DVD Library

[godardslave]

Edit: The bottom drawer contains my undergarments, naturally.

er...why are you telling us this?

[Floyd]

I have a strange system really, I order by director, but not alphabetical by director. I mainly keep my favorite directors together, say like Jim Jarmusch with John Cassavetes on a shelf. Werner Herzog with Sam Peckinpah on another, etc. Kind of strange but it seems to work out alright.

Speaking of Cassavetes I wonder if I am the only one who changed up the box to where the spines of the DVDs are visible. The only problem is the inner box is very locked in and it can't be slid in and out from the outer box, but the DVDs are easy to get to.

[ben d banana]

Holy High Fidelity Batman!

[FilmFanSea]

The bulk of my collection (800+ titles) is arranged alphabetically by director (then by year) in two large Ikea bookshelves. Since I'm running out of space, I've moved several categories of titles (TV, Animation, Avant-garde) to seperate shelves.

My next task is to weed thru my collection & sell off at least a hundred DVDs which aren't essential (and are readily available at Hollywood & Blockbuster for rental). I find that I must constantly refine and re-define the purpose of my library, and somehow get back to the "essentials". My credit card company will be extremely disappointed at this news.

[THX1378]

I have almost 500 dvds and I keep mine all alphabetically in groups with little title cards with A, B, C, ect that separate them. There all set up in a big bookcase and it sorta looks like when you go into Boarders. The only thing that I keep separate are my box sets and gift sets that I have. I have them in another bookcase/shelve to display them. All my Anchor Bay tins are on top facing front along with my Battlestar Galactica box set with the first Cylon cover, which seems to always get people talking. I also found this cool glass book cover/display set up at a yard sale that I took and put my Evil Dead: Book of the Dead dvd set in to display it.

[Polybius]

I think I get the 'honor' of having the most random collection.

I keep stuff with exposed cardboard cases (Raging Bull, Alien, Short Cuts) on a shelf with some TV box sets. All on the top shelf of a bookcase that otherwise really holds, y'know...books.

I also have a tower that displays DVDs horizontally, which I use for my various Warner Bros/New Line/Image snap cases.

The rest, i.e. the bulk of my collection that came in standard keep cases, I store in Rubbermaid stackable media boxes (which hold 27 or so single size DVD cases and can also be used to store CDs, VHS tapes, photographs or Viewmaster discs, at your pleasure). I have 10 of those.

Within them, it's more or less by genre and title. I also have theme ones (one is my 20+ Julianne Moore films, plus a few others) and within those parameters, I have some By Director sections (for Tarkovsky, the Coens, Coppola, Scorsese, etc.) and some By Actor ones (Denzel Washington, Susan Sarandon...)

In short, I may have to look a little while to find a particular title, but I know it's always among friends.

[Subbuteo]

Gadz! Flixy 1200 titles.
I have just pipped 400 titles and my girlfriend thinks I am insane. Having said that there are another 100 or so other titles (released) that I would love to have and probably another 100 (not yet released).
I have come to the conclusion that one only needs the 'essentials' well thats what I'm telling the girlfriend!

[porquenegar]

I'm at around 360 DVDs now. I store them alphabetically by movie title although I'm considering splitting off the fox studio classics and criterions from the main group. Box sets usually go on the top of bookshelves or sit next to my tv as a sort of random display. I really need to get some new larger shelves and also have to do some spring cleaning of my titles.

[mbalson]

I'm not completely sure but I am dealing with around 1300-1400 and wanting to have less. There really isn't much of a system at work for organization either. Films by the same Director are grouped, but also scattered throughout my apartment. For example the Fassbinder and Suzuki films are grouped in the living room while the Criterion selves and foreign stuff is in my office. Other than that it's a free for all really. My one saving grace is the cheap wood selves I bought at Canadian Tire(For the non-CDNs, this is a store kind of like Wal-Mart but more focused towards guy stuff like car parts and tools).
Here is a pic of one of these shelves:

[exte]

So the first Criterions all had black spines. I never knew that was the case.

[cdnchris]

So the first Criterions all had black spines. I never knew that was the case.

