"Micro-Folded-Credit-Crawl" on TV Movies

The BBQ Pit
1

Watched Part One of TNT’s “Salem’s Lot” mega-made-for-TV-movie event last night.

I don’t watch movies much on TV. If I wanna see a movie, I’m generally inclined to go and rent the DVD, or do pay-per-view. And last night reminded me of why I do this.

We watched the 11 p.m. showing, which wrapped up at one a.m., and as usual, I stuck it through to see the credits. Wanted to check the list of actors, you see. Wanted to see who played the doctor; he looked familiar. Wanted to see if there was anyone in there I went to school with, or perhaps actors I’d remember from other stuff.

I was denied this, of course.

Because nowadays, when movies are shown on TV, the assumption is that you do not WANT to see the credits. You would MUCH rather see advertising, or a promo for some other movie event, or if it’s 10 p.m., you’d rather see an intro for the local news. Why would you want to see CREDITS when you can watch ADVERTISING?

Well, perhaps because I gave a shit about THE MOVIE I WAS JUST WATCHING BEFORE YOU CUT IT OFF, YOU MORONS!

They’re quite artful in how they screw it up, though. Sometimes, the credits fold and shrink somewhat, to cover half the screen, while the other half touts a super duper movie event.

Sometimes, the credits shrink and withdraw to a quarter of the screen, while the remainder hails the coming of a new hemorrhoid cream.

Sometimes, the credits scroll down and are squashed on the bottom quarter of the screen while the top three-quarters sadly tell me that there’s a terrible accident on the interstate, but that tomorrow’s weather will be good, and don’t forget to tune in in five for the news!

Sometimes, they screw it up even more by doing more than one of the above, and speeding up the credits to the point where not only are they too tiny to read, but they blow by at three times normal speed! I mean, why bother rolling them at normal speed if no one can read them anyway, right? We’re only doing this at ALL to stay within the bounds of the copyright contract that requires the credits to be shown along with the movie, yes?

The only things the Micro-Folded-Credit-Crawl has in common, among all its incarnations, are these traits:
*the credits cannot be read. Not even if you tape them and slo-mo through them.
*the soundtrack and closing theme cannot be heard, obscured instead by a vapid voiceover.

I hate this. I despise this. I hate this with a passion. It was bad enough when voiceovers began destroying the end themes of televised films back in the sixties and seventies, but now, between ever more commercials, no end music, and credits that cannot be read without visual powers rivaling Superman’s, there is, to me, very little point in watching a movie on TV any more. I should just have waited for the Salem’s Lot video, assuming it ever comes out.

Am I just turning into an old crank, or what? Am I the only one who cares about this?

2

You’re not alone, it bothers me as well. In Germany those “trends” (voice over, cutting away credits, etc.) were started by the private channel RTL and everyone followed suit.
As a minor act of defiance I banished RTL to channel 27, so that even by zapping I wouldn’t accidently switch it on, because most of the time I stopped zapping after reaching one of the music channels.

Nowadays I don’t have TV anymore, as I cannot afford the insane GEZ fees and besides, right now I’m in Canada anyway.

3

I hear ya. I especially hate the “trapezoidal fold.” I have no idea why someone decided the necessary thing to do was widen out the top, squish the bottom, and run promos along the bottom of the screen.

Or, they leave them full size, in all their glory, and they fly past at Mach 1, apparently in an attempt to shorten the time they take up, and leave more time for full-screen self-promotion.

That’s why I love IMDB so much. Renders credits almost unnecessary.

4

There is no reason for them to do this, as they can simply play an ad superimposed directly over the movie while it is playing.

And they do. Fucknuggets.

5

I’m so jealous of the countries that are able to assign their own channels as they please, and relegate the ones you never watch to the double digits. Sigh.

</hijack>

6

Don’t forget the little trick f/X has come up with. Coming back into a movie they flash a promo on the bottom right of the screen. Not a big deal, but they have to also use the “flash” sound effect to get you attention. Often it comes in during the dialog so you miss what someone says.

7

I think the last time I watched anything on f/X was in 1996. They did not do this trick, then.

You make me glad I DON’T watch f/X. This would drive me freakin’ nuts. What, product placement isn’t enough? Next thing, we’re going to have the characters on the sitcoms suddenly stop and watch selected commercials on THEIR TVs as part of the scripted shows…

8

TBS now does this. I don’t understand why, though. I mean, all they ever show is “Sex in the City” and Braves games. I predict “Sex in the City” ads during the middle of “Sex in the City” within the next week.

