Credit (film)

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The credit (in German: "Appreciation") is the naming of the names of people who are involved in a film or the like, in the opening or closing credits , and their function, be it as an actor , director , producer , Prop master , assistant etc.

The order or the size of the nominations (especially for the actors) is often the subject of contractual agreements.

In films from the United States , the provision of credits for authors has been legally regulated by the Writers Guild of America since 1942 .

Opening credits

The opening credits are limited to the most important, popular people and functions of the staff and the cast. The system of who, where, how and when is displayed has undergone major changes over time. In films of the 1930s, for example, it was common to present the cast early in the film (i.e. the breakdown of which actor played which role ). In newer films this is only done in the credits. Until the 1960s, mostly only a certain, often small number of actors was mentioned in the opening credits or credits, while many actors were not mentioned (English: uncredited), now almost all roles are mentioned in the credits.

Today's film productions (primarily from the United States ) usually have the following information on the opening credits:

  • Manufacturing company
  • possibly a separate mention of a particularly popular director / producer (e.g. A Steven Spielberg Film )
  • Mention of the main actors and most important supporting actors , sometimes the name of a particularly popular actor precedes the film title; Sometimes individual actors are also given a role in the opening credits (this usually happens in the case of a prestigious and popular supporting role; such prominent actors and roles are usually named as the last actor information or at least the last actor information for the main actors and important supporting characters -Line)
  • Casting Director
  • Any special functions, such as a special effects studio plus a name mentioning the person primarily responsible for this facility
  • Composer of the film music and possibly licensed pieces of music and their (original) interpreters.
  • Costumes
  • Film editing
  • Production design
  • camera operator
  • Managing Producer
  • Producers
  • possibly mention of special consultants or original authors
  • script
  • Director

If a person involved has carried out several functions for a film (e.g. script, production and direction, etc.), this is usually given in summary.

With the opening credits you will either find a specially produced title sequence or the credits appear as so-called on-screen credits during the first film scenes . Today, films usually start with the second variant, while in the past the first variant was mostly used. In both cases, the opening credits are usually faded in, but in any case not run through like an end credits . The main purpose of this is to make the credit information on the most important participants easy to understand and read. A notable exception is the opening credits of Stanley Kubrick's Shining , which takes the form of ending credits.

If the opening credits are presented within a title sequence, the visual style of the overlays can differ greatly (from a simple white on black scheme to font designs that flow into the image); however, opening credits that appear during the first film scenes are mostly of a much simpler, non-individual nature.

Closing credits

The end credits present the less popular, prestigious or non-performance-determining functions, people and institutions. The length of the credits increases due to the increasingly complex production and the staff - a decisive reason why credits have become more common in the course of film history, whereas earlier films often ended with a simple "The End" insert . Earlier films were mostly able to present all relevant participants in the opening credit. However, it should also be remembered that earlier films were not contractually bound to list all participants as comprehensively as possible. At that time, however, there were also end credits, mostly breaking down the main and supporting actors and their roles.

Usually the credits run slowly upwards so that the new names appear at the bottom and can be read for about 15 seconds in one go. The design is predominantly white text on a black background and is accompanied by specially arranged or cut film music . However, other forms are also known. So running in the film Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines ( Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines credits) horizontally in an animated guy through. In David Fincher's Seven ('Se7en') the credits run in the correct order of the persons and dates to be named - but slowly from top to bottom. Sometimes film content continues to take place in addition to the scrolling text credits, for example to present outtakes , or the credits slide over the last film takes , whereby the film is mostly faded out until only the credit sequence can be seen.

The closing credit is - if this was not already done at the beginning - mostly ended by the presentation of the logos of the production companies, which closes the visual arc to the opening studio logos . The latter can definitely be shown again finally. In the case of US cinema productions, the MPA's certification number can usually also be found here .

