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Film Buff Uses Google Maps to Display Set Locations of 2,000 Movies

by Amar Toor on March 21, 2011 at 01:45 PM

Edmund Helmer used to spend a lot his time on IMDB, where he would look up the exact filming locations of his favorite movies. One day, though, he decided to cut out the middle man, and created his own custom Google Map, showing more geographical movie information than anyone could ever desire.

Using Google's Fusion Tables data management tool, Helmer created a map showing the precise set locations of the top 2,000 films listed on IMDB, as ranked by the site's users. It might sound like excruciating work, but Helmer's description makes it seem remarkably straightforward. All he had to do was import the geographic data from IMDB, and let Google automatically generate the map. All told, Helmer's map encompasses a total of 9,736 locations, covering 2,001 movies produced within the last 100 years. (For personal reasons, he included 'The Fall' in addition to the top 2,000.)

Though Helmer ultimately succeeded in mapping most of the set locations included on IMDB, Google couldn't pinpoint all of them. Those mystery locales were automatically relegated, appropriately enough, to the Bermuda Triangle.

Click here to check out the map in its entirety, and to effectively kill the rest of your afternoon.

Tags: data, film, google, google+fusion, google+maps, googlefusion, GoogleMaps, imdb, maps, movies, SetLocation, top, Web

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