randian

When I watch movies from the 1950s and 60s credits are generally displayed before the beginning of the movie. I also noticed that in these movies only the major players are named in the credits. Nobody cared who the production accountant was. At some point this switched, eventually auguring in the modern practice of not only displaying credits after the movie, but also giving everybody and their pets a credit. About what timeframe, and why, did this change take place?

Nick Danger

I know exactly when network television figured out that it had happened. They were showing the movie Meteor about 1981 and the announcer said, "Stay tuned for the conclusion of Meteor!" After the commercial break, they broadcast ten minutes of credits.

They probably lost 90% of their audience. I watched the whole thing, because I couldn't believe they were actually going through with it.

Ash Ketchum

THE EXORCIST (1973) opened with only the title and had its credits at the end. When Friedkin wanted Bernard Herrmann to score it and screened it for him, Herrmann famously turned him down afterwards, declaring, "Only one great movie had its credits at the end--CITIZEN KANE!" Which, of course, Herrmann had scored.

The first film I remember where the credits at the end was an issue was THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974). It was the last show of the day and the projectionist closed the curtain on the end credits. Because of the wrinkles in the curtain, I could no longer read the projected credits, but I insisted on staying so I could listen to John Williams' closing music. I was the last one in the theater and the projectionist had to unlock the front door to let me out.

Of course, the end credits for that film only gave key production personnel and a complete cast. I believe it was some time in the 1990s when they started listing EVERYBODY in the end credits. I couldn't tell you exactly when. It's certainly something I'd like to know also.

Michael Corvin

There are definitely outliers here and there but accross the board? I'd have to imagine it correlates to the modern blockbuster (post Jaws/Star Wars) where production personnel grew exponentially.

Interesting question though. Count me as curious as well.

GoldenJCJ

I wonder if some new union rules were created that states who exactly must be given a credit on movies? That would account for everyone and their cousin being listed.

bluetoast

Yeah, in many movies in the past, even people with a few speaking lines would go uncredited. Now, the caterers and drivers are credited. If all of that was done up front, it would take forever.

You also need some kind of shit to overlay the “main” credits over (the ones that take up most of the screen), either with expository establishing shots, or with something to introduce your main characters or concepts - at least for the first couple minutes, then more credits can show up as music fades (the ones that show up on the bottom of the screen).

I think that can also relate to when people didn’t travel much, movies showed like 200 aerial shots of an exotic location, or spell out on a map exactly how a character traveled from Point A to Point B, like a mini travelogue. Now, you just show the name of the new country and move on.

If The Avengers were made in the 80s, you would see a map of the plane going from Stuttgart from NY, complete with ADR of Thor asking if he can pilot the plane or some shit.

If the story dictates that you just dive into the plot, that would also slow everything down and become unnecessary.

story

If I reach way back into my film school days, there was sone sort of rule or law or union bargaining that happened in the 70s or so to make it not only required to have everyone in the credits but to also have theaters run the whole thing instead of turn off the credits and try to sneak in an extra showing or call it a night early. However, I only have a vague notion of this, can't remember details, but hopefully what I am remembering is accurate.

RichC2

eXistenZ has like 10 minutes of credits before and after the movie. So I don't know either

My copies of Persona (1966) and 2001 (1968) have after movie credit sequences, though the one for Persona may have been added by Criterion. The 2001 one is definitely part of the movie.

From Wikipedia:

I think it all comes down to contracts.

JimRochester

I had always heard but had no facts to back it up that it was a union rule demand for the production crew. If you showed up and swept the floor around the snack table you got credit if you were in the union.

randian

I just got done watching Rear Window, and besides the usual credits at the start of the movie I noticed that no character is listed next to the actor’s name. I suppose it would have been awkward to name characters before you see them. “Modern” credits, of course, always say what character the actor played.

GoldenJCJ

I don’t doubt that this is a rule. Anyone who’s ever seen a movie play on network tv or basic cable has seen the end credits shrink into an incredibly small window at the bottom of the screen or scroll up at an insanely fast speed that it’s impossible to read. The only thing that makes sense to even bother running credits That way is that it’s some contractual obligation to show the entire film.

bluetoast

Though not everybody is listed. There’s been articles about lots of special effects people getting the shaft. Say the movie uses multiple effects houses, sometimes only the bosses or other higher up people get credited.

Abob Teff

At least the “odd job” people mentioned so far have been people who actually worked on the movie. I’ve noticed a trend of including the C-suite (CEO, CFO, etc.) and even administrative assistants from companies who worked on the film.

