All
jobs should have perks, and the perks in the entertainment
industry are second to none. We were thrilled when
Modern Movie Mega Corp (MMM) asked us to construct a thesaurus
related to their upcoming blockbuster film, Dressed
to Kill: The Merry Widow Project.
The movie, set in the mid 1800's, is the story of four
very aristocratic and wealthy wives who plot, together
and with their maids, to murder their husbands. They hope
to escape the dreary Victorian boredom and oppressiveness
of their lives, to experience the thrill of dalliances
they had glimpsed but only secretly imagined, and to live
happily ever after as very merry widows, indeed! The movie
features a star-studded cast, many of whom are renowned
for both their sexual appeal and experience acting in
period pieces. The producers are convinced that the movie
will be nominated for many prestigious awards because
of its shamefully romantic and yet very suspenseful plot.
The thriller will display the Victorian era of its setting
with rich and sumptuous attention to detail. The costumes,
furniture, and architecture will be historically accurate
and the musical score, already written and fabulous, combines
the best of the music, themes, and tones produced by nineteenth
century composers.
The
folks at MMM know movies, of course. They would not be
the longest established and most profitable production
company in North America if they did not. One of the reasons
for their success is that they know marketing just as
well, if not better. They are sharp. One only has to look
at the web site of The Lord of the Rings, for example,
to understand the enormous profit making potential of
well planned concept marketing coordinated with the ownership
of movie tie-in merchandise.
Dressed to Kill: The Merry Widow Project has been
strategically written and vividly shot to feature Victorian
dress in all its corseted glory. MMM will incorporate
a multi-faceted merchandising approach during the production
of the movie. A major marketing thrust will be the marketing
of corsets made famous by characters in the movie. Star
corsets named after actresses will be sold. This will
lead to an interest in personalized custom corset ordering
as well as the desire to own other merchandise related
to the movie themes and period costumes. MMM plans to
inflame the current corset rage to unprecedented proportions,
on an international level. With a fully developed web
site and thesaurus in place to ease the ordering of stock
and custom corsets, MMM hopes to make a killing.
Of
course, this will necessitate a number of other thesaurus
modules for this project. Users of this online thesaurus
will include customers, costume designers, seamstresses
and all our corset indexing staff. Everyone will find
the thesaurus a simple access tool with which to select
and design two hundred year old styles of underwear made
of accessible Victorian materials (or twentieth century
materials) with twenty-first century terminology! Once
the designers of MMM develop their star character corsets
for each actress, another module will be needed to establish
the preferred descriptors and cross-references related
to these corsets. MMM clearly needs a comprehensive thesaurus
of Victorian corsets which will act as a basic model and
guide for the development of all future modules related
to the movie marketing strategies and the fluctuations
of the marketplace.
This
is where we, the well-known indexing team of Three Old
Broads and a Babe (TOB&B Inc.), come in. We were hired
to create the thesaurus. We also happen to be movie buffs
with a great deal of experience working in the movie industry.
Our hearts may have affected our judgment when we decided
to take on this job. Of course, the opportunity to visit
England again, (the second time this month - we just returned
from finishing a huge project related to the British Museum's
lovely Reading Room), was another factor. We were a little
more than curious to read the script and examine the museum
corsets. We must confess, though, that the opportunity
to work with so many stars on one set was the final piece
de resistance - the turning point in the organization
of our busy calendar.
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The
Indexing Company
Three Old Broads and a Babe, Inc.
We,
the members of TOB&B Inc., are an indexing firm comprised
of four women. We trained together at the School of Library,
Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS), at the University
of British Columbia and received our MLIS degrees within
a few months of each other. After working as independent
indexers in different locations throughout the world,
we renewed our friendships at the 45th Anniversary of
SLAIS. After a great weekend together, we spent numerous
weeks developing market surveys and proposing profit and
loss statements to our bankers. We received the green
light and quickly decided to join forces and become a
much-needed indexing firm. Our cocktail party joke turned
into a brilliant idea! We have found that our diverse
backgrounds and talents perfectly complement each other.