Except A Night to Remember, which had a brown spine. The rest were all black.

[godardslave]

So the first Criterions all had black spines. I never knew that was the case.

Except A Night to Remember, which had a brown spine. The rest were all black.

what shade of brown was it?

i need to reorder my dirt and i'll use your answer as a reference point to get me started.

[jcelwin]

i need to reorder my dirt and i'll use your answer as a reference point to get me started.

Wouldn't you just have the dirt ordered lightest-to-darkest (or vice-versa)? That seems a logical way to do it.
Unless you are thinking of purchasing that disc and wish to save a place in the dirt for it.

Btw, do you water often? And what kind of fertilizers do you use on your roses?

[Theodore R. Stockton]

I make my own fertilizer but it's not the same brown as A Night to Remember.
BTW, the spine is actually a dark red not brown.

[godardslave]

i need to reorder my dirt and i'll use your answer as a reference point to get me started.

Wouldn't you just have the dirt ordered lightest-to-darkest (or vice-versa)? That seems a logical way to do it.
Unless you are thinking of purchasing that disc and wish to save a place in the dirt for it.

Btw, do you water often? And what kind of fertilizers do you use on your roses?

no criterion is the reference standard, [as we all know], so i use their concept of brown as a reference against which to judge the collection of my dirt.

I dont water as that turns the dirt into mud and makes the dvd cases to wet and messy.

the fertilizer i mainly use is a brand called "intelligence", oh yes...but sometimes i mix in the brand "humor" also, although that can be dangerous and sometimes has unexpected results.

[scotty]

My 145 are lodged in three of a potential six low-lying horizontal rows of pullout drawers (low-lying modern furniture), spines facing up. I like hiding the films. I've got enough books out as it is.
Nations are kept together, starting with US and moving loosely through geography from there. Within nations, films are arranged by director, but placed chronologically according to the first film by a director. So, for the US, Chaplin's Gold Rush (1925) begins four Chaplins, followed by Keaton's The General (1927). For directors whose films cross national boundaries, majority rules, so The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes stay with the other Hitchcocks in the US sector, even though they are UK. Multiple-director box sets are generally not true boxes but bundlings of individual titles. These individual films are broken out as above. Single director sets: in the case of the Scorsese, they are in individual cases anyway, so they are mixed in with other Scorsese releases in chronological order (so that Alice (1974) precedes Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980), not After Hours (1985)). In the case of Criterion boxes such as Truffaut or Cassavetes, everything stays together because they are designed that way. Jules and Jim (1962) comes after the Doinel set because The 400 Blows (1959) predates J&J.
This may sound complicated but actually it is quite easy to find particular directors, time periods, or national cinema this way. I can immediately see all the Italian films and the Fellinis together at a glance. If I only know I want to watch a 40s Hollywood film, I can browse that easily even even though organized by director because they are roughly together.

This is pretty much how my lit. books are organized. And yes, I put way too much energy into this.

[Morbii]

I have about 900-1000...

My criterions are in two groups: spine ordered for ones I've watched, and spine ordered for ones I haven't
I also have sections for the following, all alphabetical:
* unwatched
* TV (and my first LOTR gift set/T2 VHS set since they were too big to fit on any shelf besides the top one)
* non-criterion OOP
* other region DVDs
* everything else
And lastly I have two sections broken down by director and year for:
* Dario Argento films
* Lucio Fulci films

Oh, and I have my criterion copies of Salo, The Killer, Hard Boiled, This Is Spinal Tap, and my Fox Lorber Tetsuo the Iron Man in a safebox.

Here's a picture, actually (this was taken probably a few months ago though, the collection has grown since then)

[Theodore R. Stockton]

Criterion porn. It was stopped by matt on the last incarnation of the forum.

If you feel the need to post a picture of your collection at least watch all of them.

[Morbii]

Oh, I fully intend to... it's more a matter of not having infinite time to do whatever I want (sadly)

[javelin]

Thank you everyone. My 163 seems like such a pittance in comparison, now I can refer my g.f. to this thread when she asks if my collection is getting out of hand.