Best end credits: the original Planet of the Apes.

B5Erik

There were a handful of them in the 40's and 50's. It was usually an artistic decision.

The Longest Day (1962) may have been the first movie that had fairly comprehensive credits with everything running at the end and nothing at the beginning.

Mabuse

There were early outliers that did it first, but the really long “list everyone” style of credits kicked in around the mid ‘70s. Compare Jaws and Close Encounters. Jaws is less than a minute and Close Encounters is exhaustive. The DVD Savant critic who works for this site says Close Encounters was the first to do it in our modern sense.

Regarding Existenz: David Cronenberg is well known for long opening credit sequences. He says he likes them because they lull you out of your current reality and prepare you for the movie.

cultshock

I don't doubt that at all, it sounds exactly like the kind of thing Cronenberg would want to do.

DthRdrX

SW/TESB actually had Lucas getting fined 250,000 and later quitting the director's guild over the opening crawl/lack of credits.

RichC2

Makes sense, Mulholland Drive has a similarly long intro that works as a lull into dreamworld.

Ash Ketchum

For most of Hollywood's golden age (1930s and 1940s), cast lists at the end gave both character name and actor. It was common in the 1930s to do that at the beginning also.

This is from ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930)

Mabuse

And sometimes at the beginning and end.

“A Great Cast is Worth Repeating” James Whale would remind you.

Jay G.

My understanding is that the long end credits are a result of the death of the "studio system" in the 70s, and the difficulty in proving your prior experience after the studio system died.

Under the studio system, everyone in the crew had steady year-round jobs at the studios, and were just assigned films to do as they came up. Even if, as a crew member, you wanted to switch studios, you could just put the years you worked at the previous studio as a reference. Nobody "needed" a credit to prove previous work.

When the studio system died, suddenly everyone was getting employed on a "per project" basis, and had to apply for each film to work on it. What's more, these movies were typically managed by production "companies" that were put together for just that particular film, and then essentially dissolved afterward. So to get a job, you now had to list the particular films you worked on, but there was no company to call for a reference and confirm your work.

So the various unions started insisting on crew being credited for their work, so there'd be a permanent, public record of their work on the film. Once enough people started getting listed that it became awkward to list everyone at the beginning, films started shifting the credits to the end. And once it was at the end of the film and the audience didn't "have to" sit through it, the number of people being credited exploded.

Of course, some people still wanted to be credited at the beginning, such as the producers, director, major stars, etc. So we now have it where we have "brief" opening credits, with a few notable exceptions, and "full" end credits.

Nowadays it seems half the credits for major blockbusters are the VFX credits, with the various companies and various employees of each. I stopped counting the number of VFX houses that worked on Avengers: Infinity War after reaching a dozen.

GoldenJCJ

I appreciate that answer Jay G.

Alan Smithee

Seems like a current trend is to have NO opening credits at all, not even showing the movie's name onscreen until the end if even at all. Superman had pretty long opening credits as well as closing.

I remember reading something in the paper shortly after Ghostbusters first aired on network TV- as they were contractually obligated to run the full ending credits (even though they routinely cut movies for time, even if the content wasn't 'offensive') some executive type said he tuned in near the end waiting for the news and was flabbergasted at the amount of end credits being shown and what a waste of time it was (which of course could have better been used for more commercials). Eventually they started speeding up the end credits on TV versions to get them out of the way faster; no big loss as the movie was already edited to death anyways and I've heard it's only gotten worse as more commercial time has been added.

Nick Danger

You don't watch movies on TV, so you haven't seen how they do it these days. They commonly run full credits sped up to about thirty seconds, and squashed to a quarter of the screen. It's so small that even if you recorded it and paused, it would still be unreadable. Sometimes they create a new credit sequence for TV, nonscrolling credits that flash by at 24 pages per second. Some people must include "credits are shown during TV broadcasts" in their contracts, because occasionally there is a full screen / slow credit sequence for the director and major actors, and then the window shrinks and the text becomes fast.

Some of the rerun networks do the same thing with old television shows: they shrink the closing credits and put the beginning of the next show on the same screen. It keeps the viewers who would change channels if there were a pause between programs.

Ash Ketchum

Yeah, I saw that recently at the gym, on TBS, where one movie was ending and its credits were tiny on the bottom of the screen and the next movie was starting at the top of the screen. Just bizarre. This is why most of us don't watch movies on commercial stations. I've even seen premium cable movie stations with no commercials that squeeze the end credits to the bottom while they promote their upcoming schedule.