We are a formidable team capable of tackling any indexing
project. The more creative license we have with a project
proposal, the more successful the completed project. We
have produced a variety of indexes and thesauri and have
worked on some of the most successful thesauri, including
the Art and Architecture Thesaurus and the British Museum
Thesaurus. We have experience with a variety of thesauri
types, ranging from the pictorial to the object-based.
We
are a growing firm. Many of our recent projects have been
for large museum and gallery collections. We have recently
cut our teeth in the movie industry and produced an index
and thesaurus for a production company that filmed and
produced much of its footage in New Zealand. During the
filming, there was huge commercial interest in the otherworldly
quality of their costume designs. We developed a thesaurus
and helped this company incorporate it into their marketing
organization and strategies.
Due
to our vast experience, MMM has been very generous and
have guaranteed ample funds for the development and maintenance
of the thesaurus. As well, we have been able to hire of
a team of highly specialized indexers and support staff
who will maintain and develop the corset website, coordinate
sales and marketing strategies, and develop future modules
of the thesaurus, as they are deemed profitable by MMM.
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The
Thesaurus
MMM
currently has a large thesaurus that includes terminology
related to their other film productions and merchandise.
In this thesaurus, terms such as basic colors are already
included, so it was not the job of TOB&B to create
these hierarchies, but rather ensure that our thesaurus
would integrate well into the overarching MMM thesaurus.
We were careful to add qualifiers to homonyms and colors
to ensure successful integration of this and future modules.
At
this point, the thesaurus for Dressed to Kill:The
Merry Widow Project collection consists of preferred
and non-preferred terms for many nineteenth century corsets
and corsetry-related terminology. We used many different
authoritative reference sources including museum examples
of nineteenth century corsets, books, articles, encyclopaedias,
and websites. It is anticipated that the thesaurus will
grow to include a number of distinct modules related to
this film production including linens, perfumes, 19th
century evening wear.
As this is only the first of a variety of anticipated
modules, the thesaurus structure is sufficiently flexible
so that other modules and terms can be integrated easily,
without causing data redundancy and impotency. For example,
all of the terms and descriptors in the 'materials' and
'corset components' hierarchies can easily be post-coordinated
in new hierarchies that might include character corsets
in future modules. Anticipating this module, we have added
the 'star names' node. Similarly, all of the hierarchies
can be post-coordinated with our 19th century corset hierarchy
or even a future 'gartered teddy' line.
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The
Users
The
current thesaurus will be used by a diverse group of users.
It will be used by members of the wardrobe department
and the seamstresses to design star corsets for the movie
as well as to sell to the consumers. It will also be used
by the website and print catalogue designers. Many of
our thesaurus users are not sophisticated index users.
We have included many scope notes to aid in the translation
of the terminology unfamiliar to that user group. We are
committed to making the thesaurus easy to use.
Although
the thesaurus focuses on nineteenth century corsets, we
have included some contemporary terms for corsets. We
expect some users will not be familiar with many of the
historical and technical terms. For example, many first
time buyers might use 'foundation garments' or 'lingerie'
as a term for corsets. They would be referred to the preferred
term of 'corsets' within the thesaurus. While contemporary
expressions therefore comprise a large number of our non-preferred
terms, historical terms comprise another large portion.
It is assumed that most of the end consumers will have
seen the movie and may therefore use the historical terminology
used in the movie when ordering a corset.
While
some of the clients might be quite savvy with respect
to undergarment measurements and corset styles, others,
including men wishing to buy gifts for members of either
sex, might be less knowledgeable about corset construction
materials. For example, some might have little understanding
of the use of 'cane' as a stiffening device; the inclusion
of scope notes in the thesaurus will help these users
immensely, as will the telephone ordering system. So while
the thesaurus is complex, it is also quite easy to use.
