Do you categorize your collection by genre and, if so, which ones do you use?
 

I like to categorize my collection by genre. I find that that helps me settle quickly on what flick I want to watch, because when I have time to watch a movie, I'm usually in the mood for a particular genre and can just go from there. Lately, however, I've been hitting some titles that are difficult to pidgeonhole (E.g., is The Fisher King a Comedy or Drama? Should Who Framed Roger Rabbit go in Animated or Comedy?). I'd like to see how some other genre organizers have broken down their collection to see if I can improve my organization.

I have mine organized into the following categories:

Action/Adventure/Epic
Animated
Comedy
Drama/Documentaries
Kid Flicks
Musicals/Music
Reference
Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror
War
Westerns

Assuming you're a genre organizer, what genres do you use?

alphabetical before I moved, now they are all in boxes. But I am working on building some shelves and once they are done, I'm gonna go with genre. But I guess, I would label them the same as yours. Except I would do a broader category for animated & kid flicks into a 'family' category. Since all my animated films are family oriented except for Heavy Metal.

Right now, I only separate the Television genre into its own case, as my collection is small enough where breaking them all down by genre just wouldn't be effective.

I use DVD Profiler to break them down for me when I want to choose a specific type of film.

Other then that, I keep them alphabetical.

If I were to break them down by genre, I would probably use the same schematic that you have, but I would come into issues when it comes to borderline flicks that might be either drama or comedy or drama versus action.

Sometimes you do have to make some tough calls regarding categories. I pretty much just threw Fando y Lis up in the air and wherever it landed, it stayed.

I used to, now I alphabetize them, but when I did I separated them into horror, action, Tarantino movies, light hearted/romantic comedies, TV shows, and so on.

I have a few sections:

Boxsets
Criterions
Signed DVDs
Animated
Anime

And the rest...

I have had a lot of people tell me that I should categorize my collection by genre, but I have always resisted and stuck to alphabetical.

My argument for staying alphabetical is that some movies are just too difficult to categorize or can be categorized in many different genres.

The problem I have with the alphabetical method is all the different case styles, from snappers to single amaray keepcases to double alphas to box sets.

What I've done is to keep my snappers in one little section of their own. Their order is based somewhat on the color of the spine and a bit towards genre, but not really.

The majority of my keepcases are together by genre. For example:

Westerns
General Action
Life-action Comic Book movies
Historical pieces/epics (by historical chronology)
Military/War (by historical chronology)
Sci-Fi
And some even by actor, ie. Steven Seagal, Arnold Schwarzenegger

Then my TV season box sets or odd-ball sized custom cases go wherever they'll fit and look half-way decent.

My problem right now is that I'm out of shelf space. Or the space that I do have left on two shelves is "reserved" for up-coming releases.

I'm thinking about buying some of those 10-DVD stack racks from DDD. I've got a spot for them. Just need to figure out what to put in them.

TV
Horror/suspense
Drama
Action
Comedy
Snapper

i try to have shelves in my dvd cases dedicated to specific genres or groupings

-unopened/ yet to be watched (the titles in this section also get moved around according to genre or label -like Criterions, etc)
-TV vintage (60s, 70s, 80s)
-TV current (mid 90s on up i consider current)
-Cult (horror, exploitation, sci-fi- generally 60s-early 80s)
-classic sci -fi/fantasy (generally 50s-60s)
-classic Horror/monster (Universal Monsters, etc)
-70s (my favorite decade for movies- this is a catch-all, dramas, comedies, etc- and there are different shelves devoted to the releases from specific years)
-general dramas 30s-60s
-general dramas 80- to present
-snappers
-oversized boxes and sets
-Fox studio classics (i didn't intend to give them their own shelf, but i had a bunch that all hadn't been watched so they all tended to find the same area on the shelf, now i will probably just keep them together unless i get around to making some better jacket art for them).

within each category the films are in order chronolgically.

i also have one shelf reserved for movies that are my all time favorites- the creme of the crop.

I file by genre....but there are sub-genres within those genres.:D

some of my library sections include:

Horror(general)
Giallo
Nunsploitation
Swashbuckling
Rome, The Bible and Beyond
Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Something Weird
Lesbian Vampire
Film Noir and Classic Crime
Euro-American Western
Flesh Eating/Cannibal
War

and so on and so on.:thumbsup:

and hell no...a section just for snappers?:lol:

alpha? forget about it. the library would be chaos and look damn cheesy.

