Movies & Entertainment: A Comparison (Assignment One)

This post will look at three major movie websites – Rotten Tomatoes, Ain’t It Cool News and Urban Cinefile – to compare and contrast their strengths and weaknesses in web writing and accessibility.

Rotten Tomatoes (RT) is a well-established movie and entertainment website which has different “versions” depending on your country (for example, I viewed the “au” version of the URL by default). The homepage has great navigation, including simple links to forums, movies, celebrities, DVDs and top upcoming and new release films in Australia.

The articles are professional but not too serious in tone. Headlines and kickers are pragmatic and direct, often simply a list or statement of the content – for example, one article carries the heading “Critics Consensus: Inglourious Basterds is Certified Fresh!” with subheading “Plus, Shorts, Post Grad, and X Games 3D: The Movie come up short”. Most articles encourage audience interaction, with one example ending, “Let's save the bickering for the comments… and work our way up through the 10 best-reviewed movies of Brad Pitt's career”. The language in general is simple and “catchy”, allowing the conversational tone preferred by Internet users, as papers by Dube and Nielsen have discussed. Additionally, as Lynch and Horton have found, the use highly descriptive headlines and kickers also makes keyword searches simpler for search engines.

Promotion of stories from the homepage is largely done with pictures and graphics, with “Today’s Features” and “What’s Hot” scrolling past on an interactive banner. Teaser images are accompanied with headlines and kickers such as “25 Movies to Get Excited About in 2009: As we head into the final stretch of the year, we count down the best movies on the horizon…”. Lists of movies – the box office listings, newly released films and upcoming films – are visible from the homepage on the left navigation bar, letting users simply click on a film title to get a wealth of links of critical reviews. A toolbar with “Related Links”, including pictures, posters, news and forums about the movie in question, is accompanied by “Related Articles”, “Most Discussed”, “Latest News”, “Latest Interviews” and “Latest Features”.

Other internal links are well signposted. In the articles, links are attached to almost every name, including directors, actors, movies and critics. These are coloured blue, which both highlights keywords and also helps users access more information - two aspects that are important in web writing according to Nielsen. Keywords are also listed and linked at the end of the articles, including the celebrities and movies featured and even mentioned in the article. The site's forums are heavily promoted, with comments and message boards linked throughout the site as a key part of user interactivity.

External links abound. In the “News & More” links, only three out of the fifteen links displayed were “RT News”, with the rest being to external sources. This gives a great sense of credibility to the site, since as Nielsen's paper suggests, "Links to other sites show that the authors have done their homework and are not afraid to let readers visit other sites". External links open in a new window, which implies a concern with keeping people on the site, but may also assist in navigating to the comment section on the Rotten Tomatoes website for each story. Rotten Tomatoes could improve the many older reviews which are unlinked or have broken links, but overall, the site has very few navigational issues and is an impressive example of web writing.

Ain’t It Cool News has a lesser visual impact in its homepage. While its use of cartoon graphics makes the site look distinctive, the over-large fonts and busy graphics can be distracting, and the list of stories are not broken up by pictures or any visual cues, making it difficult to skim the page. The search function is present but not obviously placed, which is a drawback for such a busy homepage, as Lynch & Horton suggest that users can be overwhelmed by too much information.

Like Rotten Tomatoes, the AICN articles again utilized long, descriptive headlines and kickers, such as “Quint chats with Terry Gilliam about THE IMAGINARIUM OF DR. PARNASSUS, WATCHMEN, Pixar, Ledger and much more!”. Stories are often very short - for example, some articles I found are simply a quote and a link. In keeping with Dube's endorsement of conversational Internet writing, AICN has an even more down-to-earth style than RT, with the reviews more reminiscent of a blog rather than an online newspaper. Authors are known by nicknames, and the use of colloquialisms – such as expletives and frequent use of the first person – is common, as in this example.

Cross-promotion is not as well exploited in AICN as in Rotten Tomatoes. Stories on the homepage are listed under headings such as “Top News” and “Latest News”, but are mainly ordered by date, with reviews, news stories and trailers all listed together. “Top Talkbacks” are listed to the right of articles, but there are no links to earlier related articles or discussions on the story’s topic, which is a drawback as researchers like Nielsen & Morkes found that particpants enjoy following links to more information.

