Our IMDb History:

The 1 Second Film is not currently listed on IMDb. We may be listed again in the future. Below is my account of our project's history with IMDb. See our IMDb FAQs for more info.

After this project began to receive the support of various celebrities, I began submitting the credits to IMDb on the grounds that the film met the requirements of "general public interest" that qualified the title for an in-production listing. We had many celebrity producers at the time- from Christina Ricci to Ben Harper. However, we did not have much video or photos, and the credits were rejected.

When Stephen Colbert became our producer in 2005, he said on video:

"IMDb should put these credits in. It's as valid as most of my credits,"- Stephen Colbert

We posted this video online, shared a link on IMDb, and started a petition to get our credits listed. IMDb title managers reviewed our request and approved it for listing.

For the record, we only reqested IMDb to include our celebrity producer credits. However, IMDb began to list all of our producer credits, including thousands of first-time filmmakers who submitted their names to IMDb for listing.

Once listed on IMDb, people around the world browsing any of our various Celebrity Producers began stumbling across The 1 Second Film. For instance, we were listed under the credits of Kevin Bacon or Roland Emmerich. Curious IMDb browsers realized that they too could become our producers of our film for $1 or more, and thousands of people began to join our crew. At this point, our film began to grow virally.

At one point, over 3,000 of our 7,000 producers were listed on IMDb (view IMDb listing screenshot).

At the time, volunteers and I were entering names by hand. We were working on automating our website so that we could then pursue press and grow the project. We began to save funds to build an automated website, and to prepare the project to scale up.

In 2007, I had a chance encounter with Jon Reeves (head of IMDb data management) at a Los Angeles stop-motion event.

Jon was aware of The 1 Second Film, and asked me a lot of questions. He said that IMDb was discussing what to do with our project.

IMDb wanted to see some publicity and progress. I told John that we were holding off on publicity until after an automated website would be completed. John agreed to give us 2 months to complete the website, and we shook hands. However, just a few days later, IMDb pulled our credits before our automated site could be launched. We were not given any warning, nor did IMDb honor the agreed upon time-frame.

Jon has since written on IMDb that I missed the deadline. This is inaccurate.

The fact is, that before the 2 month time frame to automate or website, IMDb removed all of our credits, and eventually our title.

This upset a lot of our crew. Many had paid IMDb money to have a photo included in their IMDb profiles.

We never guaranteed anyone an IMDb credit in exchange for a donation to our project.

Why IMDb Removed The 1 Second Film

Some have suggested that the length of our credits was the issue, however, IMDb has assured us that their database is scalable and that the length of our credits was not an issue. We also offered to supply a spreadsheet of our producers so that the process could be automated.

We are still working to resolve this issue. We have an interesting theory as to the real reasons IMDb removed our credits, that will be included in our documentary. For now, we are focusing on completing our project, and plan to return to the IMDb issue down the road.

We still believe that our film meets IMDb's standards for pre-listing, as it is of "general public interest" by having many celebrities involved. Our film is currently listed on Wikipedia; the merits of our Wikipedia listing have been debated by the Wikipedia community, who have found that the project is of general interest.