You can almost date a movie to the year by the amount of credits displayed at the beginning or end of a movie. With all the rules of the unions and guilds, now everyone and every thing remotely associated with the movie gets in the credits (including the “Honey wagon driver”) and end credits can run 10 to 15 minutes in length. Granted, nobody every watches them unless they suspect there may be some inserted bloopers or other scenes.
But with all the rules, how do they get away with ( on television ) running 10 minutes of credits by in 30 seconds, and in such a reduced sized window that nobody will ever be able to read them, even with freeze-frame? Why even bother?
[Kermit, Gonzo, and Fozzie are in a hot air balloon, flying through the opening credits of The Great Muppet Caper]
Fozzie: Nobody reads those names anyway, do they?
Kermit: Sure. They all have families.
My best guess is that, for legal purposes, the TV networks have to show the entire roll of credits for the movie. Clearly, there’s nothing in that rule which states they have to show the credits at their original speed, or in the full screen, which is exactly why they do why they do.
They even do it for TV programmes now. The obnoxious trend is for the credits to shrink to a teeny window while the rest of the screen is taken up with a trailer for whatever crap is coming up next, on the other channel or a fortnight on Thursday.
The BBC actually has guidelines meant to ensure that programmes are made with credits that can survive this treatment while still being legible, but on older shows, or those that don’t comply with the guidelines for whatever reason, they are impossible to read.
Not just that. I’ve seen credits on some moves that were full-screen and not scrunched–granted, on *TV, not in a theater–and they were still too small to read. I think the point still remains, though. They were contractually obligated to place the credits, but not how large they had to make them.
*Admittedly, a 25-inch CRT TV. Still haven’t upgraded.
Some of those movie industry people must watch TV. I would think that they would have caught on to that hole in their contracts by now and made them show the credits in their original version. 10 or 12 minutes of air time is worth a lot of money. I’m betting there is some additional payment made to allow them to do that.
A bit ironic that the TV industry is up in arms that technology allows us to skip commercials (their source of income), but they will use technology to skip the credits, part of the idea of which it is how movie people can get more work (their source of income).
Nobody stays to watch the credits. Well, few do. I like to, usually to see all the actors, the filming locations, and the music score. Wish they’d front load that stuff, but locations and music are usually towards the end.
I seriously doubt anybody has a contract that pays them more when their credits run. The contract says they get a payment when the show or movie is repeated, decreasing with each repeat. And residuals usually only apply to featured actors and the like, not the key grip or Head Wrangler. So the credits don’t matter a bit as far as monies paid. The contract probably says that the network has to air the movie edited only for content, if that. Given that most disclaimers say “edited for content and to fit time restraints”, I think the fact that credits run at all is up to the network.
I have no doubt whatsoever that they’ve realized it’s happening. It’s also pretty clear that the studios have decided it’s no skin off their nose, since it hasn’t changed. As silenus notes, the presence of the credits (or how quickly they’re shown) has zero impact on the royalties paid to anyone who’s in the credits.
As it is, quite a few TV networks engage in “time compression” of movies to make them fit into time slots (and make room for commercials, on some networks) – they’ll cut small snippets of dialog, cut out small scenes, even speed up certain scenes. If the studios forced the TV networks to show the credits “in their original version”, I can guarantee you that the networks would find other ways to engage in time compression.
Most likely by refusing to negotiate for the broadcast rights for the movies of whichever studio would do so. Ten or twenty minutes of what is basically free advertising for the movie studio, actors, crew and support is pretty expensive, especially when the network is foregoing actual advertising that puts money in THEIR pockets for it. I don’t see any network negotiating that much airtime away for bupkis.
The wife and I always stay to the end of the credits. And I mean always. We are credit junkies. The music is usually still playing, and that’s part of the experience too. We are often the last ones to leave the cinema.
The best of its kind must be the credits after Kentucky Fried Movie when everybody involved with the making of the film is mentioned including the hundreds of Chinese extras in the Kung Fu movie parody.
I saw that movie decades ago, and I only remember one thing from it - well, two things really, rubbing up against a glass shower door, bouncing up and down…
I like the credits in a theater or on DVD, but rarely stay to watch them on a TV broadcast rerun. I don’t blame the brodcasters for doing what they do, and if they get away with it, they’d be stupid not to. Otherwise they lose eyes on the channel almost as fast as if they were broadcasting silence or a test pattern.
Given they’re doing their best to minimize the “nothing more to see here” issue, the only explanation that they show them at all is due to legal obligations. Admittedly, they’re only meeting those obligations in the letter but not the spirit. Ah well, working that stuff out is what lawyers are for.
I’ve been a credit-watcher since Hal Needham started putting out-takes into the credits of Burt Reynolds movies back in the day. But not on TV. The only time I read them then is to figure out who did the guest voice work on Archer, for example.
My wild guess is that the on-screen credits are not as important as they used to be, even for those workers who are hoping to be recognized and be offered a job with a future movie. No one (I presume) uses the on-screen credits for that anymore, not now that we have imdb.com and other easy ways to get that information.