Citation, Documentation of Sources

Q. I was wondering how I would cite an educational movie. Thank you.

A. CMOS doesn’t answer this question, but it’s one of the most frequently asked. I’m getting the impression that research papers are a lot more fun than they used to be. When you cite a book, you include author or editor, title, place of publication, and year. So for a movie, you could treat the director like an editor, and style it something like this:

Movie Title. Directed by Mary Smith. Hollywood, CA: Bigshot Productions, 2004.

When you have to deal with odd citations, just include all the information you think your readers will want or need, and don’t worry too much about how to style the bits that don’t fit into the conventional format. Try to style similar citations in the same way.

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]