OTSONY takes a look at the worthy competition of New York based film location websites currently online and gives reference on the best ones.

Starting with the most famous film and television website, simply known to many as The Internet Movie Database and IMDb for short, this website contains the largest online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million unique users each month and a solid and rapidly growing mobile presence. IMDb was launched on October 17, 1990, and in 1998 was acquired by Amazon.com.

Each film or television show has a dedicated page containing cast listings, reviews, pictures, trailers, technical information, trivia, film locations and much more. In recent years, websites such as Wikipedia, AllMovie and MovieWeb have tried to compete with IMDb only to fall short. Although, IMDb is featured in this article and is a great source for recording film locations across the world, it offer only gives one line addresses to actual locations with very little information as to which scene this would reference. Nevertheless, it is a great website and worth a visit as least once or twice a week.

Not wanting to stray too far away from New York as there are some websites such as The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations, Filmaps and Movie Location Guide which cover global film locations, this article also looks at the various scouting blogs that in recent years have begun clogging up the Internet. Next though is On Locations Vacations which provides daily updates for in production film projects as well as news articles and visitor feedback.

Dedicated to LA and New York, this website is ideal for anyone who lives in either of these two great cities and has an keen interest in film locations and movie stars. Watch the film location updates closely, and you could find yourself on the same street as Will Smith whilst he battles it out, or as Sandra Bullock runs into the arms of her leading man.

The Movie Locations Guide makes full use of Google Maps whilst covering an array of global film locations with only a handful of New York films such as Breakfast at Tiffany's, Ghostbusters, I Am Legend, Taxi Driver and Men in Black. Although the copyright sign shows the date 2012, there doesn’t seem to be any regular updates and the newest addition to the film list dates back several years. It is shame really, especially as this website holds such a high position on Google’s search results page.

Staying with the same style of website, The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations has a vast collection of film locations as well as offering books on the subject. The only disappointing part to this website is the lack of regular updates and that many of the featured film titles are not clickable. Easy New York City has been running since 2002 and holds an impressively high position on various search engine results pages, considering the lack of actual content and updates. Nevertheless, it is still worthy of a mention in this review as it holds 81 New York based films with click through film poster icons much like OTSONY to reveal the film locations and a brief scene description, although scrolling down the page reveals them too!

If the 1980’s are more your thing, when films became movies, ran for only 90 minutes and had a start, middle and normally a romantic end, then a visit to the 80s Movies Rewind website is well worth the bandwidth. Featuring a long list of 80’s films with click-through to a review, soundtrack, trivia, behind the scenes and filming locations pages this really is the ultimate in 80’s film websites. Although the list of 80’s films are rarely updated, there is a very useful forum where visitors can leave comments and have lengthy discussions.

Finally, the Internet film blogs and for this review there are 2 which have been bookmarked. First up is I am Not a Stalker, a blog which claims to be the definitive source for film locations. Run by US resident Lindsay, who tends to like to stand in front of the locations and smiles quite a bit, this blog hosts locations mainly from city of the angels, much like the website Movie Shots LA. Updated daily, Lindsay scouts the Hollywood Hills for film locations and posts screen grabs alongside photographs that she has taken on her travels. The biggest disappointment when browsing through the pages for this blog is that OTSONY was missing from the links page of film location websites – Tut Tut!

If scouting film locations is your thing, then we hope that this review has helped you in some way. One person who has dedicated part of his adult life to finding new and old film locations and who probably has the best job in the world is film scout, Nick Carr. The New York resident actually gets paid to walk around the streets of New York in search of prospective locations for future film productions. He also hosts a very informative blog called Scouting NY which documents his travels and findings, whilst occasionally posting articles about classic films that have been shot in New York and how much the city has changed.

That concludes our first look at the competition currently online. If you would like to nominate a website or blog for the next review, please contact the OTSONY editor via the email – editor@onthesetofnewyork.com