CREDITS. MAIN TITLES AND END TITLES – Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

The main credit sequence in a film performs three principal functions, all of which are complex. First, the
audience must be given vital information about the
nature and content of the film. As narrative tools,
the credits must negotiate between the demands of the
story and the audience’s information state on coming to
the theater. For example, in Good Will Hunting (1997),
Ferro wanted credits that would introduce and focus on
Will (Matt Damon) and show his literacy. Second, the
main title must attest to the strengths and powers of the
filmmakers (during the studio era, the studio whose logo
preceded the title sequence; since the 1980s, the era of independent production, it typically touts the principal
cast and director). A well-designed and ostentatious title
sequence acts as an advertisement for the producer and
filmmakers, touting not only the film but other films
made by the same people; it suggests technical know-how
and a concern for audience engagement, thus constituting a basis for audience investment in other film products. Third, the main title is a kind of display board for
the film workers’ specific talents. In general, and at least
in well-received films, the better one’s card in the main
title sequence (the larger the type, the better the placement), the higher can be one’s asking price for future
endeavors. The title is an economic asset for the filmmakers and their cast and crew, and often payment for
services rendered on a project is deferred in exchange for
increased visibility of one’s name in the titles.
Front credits are nowadays invariably briefer than
end credit rolls. Aside from the title of the film, the main
credits typically name the principal cast; the writer(s) of
the screenplay; the author(s) of the material from which
the screenplay has been adapted, if any; the cinematographer; the composer; the designer (or art director); the
costumer; the editor; the producers; the director. In the
studio era—roughly 1930 to 1960—each of these aspects
of filmmaking was handled by a specific studio department, and the head of each of these departments was named in the credits, no matter who did the actual work.
At Paramount in the 1950s, for example, the name of
Hal Pereira (1905–1983) appears as art director on virtually every front credit the studio produced; at MGM
in the 1940s, the name of Cedric Gibbons (1893–1960);
at Twentieth Century Fox in the same decade, the name
of Lyle Wheeler (1905–1990). Contemporary main title
sequences are sometimes strikingly abbreviated for dramatic effect. Steven Spielberg (b. 1946), for example,
typically runs his credits only at the end of his films,
retaining the actual film title card—if that—at the beginning. Because audiences are somewhat less likely to read
titles at the end of a film, this practice, while modestly
withholding the director’s credit until the first position
after the finale, also reduces the billing of actors and crew
(an effect somewhat mitigated by the intensive advertising that all new blockbusters receive). The end credit roll,
which originally repeated only the names of the principal
cast (‘‘A Good Cast Is Worth Repeating,’’ end credits at
Universal Pictures uniformly began, starting in the early
1930s), now tends to contain all of the members of the
cinematographer’s gaffing crew and the grip crew that
handles the camera; all of the carpenters and painters
who work for the art director; everyone involved with
sound, dialogue, and foley track recording, as well
as those who cater, chauffeur, assist, insure, negotiate,
supply, and in any other way are connected with the
film. At the end of Titanic (1997), the extensive end
credits include ‘‘inferno artists,’’ ‘‘water systems engineer,’’ ‘‘etiquette coach’’ and a ‘‘thanks’’ to the Mexican
Minister of Tourism.
In 1942, an attempt to do away with full end credits
proved unsuccessful. By law, copyright acknowledgments
for all songs and musical tracks used must be included by
producers in the end credits. With productions becoming
increasingly more complex and involving more and more
workers, end credit sequences have become notoriously
extensive. For Superman (1978), 457 end credits roll for
twelve minutes, about one-tenth of the entire film’s
length. In Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone,
1968), the end credits take up more than twelve minutes.
The end credits of Jurassic Park (1993) list 519 names.

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