Combination of opening and closing credits

Many films show significantly fewer credits in opening credits than stated above. These shortened opening credits usually only present the studios and the film title and are then called the opening title . Some films don't even present this information. In the film Spiel mir das Lied von Tod ( C'era una volta il West , 1968), for example, director Sergio Leone completely renounced the film title despite the 10-minute opening credits. This was only faded in at the end of the film to underline the end of the Wild West. The director George Lucas left for a similar maneuver even the Writers Guild of America : For his film Star Wars ( Star Wars ), he also refrained from 1977 to the expression of actors and stakeholders at the beginning of the film - only uncredited that was read, for which he obtained separate approval from the WGA before the film was released. For the sequel The Empire Strikes Back , he did not do so and had to pay heavy fines in the following legal battle against him and the responsible director, whereupon he resigned from the Writers Guild.

If a film has only shortened opening titles or no opening titles at all, the style of the first end credits can usually be compared with the opening credits described above. The order in which they are named is usually different, as the director should be named first, followed by the actors, etc. This usually means that information that was already shown in the abbreviated opening title does not reappear here or only appears late .

The procedure described under Opening Credits, that some actors are given a role directly, occurs statistically more often with the End Credits, probably in order not to denaturalize the role at the beginning of the film. In order to avoid similar assumptions by the audience, David Fincher did not mention Kevin Spacey in the opening sequence of the film Seven , although all other important actors were named there. His participation was only shown as the first display in the Closing Credit.

Once the most important functions have been recognized according to the opening credits scheme, the usual scrolling text for the end credits follows. However, it should be mentioned that credits that do not have a preceding opening credits sequence often begin with the cast , i.e. H. break down which actor played which film role. This breakdown usually follows in the case of closing credits that have a “catch-up” opening sequence later in the scrolling text part.

The note "uncredited"

"Uncredited" refers to a notice in z. B. film literature or databases that a person involved in the production of a film was not named in the opening and closing credits. This may be due to insufficient pro-rata performance to meet the conditions for naming, which are often specified by trade unions or interest groups such as the Writers Guild.

Other possibilities include contractual reasons (for example, at the time of the studio system, artists who were under contract with a film studio were not allowed to work on productions of a competing studio ) or the person may not be officially named for political reasons. Examples of this are artists who were banned from professions in authoritarian states or in the USA during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s. In these cases, naming was not given at all or it was given under a pseudonym or by using a “straw man” who made his name available for another person without having participated himself.

literature

  • Steven Blandford, Barry Keith Grant, Jim Hillier: Credits . In: The film studies dictionary . Arnold; Co-published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press, London / New York 2001, ISBN 0-340-74190-2 , pp. 59 .
  • Stefan Müller: Opening credits - Credits - Générique. To locate certain tendencies in the opening and closing credits of narrative-fictional films and commercial cinema . Vienna 2002 (180 pages, dissertation).
  • Michael Schaudig: 'Flying Logos in Typosphere'. A little phenomenology of the graphic title design of cinematic credits . In: Hans-Edwin Friedrich (ed.): Writing and image in film . Aisthesis-Verl, Bielefeld 2002, ISBN 3-89528-358-4 , p. 163-183 .
  • Will Straw: Letters of Introduction: Film Credits and Cityscapes. In: Design and Culture . No. 2 , 2010, chap. 2 , p. 155-165 .
  • Alexander Zons: "Thank You for Reading the Credits". Notes on the cinematic acknowledgment . In: Natalie Binczek , Remigius Bunia , Till Dembeck, Alexander Zons (eds.): Saying thanks: Politics, semantics and poetics of liability . Fink, Paderborn 2013, ISBN 978-3-7705-5669-4 , p. 171-184 .

Individual evidence

  1. Typical Order of Credits in an Opening Title Sequence (Completing the Creative Process) (Motion Graphic Titling). In: what-when-how.com. Retrieved September 8, 2016 .
  2. ^ A b c Writers Guild of America, West (Ed.): Screen Credits Procedures . Los Angeles ( wga.org [PDF; accessed September 8, 2016]). wga.org ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wga.org
  3. Wook Kim: After 'The End': 10 Memorable End-Credit Scenes . In: Time . November 26, 2012, ISSN  0040-781X ( time.com ).
  4. TIL George Lucas was fined $ 250,000 by the Directors Guild of America for not putting the director's name (his) in the opening credits of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back prompting him to leave the Guild. In: reddit.com. reddit, accessed September 8, 2016 .
  5. 14 Things You Might Not Know About 'Se7en'. In: mentalfloss.com. Retrieved September 8, 2016 .