This is a New Zealand Film Commission pdf generated from a spreadsheet. Could I please request the original spreadsheet and associated data not contained in the pdf.
creating definitive Wikidata items of New Zealand film.
NZ film is poorly represented in Wikidata and Wikipedia. Having access to this data will improve the visibility of this cultural activity. If this dataset is more visible then the impact of Commission funding is more obvious. The NZ public will then see the results of their financial input into NZ film.
The records in this published dataset are limited to: Year, Title, and Director only. Is there more information contained in NZFC dataset that should be released to the public? If so, I would like these fields to be included in this request. (For instance, producers, studios, production companies, cast, funders and other crew.)
To get this data into Wikidata I need an authoritative open dataset to work from. PDFs generated from spreadsheets are difficult to do this from, and in this case there has clearly been data loss in the process of creating the PDF. The Film Commission has previously published spreadsheets listing NZ films created between 1939 and 2016 (available on the Internet Archive here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160815053228/http://www.nzfilm.co.nz:80/about-us/research) and I would like to see this continue, and the dataset expanded.
See above.
Other
An updated list of New Zealand Films is now available from the NZ Film Commission website: https://www.nzfilm.co.nz/resources/feature-films-made-new-zealand-2013%20on The NZ Film Commission is hesitant to make this an ongoing maintained dataset in its current form as the list includes data relating to films that have had no interaction with NZFC. This data has been sourced via web search as NZFC is not responsible for and does not hold this information. For this reason, this list could be incomplete. The NZFC is open to creating and maintaining a dataset that includes only films that have interacted with NZFC (i.e. via financing or other engagements). The NZFC is open to discussion about this. The NZFC is currently working on a number of datasets that it expects will be of interest to the community. It is expected these will be available by the end of April 2020.
0 Votes
New Zealand Film Commission
Agency responded
Victoria Leachman
I'm wondering if staff at the Film Commission are considering this as an OIA request rather than a request for data to be lodged and maintained in data.govt.nz? I'm wondering whether the staff at the Film Commission have been upskilled to be able to add an excel spreadsheet to data.govt.nz and how to update their spreadsheet on data.govt.nz over time. Has the Film Commission got a staff member who has been delegated the responsibility of developing a workflow for the open release of their data? Someone in that organisation knows how to release the CE expenses data (see https://catalogue.data.govt.nz/dataset/new-zealand-film-commission-chief-executive-expenses) I'm wondering whether that staff member can also take on the responsibility for opening this spreadsheet as well? That would solve Tom's problem and also make the spreadsheet reusable for the public of New Zealand. Could the team have a conversation with the Film Commission about this?
Tom Ackroyd (Requester)
I realise I listed columns based on the old Excel spreadsheets and this pdf has other key creatives. This is good.
What I mean by data loss is (for instance) where text is lost in the translation from Excel to PDF. An example is "THE CHILLS:THE TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY OF MARTI9N2PHILLIPPS" where a long title has bled into the neighbouring cell.
PDFs are also very difficult to translate back into a spreadsheet or CSV, so that extracting data involves extra steps and can lead to formatting errors. If the source spreadsheet was made available, the data would be more accessible and more useful to open linked data projects such as Wikidata. This is of intrinsic benefit to the public and the culture.