Opening credits

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Opening credits, in a television program, motion picture or videogame, are shown at the beginning of a show and list the most important members of the production. They are now usually shown as text superimposed on a blank screen or static pictures, or sometimes on top of action in the show. Where opening credits are built into a separate sequence of their own, the correct term is title sequence (such as the familiar James Bond title sequences). Opening credits since the early 1980s, if present at all, will identify the major actors and crew, while the closing credits list an extensive cast and production crew. Historically, however, opening credits have been the only source of crew credits and, largely, the cast, although over time the tendency to repeat the cast, and perhaps add a few players, with their roles identified (as was not always the case in the opening credits), evolved. The ascendancy of television movies after 1964 and the increasingly short "shelf-life" of films in theaters has largely contributed to the credits convention which came with television programs from the beginning, of holding the vast majority of cast and crew information for display at the end of the show.

In movies and television, the title and opening credits may be preceded by a "cold open", or brief scene, that helps to set the stage for the episode.

1 History
2 Recent trends
3 Credit only
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

Up until the 1970s, closing credits for films usually listed only a reprise of the cast members with their roles identified, or even simply just said "The End", requiring opening credits to normally contain the details. For instance, the title sequence of the 1968 film Oliver! runs for about three-and-a-half minutes, and while not listing the complete cast, does list all of its technical credits at the beginning of the film, all set against a background of what appear to be, but in fact are not, authentic nineteenth century engravings of typical London life. The only credit at film's end is a listing of most of the cast.

Some opening credits are designed to run concurrently with a film's first sequence; in fact, this is one practice even more commonly followed today. The opening credits for the 1968 western Will Penny ran for a full seven minutes into the film. The opening credits for the 1968 film Once Upon a Time in the West lasted for fourteen minutes. This was because they were not presented in title sequences. Instead they are intermittently superimposed over the entire opening sequences of the two films.

The films of Satyajit Ray often show creative opening credits. His first film, Pather Panchali features completely hand-written opening credits. Further movies of his frequently show credits in some way thematically related to the film, for example, the credits of Kanchenjunga are written in a mock-Tibetan font.

The first sound film to begin without any opening credits, other than the display of the title and the credit "Color by Technicolor", was Walt Disney's Fantasia, released in 1940. The next film to begin with only a title credit was Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. This practice was extremely uncommon during that era.

Most Soviet films presented all film-related information in the opening credits, rather than at the closing which consist of just a "THE END" (Russian: КОНЕЦ ФИЛЬМА) title, nothing else. A typical Soviet opening credits sequence starts with a film company's logo (Mosfilm, Lenfilm, etc.), the film's title, followed by the scenarist (the Soviet Union considered the scriptwriter the principal "auteur" of its films), followed by the director, usually on separate screens, then continuing with screens showing other credits, of varying number, and finally, the film's chief administrator-in-charge, the production director (Russian: Директор картины). Following this came the cast, usually in actor-and-role format for all principal and major featured players, and perhaps then a screen just naming, in an alphabetical cluster, some additional character players. The final credit screen identified the studio corresponding to the logo at the beginning, and the year of the film's production.

This basic method was also followed in most American films from the 1930's through the late 1980's, though, obviously, in American films there was no censoring of the director's name, except in cases of blacklisting.

[edit] Recent trends

In recent years, many major American motion pictures have done away with opening credits, with many films, such as Van Helsing, Batman Begins, The Mummy Returns and Teacher's Pet not even displaying the film title until the closing credits begin. George Lucas is credited (or blamed) with popularizing this with his Star Wars films which display only the film's title at the start. His decision to omit opening credits in his films Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) and Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back led him to resign from the Directors Guild of America. However, Hollywood had been releasing films without opening credits for many years before Lucas came along, most notably Citizen Kane and The Godfather. However, it was with the release of Lethal Weapon 2 in 1989 that the "title only" opening became an established form for summer blockbusters. Clint Eastwood has done away with opening credits (except for the title) in every film that he has directed since approximately 1982. Fahrenheit 451 uses spoken opening credits instead of written ones, to provide a taste of what life is like in a non-literate culture.

[edit] Credit only

With regard to television series, it is now an accepted practice to credit regular cast members for every episode of a season, even if they did not appear in each episode. For example, during the second season of Lost, the complete credited cast appeared in only two episodes out of twenty-three.