We publish movie-based content across various platforms. Articles are added to this site regularly, we have a podcast (available on any streaming platform) that goes out every two weeks, and various social media channels posting on a daily basis. One of our most popular forms of content are our social media threads which form a narrative, telling the making of story behind various classic and/or hit films.

The response to our threads is, without exception, overwhelmingly positive. Most replies and comments come from fans who, like us, wish to discuss and celebrate their favourite films, and we love making them. We do on occasion, though, receive comments (for which we are very grateful) from people who worked on the relevant movie questioning some of our facts as being wholly or partly incorrect. As such, we’ve written this article to explain how our threads (and all published podcasts) are researched to ensure they are as accurate as possible.

Before a word of our threads (or podcasts) are written, we go through an extensive research process on the movie in question. This takes place over days (often weeks) where we watch documentaries, read articles from online publications, watch/listen to interviews, read books, and anything else we can do to absorb as much information as possible.

Each researched fact is then verified. If it cannot be verified, it does not go into the thread or on our podcast. To pass this verification, one of two things must apply:

• We hear the story/fact/trivia coming directly from the mouth of the director, cast member, crew member, or anybody else involved directly in the production of the movie.
• If the story/fact/trivia is reported (rather than recounted by somebody who was there), we do not consider it verified until we find at least 2 additional sources relaying the same story/fact/trivia.

For example, we have published a social thread and podcast on Jaws (1975). In carrying out our research, we came across a documentary called Inside Story: Jaws in which director Steven Spielberg was interviewed and said the difficult production of the movie gave him, “Nightmares for a lot of years.” As this came directly from the director we took the information as verified and it went straight into our thread/podcast. If, however, we had read an article in an online publication which contained words to the effect of, “Spielberg later said the production of Jaws gave him nightmares for years,” we would have carried out further research to find the same piece of information in at least two other places before considering it as verified.

Is this a foolproof way of 100% guaranteeing everything we publish in our threads and on our podcast is always exactly as it happened? Unfortunately, no. In the case of stories reported second-hand, details can be embellished and/or exaggerated without us having any way of knowing. And, in the case of stories being recounted first-hand by cast and crew members, details can be misremembered over time. For example, on one occasion a well-known director contacted us privately via Twitter to correct one of our pieces of information on the social thread describing the making of their movie. The fact in question was something that had been said directly by a senior cast member on a documentary we watched in our research. We were happy to remove it out of respect for the filmmaker in question, but this demonstrates the difficulties there can be in really nailing down the truth.

We’re not complaining about any of this of course – we love carrying out the research and everything that goes with it. We just thought it worthwhile in explaining our processes to any who may be interested. In a nutshell, we feel we are as diligent as we can be in our research. We can’t, unfortunately, guarantee everything happened 100% in the way we say it did, but we can 100% guarantee the below:

• Every story/fact/trivia in our social threads and on our podcast has either been recounted directly by somebody involved in the production or reported by at least 3 separate sources.
• We have done everything we can to ensure our making of stories are as accurate as they can possibly be.

Thanks so much for reading and listening!