Mine are still alphabetical but will soon be changing to genre.
The catagories I will be using are:

Action/Suspense
Comedy
Drama
Family/Cartoons/anime
Horror/Thriller
Hitchcock
Music/Musicals/Sports
Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Television
Western/War/Martial Arts

I categorize by genre/subgenre:

Action/Adventure | Boxed Sets | Broadway Theatre Archives | Comedy | Concerts | Criterion | Disney Animation | Other Animation | Documentary | Drama | Family (not animated)| Foreign - Chinese | Foreign - Korea | Foreign - Philippines | Foreign - Other Asian | Foreign - France | Foreign - Spain | Foreign - Other European | Foreign - Latin America & Middle East |Historical Figures | Horror | Literary Adaptations | Live Performance | Musicals | Mystery/Suspense/Thriller | Period Pieces | Romance | Science Fiction/Fantasy | Sports | Television Shows | War & Western

At times it is difficult to figure out where to categorize a movie but it's so much easier for me to locate a DVD using this system.

The only thing that I categorize are the sets or series.

I have Star Wars and Star Trek films on one shelf. Another has all the John Carpenter movies. One shelf for Animated tv shows. Another for BBC brit coms. and so on. The regular movies are all seperate on another cabinet.

mine are split into 2 sections, Animation and Everything else.

Each section is alphabetical with the exception of the animation section which has the pixar films grouped together.

I used to have my collection sorted by studio, but as it grew I have gone to alphabetical. Certain series of films such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan are listed under those names.

The only exceptions are the Bond movies and anything from Disney.

<i>"Hmmm.... maybe I'll watch a light green movie tonight...</i>" -wink-

Hope this post isn't viewed as a hijack, but considering the topic I was wondering if any of you have located a source for DVD-sized genre cards to place between breaks where one genre ends and another begins in a DVD collection?

If I have enough movies for a sub-genre (at least 10 dvds) then they get their own section.

DRAMA
--Romance
--Mature
--Black Cinema
--War/Violence
--Musicals
--Historical
--Comedy
--TV Series
--Silent Movies
--Classics
FAMILY
--Animation (disney)
--Drama/Comedy
SPECIAL INTEREST
--Exercise/Travel
--Discovery Channel/BBC
--Visuals/IMAX
--Music
SCIENCE FICTION
--Death/Ghost/SuperNatl
--Vampires/Werewolves
--Nature/Creature
--Aliens
--Time/Future
FOREIGN
--Criterion
--Other

I got rid of all my snappers and converted to keep cases so I don't have that problem.

Back when I had about 30 or so DVDs I would arrange them by color, because it looked neat.

Now I have slightly over 100, and I only have 3 catagories: Movies (alphabetically), TV Shows (just kinda lumped by show), and Music DVDs (alphabetically).

naw... i couldn't do it. i HATE it when stores do it. what's comedy to one person might be a drama to another, etc etc. Pure alphabetical for me.

I was in the same boat, but I'm finally breaking down and organizing by genre.

The collection was just too overwhelming to both guests and my spouse. Someone would be looking for, say, a light comedy... but would have to scan through hundreds of films they had no interest in.

I'm still tweaking the categories:

Action
Animation
Comedy
Documentary/Misc
Drama
Family
Horror
Music/Concerts
Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Serials
Silents
Sports
TV shows

(Hitchcock, Kurosawa, and Chaplin get their own sections.)


Again, I'm still working with it (and trying to decide on reasonable subgenres). But I think at this stage, it makes more sense to organize this way, rather than having dramas next to Disney animation next to a Metallica concert. That worked for me, but seems to not work for anyone else on the planet. ;)

My non sense system....

TV Box sets....all grouped together

All other DVD's are grouped by studio. I find it looks better if they some what match.

Action/Adventure/Epic
Sci-Fi
Comedy
TV
Suspense/Thriller/Horror
Family/Disney
Music/Musicals
Documentaries/Docudramas
Fantasy
Combo: Action-Comedy, Sci-Fi-comedy
War
Western

I organize mine by studio. And then by color after that. It looks really good. Everything matches. The Superbits look great.

Saxon