Report Post 2 - Biographical Information

One of the pieces of information that I decided I needed was Biographical information concerning my topic. In this post I will detail my findings and take a look at their sources.

A short biography of M. Night Shyamalan, composed by myself from my research -

M. Night Shyamalan (pronounced "Shah-mah-lawn") was born Manoj Nelliyattu Shaymalan, in Pondicherry, India, on the 6th of August, 1970. His parents, Nelliyattu and Jayalakshmi Shyamalan were both doctors who immigrated to the United States after the birth of their first child and M. Night's older sister Veena. M. Night was raised in Penn Valley, in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He attended a private Roman Catholic grammar school, which his parents chose not because they were Catholic, but because of it's strict academic practices; followed by an Episcopalian High School. He later went on to graduate from the School of Arts, at the New York University, which was where he adopted the name "M. Night".

When he was eight years old he was given a Super-8 camera, which is when his passion for film-making began. By the time he was 17 he had already made 45 homemade movies. In 1992, the same year he graduated from NYU, his first film, the semi-autobiographical Praying With Anger, was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. To this day many people consider it one of his greatest works.

In 1993 he married Bhavna Vaswani, who he met during his time at NYU. Currently they have two daughters and reside in a suburb of Pennsylvania, not far from his favourite filming locations.

The movies that he is most well known for to this day are - Praying With Anger (1992), Wide Awake (1998 - his first commercial film), The Sixth Sense (1999 - the film that in essence made him famous, also reported to be one of his favourite films), Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002), The Village (2004), Lady in the Water (2006) and The Happening (2008). He is currently working on the film The Last Airbender (scheduled for release in 2010).

A full list of films that he has been involved in can be found here.

As I mentioned before, one of my first stops was to Wikipedia, which I have used in the past to enhance my own general knowledge. When searching for information on the Internet I've learned through experience to approach everything with a reasonable level of scepticism. Particularly with Wikipedia, as I have been given incorrect information by Wikipedia before. However, one thing that I have realised through use is that Wikipedia, even if it's pages might contain information of a questionable authority, often gives links to other sources of information, which can be very useful. It was the Wikipedia article on M. Night Shyamalan that gave me the links to two "official" fan sites - MNight Online (which has a blog that I was able to view but unfortunately does not appear to be working now) and MNight Fans. Both these sites also have biographical information, which I was able to compare to the information on Wikipedia. Not knowing anything about M. Night Shyamalan personally, I have a limited number of ways to determine if the information on these sites is of any use. During a later class I was searching for M. Night Shyamalan on Del.icio.us and I was directed to the Internet Movie Database. I've used IMDB before to find information so in hindsight it probably should have been one of my first stops. The IMBD in particular is useful because it has both biographical information and information on all of the movies that M. Night Shyamalan has been involved in.

The primary problem with using information from Wikipedia is the fact that anyone can edit articles and while there are measures in place to try and keep the articles correct and impartial, this is still a fact. Two things that can be done are - checking the citations on the article and checking the discussion page for the article, both of which can help to determine if the information in the article is correct. The same sort of problem applies to both of the fansites that I'm using for information. By comparing the information on these sites I can see that they contain the same basic information; so, using some logic, I can deduce that unless all four of these websites have taken their information from the same incorrect source, the information is most likely correct.

In the case of the IMDB, I have to admit to being less sceptical than I usually am with information on the Internet, because I personally trust the site to give me accurate and up-to-date information. The database is run by a business than began as film hobby club, it has representatives in multiple countries and offers both free and paid services.

In the end it does really come down to a matter of trust; I have to trust that the people who put the information onto these sites have done their own research and care enough to make sure that the information is as correct as it can be.