[LonHuber]

I've moved recently, and my 1000 or so DVDs are in stacks awaiting delivery of some built-to-fit shelves a friend is building for me. So they are at the moment completely disordered, which is actually kind of fun to browse. Before the move, they were arranged by nationality, and within that arrangement by genre and/or director. So all the Italian art films were together, and subcategorized by director. Eurohorror was its own category, with Argento, Bava, Franco, etc. all getting their own sections. Same for French, Japanese, HK, and so forth.

I'm not too attached to a given arrangement - once I got nutty and reorderd them all chronologically, which made for some interesting juxtapositions - LA DOLCE VITA in the same section as BLACK SUNDAY, for example, gives some perspective to things!

When I ask what someone wants to see, the answer is usually "got any Fellini, Godard, Welles, etc..." or "Something scary, funny, sad..." so
I'll probably do the nationality/director/genre thing again when I get the shelves in, for the sake of the guests. Plus it's fun answering the question "What are all THOSE ones?" with "Oh, Italian crime films" or "1970s French porn."

- Lon

[solaris72]

This is what my DVD collection looks like:


Awwww! My DVD collection thinks its people!

[emcflat]

I just moved, so I feel compelled to contribute to this thread as it has recently been consuming my nights and weekends. I used to buy DVD racks that Wal-Mart sold (I think they held about 150-180 a piece.) I would just go up up get a new one about twice a year or whatever when I needed more space. Of course, these were ultimately discontinued.

So I bought 6 9' long wood boards and took a dozen cinder blocks from a construction site and built a new shelf that way. It looks like crap but it's functional. The way I organize is this; the top shelf is reserved for BIG showy sets (like Monty Python megabox & Kubrick,) oversize boxes (like Eraserhead, Dark Crystal,) and sets that I have more than one season/volume of (Simpsons, Rocky & Bullwinkle.) Everything else is alphabetical all the way down. I understand the compulsion to arrange titles by Director or Genre, but I also like the uniformity of having it totally alphabetical.

Anyone have any DVD moving stories? That was awful, I ended up just stuffing them in rows into plastic shopping bags, which worked OK. The remainder I had to put in a canvas car-top carrier. That was probably the scariest drive of my life.

[Subbuteo]

Flixy
Yes I'm considered insane, folks who visit think it strange I have so many foreign titles and then they spot my music and book collection with a blank expression whilst turning to my pictures on the wall with such comments as 'thats nice'
My saving grace is my partner now recommends some of my films to visitors which at least exonerates me as being the sole wierd one!

[mmiesner]

i started putting my collection together simply by alphabetical, but once i started getting a good amount of multiple films by single directors, i put it all by director. but then i found that i had a good amount of films that really, who gives a fuck who directed it? i mean, i didn't buy willy wonka because mel stuart is a genius, i bought it because it's a great childhood memory. so now i have a sort of rule where it only gets into the director section if i have multiple films by the director. the only exceptions are 'by Brakhage' because really... it's only one box, but it really is multiple films. blade runner sits by it's lonesome in the director's section, but only because the Alien box set can't be split up to put with jeunet and fincher as well *and by the way, fuck james cameron and his shitty alien movie*. i also have all my roger corman films in the singles section because most of them are double features that are only one by him. i can't contaminate my director's section with lesser directors. and then there are the enigmas of charlie kauffman and harmony korine, where i went by the writer instead of the director. i couldn't bear to break up adaptation from human nature or julien donkey boy from kids. so it goes like this - my director's section is organized chronological within each director, and the 'singles' section is simple alphabetical. the only time i run into problems in the directors section is when a box set comes at the edge of a shelf - then i have to fudge things around and out of order until i have accrued enough things to even it out again. and i'm so goddamned ocd that i will sometimes buy things simply to fill space and get my collection back in its proper order. wow that was a long explanation of something so seemingly simple...

but that's nothing - the guy who got me into good film must have over 3000 flicks in various formats in his apartment, and i still have yet to crack the code of his selection. he has so many different sections - some directors, some genre, some specific studios *such as hammer*, then some stuff that i really don't know how he keeps track of it. but every time i ask him if he has something, he knows exactly where it is and if it is loaned out to someone. freaking amazing, someday i want to be that guy.