9

They don’t just do this to movies, it’s TV show credits, too. Being in The Show Business myself, I look at credits, usually to spot some performer I liked. But nine times out of ten, the credits are squeezed so tightly you couldn’t read them by freeze-framing and using a microscope.

And don’t get me started on those goddam bottom-of-screen pop-ups during shows . . .

10

That’s what I’m talking about. Except sometimes it’s not just on the bottom right, it’ll go right across the middle of the screen.

11

On a vaguely related note, I was in a part of the country which had VERY severe weather on the day of the Indy 500. During most of the afternoon, they alternated between nothing but severe weather(annoying but understandable) and split-screen weather and Indy 500 with the audio being weather. I could not understand why they bothered to show the Indy 500 on the other half of the screen at all. I would have much preferred a large lap counter, or even just a running crawl describing the Indy 500. Perhaps people with superwidescreen tv’s could glean some information about the Indy 500, but those of us with only 21" screens were limited to being able to tell when the commercials were on(that’s when they’d switch back to nothing but weather, usually).

The same station, or at least one in the same area of the country, did the same thing with a UK basketball game and the coverage of the aftermath of the Columbia shuttle incident. But, one could see much more of the action with basketball players on a small court than of cars on a large racetrack. And, the local basketball radio station stuck to basketball coverage, so we could hear what was going on. That made sense, anyone wishing to see unending NASA coverage could do so, anyone wishing to get on with life could choose to. Since I don’t usually care much about the credits, it doesn’t bother me a lot when they shrink them, although I’ve been known to wonder why they bother showing them, if they can’t be read better than they can on my TV.

12

I’ll third those damned annoying back from commercial promos. They go back to the movie and Kobe Bryant will pop up at the bottom of my screen dribbling a basketball for 5 seconds before he goes for a slam dunk 3 inches past the edge of television. Don’t get me started on those stupid network “bugs”, I already know what fucking channel I’m watching!

They wont stop until they have Coke commercials playing on the back of our eyelids while we sleep.

13

Preach it, Master Wang-Ka!

Yet another of these little annoyances: the way TNT plays the closing credits of* Law & Order* squished down at the bottom of the screen–during the opening of the next episode of Law & Order!

14

Well that’s a new one the ol’ duffer here. I don’t watch the show so I’ve never seen it. But do you mean, in essence, they are airing 2 programs at the same time? :eek:

Is the show that close to make or break that they need the extra 2 or 3 ads?

15

These things just add to my overwhelming sense of hopelessness and dread. Coupled with the beheadings in Iraq and George Bush, these horrifying abuses of the airwaves contribute to my ever increasing difficulty in getting out of bed each day. Every time one of those promos pops up in the bottom right quarter of the screen, a sense of impotent rage washes over me. The only way I can survive them, over and over again, is to force myself to exhale till my lungs feel flat and empty, and let myself go limp. I have a similar metabolic crisis when the credits at the end of the show or film are all-but-technically deleted. These hellish abominations are among the many reasons that 98% of my television time is spent on TCM these days.

16

They do show the two episodes at the same time, but only the ending credits of one episode at the very bottom of the screen, while the next episode is beginning at the top of the screen. I thought they did this more so when they show several episodes of Law & Order in a row (like they often do), it somewhat traps you into watching the next episode. Not that you can’t change the channel or anything, just you see the end of one episode, and before you know it you’ve seen the start of the next episode and are supposed to think “well, I might as well watch this episode too!”

Though the squished credits are still annoying no matter what the reason.

17

Count me as a young crank, then. In fact, if the Cub Scouts had offered a merit badge in crankery, I probably would have qualified.

18

I wonder what the unions (SAG, AFTRA, etc.) have to say about unreadable credits. You’d think they’d be up in arms about it.

Also, sometimes the closing credits have a unique aspect worth watching or listening, if the broadcasters would let us. Once Q13 Fox played their own silly promos over the closing credits of The Simpsons, on the episode with Tito Puente and his big band doing their arrangement of the Simpsons closing theme. What buffoons.

19

If you listen to the DVD commentary for The Simpsons and Futurama, you can hear Matt Groening ‘n’ crew mentioning this type of thing. They mention several times how nice it is that you can actually see all their names at the end of the show without interference.

20

Yeah, right. That show is like crack, and the network knows it. If I’m not ready with the track shoes and starting block to run at full force into the next room, screaming for the wife to turn it off, I’m done. Days of L&O can go by, and I’d be there, eyes watering, mouth drooling, lips quivering. Anyway, gotta go, commercial’s over…