Where credit is dew
I was waiting for a subway train the other day, and after a few minutes of sightlessly staring at the ads between the platforms, something occurred to me: Why do movie posters always devote so much space to the production credits?
Take a look at any movie poster (such as the one pictured here) and you’ll see that up to a third of the space is devoted to listing the people who made the movie (I’ve outlined this in yellow.)
With the exception of the cast and possibly the director, I’m guessing nobody cares about any of these people or their involvement in the film.
Are you going to go see Get Smart because the Director of Photography was Dean Semler, A.C.S./A.S.C.? No? Well, Jimmy Miller was one of the six Executive Producers! And damn, if it doesn’t have music by Trevor Rabin! Now you’ll see it, right?
This is an advertising convention that has been around almost as long as the film business, although it seems to have gotten worse of late - check out some classic movie posters, and you’ll see most of the credit space is devoted to those in front of the camera, not behind it. A quick pixel count shows the Get Smart poster is approximately 7% product title, 4% cast, and a whopping 30% production credits. Yikes. (At CBCNews.ca we’re still lobbying to get bylines on big stories.)
And it doesn’t apply to anything but movies. Other posters don’t credit the guy who designed the tread on your Nikes, or the people wrote the code for Windows Vista (OK, maybe they should remain nameless.) Even posters for TV shows focus on the actors, not the crew, even though most of the postitions are the same as those for a big screen production.
Imagine if all marketing devoted as much space to the people behind the scenes who you couldn’t give a toss about.
Take Coke, for example (since I’m currently reading Max Barry’s Syrup).
Here’s what the Hollywood version of the can would look like.
A little space for the name of the product, a tiny space for what’s in it, and a LOT of space for the people who designed the can and mixed the syrup.
Not useful, and not appealing. But apparently Hollywood doesn’t agree. Vanity, maybe? Say it ain’t so!
Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 07-24-2008 | 10:07 PM
Posted in: Apocalypse signs
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Interesting point, Paul.
Of course, there must be a long legal history behind the credits on posters — you know that movie studios aren’t foolishly wasting perfectly good (and expensive) ad space without being legally required too. I suspect it has to do with union rules (e.g., of the Director’s Guild, etc.). But what’s amazing is that the unions (and presumably courts) see the fine print — which nobody reads — as worth defending. I know it’s nice to give credit where credit is due (or dew). But why would anyone insist on forcing the fine print, when it’s clear that it doesn’t actually achieve that. Bizarre.
Any lawyers out there know the answer?
Who cares about CBC Radio and Television credits either?
New Media, on the other hand…
One answer: Unions.
Union rules even dictate the order in which the credits appear at the start/end of movies.