Internal links are also relatively infrequent. Reviews, interviews and stories are generally plaintext, with only a link at the end to contact the author and possibly to find a related story. Keywords tend to be in all capitals, which assists the visual setup of the page, but does not provide any parallel information through links. Like Rotten Tomatoes, comments are a big part of the site, with “Talkbacks” (or article comments) and “The Zone” (message boards) visible and promoted.

External links, like internal ones, are relatively rare. Many of these links are to Variety sources or The Hollywood Reporter - at random, I quickly found three examples by Hercules, Quint and Merrick. This implies some reliance on a few main sources of information rather than the greater diversity that Rotten Tomatoes displayed. Links also tend to open up in a new window, indicating the desire to keep users on the site.

To improve AICN, I feel that links and the general visual layout could be reconfigured. Using visuals to differentiate between reviews, interviews and news stories would greatly assist in the Nielsen & Morkes' all-important goal of the Internet: "to find useful information as quickly as possible". Related links should also be better exploited as a medium, since it would help give context to articles and give users greater access and navigation to other information, which Dube also identified as an important part of web writing. The site’s credibility also suffers from the over-personal tone of the reviews which – while often amusing – can seem unprofessional and less authoritative.

Urban Cinefile is an Australian movie website with a punchy black background and clear navigation bar on the left hand side of its homepage, leading to alphabetical search functions for movies, DVDs and other entertainment. Unlike AICN, images are used with text on the homepage for better visual appeal. However, the homepage is quite long with stories added by date and requiring a lot of scrolling, a trait Nielsen identifies as a generally negative quality in web writing.

Headlines are even more straightforward in Urban Cinefile than in Rotten Tomatoes and AICN, often simply stating, “Movie Reviews: Inglourious Basterds” or “Balibo: Insider Briefing”. While perhaps uncreative, headlines like this are clear, informative and incorporate keywords – three qualities that Nielsen's analysis suggests suit it well to the web. The type of article – for example, an interview or news story – is clearly stated in red as you scroll on the homepage, making skimming easy. Articles are written in an inverted pyramid style – for example, a story about the Israeli film festival begins with a rundown on major facts of the festival and the key films, before discussing other lesser films. Reviews also begin with a concise synopsis of the film in bold type, as in this example. The language of articles and reviews is much more professional and less like a blog than AICN, avoiding colloquialisms and use of the first person.

Cross-promotion within the site is visible from the homepage, with reviews often linked to related competitions or DVD reviews of related films – for example, a DVD review of the 1978 Inglourious Basterds film is linked to the review of the new version. Stories with straightforward headlines are simply listed on the homepage without overuse of graphics or flashy gimmicks, with a synopsis and a sample quote from the site’s reviewers. Internal links are few, with reviews and stories again mainly plaintext. Reviews benefit from having movie information – such as the running time, director, scriptwriter and release date – listed on the right of the story, but these are not linked. Most stories only have one or two additional links which are clearly signposted but few in number. There are no “related stories” or similar listings, which is also a drawback since there is often a lack of context for reviews and interviews as Dube argues. While a forum is part of the site, it is not heavily promoted, suggesting that the site could improve its interactivity.

External links are few. Reviews are largely done by one or two internal staff, with only occasional references, which contrasts with the many reviewers that are listed in RT. An external link is sometimes used to add context to news stories – for example, a story about a controversial fishing film at the Tokyo Film Festival was accompanied with links to an anti-dolphin hunting site, interviews and a review of the film. There could be more of these, however, to bolster credibility and give greater context to news stories, as Lynch and Horton suggest.

Urban Cinefile might benefit from greater organisation on its homepage, to speed navigation for busy Internet users. The search function could also be improved and placed on the homepage, instead of being a separate page on its own, for easier navigation.

In my opinion, Rotten Tomatoes is top of the heap in this analysis, followed by Urban Cinefile and AICN. As the Internet continues to evolve, it can only be hoped that sites like these do too!