I’ve noticed the following in the credit reel of movies (yes, I’m a dork who stays to read the credits):
Casting Director Joe Blow C.S.A.
Editor Jack Shiznit A.C.E.
Why do these particular ocupations merit thier own sufixes (suffi?) Also, what do they stand for? Where/When did the practace orriginate?
Casting Society of America
American Cinema Editors
Unions, and union rules, basically.
It’s interesting to note which organizations get the designation and which do not.
The Producers Guild, for example, has been bellyaching for years about “credit proliferation,” which is what happens when people only peripherally related to the film get producer credits. Often this is an executive producer, or a star’s business manager, or the jamoke who originally bought the rights to the article the movie was based on, or whatever. The motion picture academy recently changed their rules so only three people can collect the Best Picture Oscar (which goes to the producer), thereby preventing a repeat of the scene when Shakespeare in Love won and it seemed like half the audience got up.
So the Producer’s Guild’s proposed solution was to flag “actual” producers with the P.G.A. designation, and as such differentiate them from people who got the “Associate Producer” credit as a favor to somebody. The studios, however, flatly refused to play along, since this would of course piss off the big stars who routinely got their managers or agents or hairdressers that extra producer credit as a power play, since if the credit were clearly bogus it wouldn’t be worth anything any more.
In short, the ones you do see – ACE, CSA, ASC (American Society of Cinematographers), etc. – are, as Nametag says, a function of which guilds have the power to enforce their demands, and which deal with whatever crumbs they can manage. You don’t see writers tagged with “WGA,” for example.