#BrettsMovieTest

“The best thing on Twitter…”
“Not a bad quiz, I suppose”
”Yeah, I quite like it…”

So, for one reason or another, I started posting movie questions on Twitter, and it’s sort of grown a little more than just that, which is open to all, providing you have a Twitter account, of course!

http://twitter.com/#search?q=brettsmovietest

or follow me http://twitter.com/brettrigby

#BrettsMovieTest is exactly that – a fun, meaningless, points-only quiz on movies using screen-shots that I’ve taken from the movie myself;  The shots are not always the key shots as used in movie’s promotional material, as that would be far, far too easy. Instead, I try and get glimpses from the film, of scenes that you wouldn’t probably guess unless you have actually seen the movie.

Of course, me screen-grabbing ‘moments’ from the movie means that it could go either way – some shots I’ve taken, I think I'll really puzzle people for a couple of days, (such as the shot from Ferris Beuller’s Day Off - below), but turn out to be really easy and vice versa!

I don’t really know why I started the movie test, but I think I was bored at home one afternoon and would see how good my mates were at movie trivia.  If anything, I thought that those who were following me at the time who soon de-follow me sharpish, but if anything, more followers have come along because of it, which is great!

I started to have to worry about keeping track of the scores, and back in the day where there was only a few questions out in the wild, I had the winners marked on a torn-off scrap of paper.  As things moved up a peg or two, I started using Excel, but then I ended up creating a sub-site on my personal domain name just for the movie test, which is over at brettrigby.com/brettsmovietest.

But I’ve recently decided to ditch the Excel spreadsheet in favour of just keeping the scores on the website, as I end-up storing the info on the winners in two places, and then forget to keep one up to date, as they’re not linked or anything fancy like that.

Process

People have asked how I’m getting these clips, so I thought I’d mention about the process of posting a screen-shot.

First of all, I have to pick a movie that isn’t too obscure, but on the other hand, too distinguishable a movie will only make for an easy question.

So, once I’ve decided on the next movie, it’s simply a case of getting the disc into my PC, spinning it up in Windows Media Player and then the hunt begins for the shot.

As I said earlier, key people from the movie are out. I made the mistake in the past of getting a screen-shot of Clint Eastwood holding a particularly iconic handgun into the view of the camera, and the amount of people who said that it was too easy was crazy.  It was, I agree. Because of this, main characters are out, unless they’re obscured in some way, or facing away from the camera enough to make you think.

Once I’ve got the shot I want, it’s as technical as pausing the movie and then starting up the Snipping Tool inside Windows 7, which I think is an absolutely brilliant snipping tool, almost made for this purpose!

The JPEG image is then saved to my local PC and then through the wonders of the HootSuite Windows Twitter client, it’s uploaded to ow.ly and is posted out for all to guess on.

I try to reply to all incorrect guesses and send the message out as a broadcast message, so that all participants of the test can see.

Once the correct answer has been submitted (only through Twitter) then again the details are broadcasted to all, as soon as I can.

Mistakes, fixed by the Twitter Timeline

Yes, it’s true, I have made the odd mistake here and there on all of this, but seeing as it’s only for fun, so it’s not so bad. The biggest mistake that I’ve made is to respond to a message containing the correct answer, before reading back on the Twitter Timeline to see if anyone else guessed it first.

Obviously, I have rectified any problems or mistakes as soon as possible, but it helps that people playing along are on the ball and notify me pronto! Any more that come along, I’m sure I’ll get told about!

Where/where will it end?

Good question! I suppose when I run out of movies to rifle through! I haven’t got any immediate plans as yet to bring it to a holt, but then I didn’t have any plans to begin with!

I was quite surprised about how competitive some people are when playing it! It’s probably what as driven me to carry it on, to be fair.  Getting a bit of feedback occasionally is good - It makes it a bit more interesting for me doing the test, as I try to think of movies that they not have seen, that may just vex them long enough to get something constructive done!

Anyway, as long as people think it’s ok, not bad, or adequate, then I’ll continue trying to keep everyone on their toes!