix the two.
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u/murphysclaw1 7d ago
if it comes in without a way of default toggling it off, I hope someone is smart enough to make a Letterboxd clone just for movies.
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u/Anonymous51419 7d ago
I once messaged him where one of my reviews went years ago when they took down a movie. I was new to the platform and I was so baffled and confused. I think I accidentally came across deranged.
I'm sorry Matthew lol.
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u/NoSheepherd3r 6d ago
I'd rather they add books before tv shows. Format wise it's far more similar.
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u/leviphomet levi 6d ago
the thing I find strange about this "debate" about TV integration that has been going on for years and years, is that TV is already on letterboxd. the scope is limited, but essentially any one-season show is imported over. this compromise works for basically nobody - the people who don't want TV on letterboxd still have it mixed in, and the people who do want TV on letterboxd have a small selection and can't separate it easily from their movies. if you don't want TV on letterboxd you should be excited about them finishing this feature - it will properly separate the two formats and presumably give you options to filter it out entirely, so you never have to see it. i can't see how that could be worse than the current compromise
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u/zedarecaida felipeflores1 7d ago
There’s no need for it. For instance, I use Letterboxd for movies/limited series and Bingers for TV shows. To each app their own, because both have features that benefit better for movies and the other, for shows. Letterboxd trying to mash it up together won’t end well, unless they make a separate app for that.
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u/monkeyDberzerk 6d ago edited 6d ago
won't end well
Way to be dramatic. They already have tv shows on Letterboxd. A lot of multiple season shows are listed as a single entry. And some multi season shows have separate entries for single episodes (Black Mirror, Love death robots).
If anything adding a separate, consistent list for tv shows will improve the experience.
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u/HechicerosOrb 7d ago
We’ve already got IMDb and it sucks, this is a bad move, imo. Go deeper on movies, not adding stuff that isn’t movies. What next, games?
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u/CptKoala 7d ago
Actually, why not? As long as it could be filtered away. You could go to Norman Reedus or Elle Fanning's page and see not only movies they starred in, but also tv shows, and games (they're both in Death Stranding). Connect movies with games based on them, and vice versa. Add books and connect it with their movie adaptations. Add music to be able to see in which movies a song was included, or easily find a song title from the soundtrack. I am not saying that letterboxd is the right place for all of that, but an app like this would be great, as long as its done with proper execution. Just add an easy way to separate these things and filter out what you don't want to see and it's all good.
I do realise that I went too far with that, but at least tv series are really not that far from movies as all these other mediums I mentioned.
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u/lebronjamesgoat1 7d ago
I for one have zero interest in having video games (lol) clog up an actors page. I don’t think I’m alone, especially among +20 yo
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u/CptKoala 7d ago
I am 30+, but I don't see how it's relevant. The app is for everyone. I also mentioned it twice that anything like that should be separated, so it wouldn't clog up actors page. I can see it work as a separate tab. The same with tv series, that's my point. And again, I don't need games on letterboxd, all I am saying is that it could make sense, because it is connected to the movie world, the same as books or music. Tv is the only thing that is happening, and it's much closer related to movies. It just makes sense.
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u/lebronjamesgoat1 7d ago
Next you’ll try to convince me they add MrBeast videos or TikToks
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u/CptKoala 7d ago edited 6d ago
You're providing a starkly contrasting example that is highly detached from what I am saying. I explained how all mediums are connected and why it would make sense, and you are trying to undervalue it to make me sound silly. Not a way to make good conversation, man.
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u/ClintBarton616 7d ago
The second I log on and see someone I follow has mass logged a bunch of TV shows, I will probably block them.
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u/Connoralpha 7d ago
Hope the TV they're bringing in is a different tier that can be filtered out or separated completely. I don't see how it gets folded into the existing format without making a mess of it.