Humility in Post Production

Jeremy Ordan

Jeremy Ordan

Major Contributor
I have a question for the board, that I guess I can only phrase as what is the right level of balance to seek between being humble, arrogant, and confident when the project is complete. Essentially when you are putting together credits and you wrote, directed, produced, edited, composed the music, and filmed the project... what do you do?

I know Robert Rodriguez made up names of people for his credits, but for a small movie where your budget is $1000, you have a boom operator, script supervisor, and gaffer... well what is the right way to go?

I'm just curious, because I want to reward everyone's contributions, but we had this guy who came to the set and sat there, did nothing, and yet, sat there, drank our soda, ate our food, and now wants a credit.

Any opinions? Is it better to make it look like you had a big crew, is it better to be honest and see one name show up 30 times in the credits? Is it better to not have credits?

Thanks for the help
 
Rodriguez does it the right way -- he'll put something like "written, directed, shot and scored by Robert Rodriguez."

In other words, put your own name in there as few times as you can. In fact, if your situation is as you say, where you had a boom op, scripty, and gaffer, and you did everything else -- why not list it that way? Even then it's egotistical, but it's nowhere near as tedious to the audience as seeing the same name over and over and over...

Don't worry about it looking like you had a big crew. In all reality, people won't care whether you had a big crew or not, and nobody reads credits anyway unless they're looking to see their own name. People will judge the film based on whether they liked it, not how big your crew was. Or wasn't.
 
Thanks everyone. I want to make sure that I give credit where credit is due, but at the same time, I didn't have a foley person, we just moved the camera and recorded using the mic. Do I really need to take credit for that, or just forget about it? I want to make sure that the project looks professional, top to bottom, but if you're running a project with a crew of five, then there are only so many people to even list. I was thinking about openning a book and just start listing characters to come up with all the different possible positions. This helps though. Thanks so much!
 
A list of credits aren't what will make your project look professional. The project itself is what will make your project look professional. To use the extreme to illustrate an example: would you rather watch five minutes of Deuce Bigalow European Gigolo, and then see the entire list of credits, or would you rather watch five minutes of The Shawshank Redemption and see no credits at all?

I'd say go with the credits that matter and don't worry about trying to pad anything out. List the important jobs that the important people did. Don't fret over miscellaneous little stuff that a) you don't care about, and b) the audience certainly won't care about.
 
As usual Barry, very good point. I think I should go register the domain barrygreenfanclub.com... an entire site dedicated to barry solving people's problems and issues... or wait... does one already exist?

Seriously though, thank you for the help.
 
If you list 35 craft jobs, it sounds like a major production and will be judged that way. OTOH, if you are honest, for those few people that actually read the credits, someone MIGHT say "Wow, he did that with a crew of five?". If you are really hung up on it, list all the other people first, and then put your name in with job title of "Everything Else". :)
 
credits should flow with the movie's movement. If its a boring 5min piece of crap then it deserves minutes upon minutes of credits that will bore all but those involved. But if its a true work of art, then the credits should reflect that and be short and sweet. I've always disliked long credit listings in my film classes, especially inro credits.
 
TheYankee said:
I'm just curious, because I want to reward everyone's contributions, but we had this guy who came to the set and sat there, did nothing, and yet, sat there, drank our soda, ate our food, and now wants a credit.
Click to expand...

credit him as - set grazer -

and if you did most of the work, just put down - a film by - your name
and whatever other people did.
Stay away from scrolling credits, especially if its a short film. I learned by myself that its quite unprofessional and stupid to have long scrolling credits on a 5 minute film.
Do slates type credits and you'll be set.
 
I have seen a short that had a 7 minute run-time for the video itself and an additional 5 for credits alone!!

Of course, it was listed as a series of Produced By: Joe Smith, Directed By: Joe Smith....etc, etc. I swear this guy spent more time making his name and credits look good than the piece itself... and it wasn't meant to be ironic or funny, which was a little scary....
 
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Set grazer = Associate Producer. Give him that credit and everyone will be happy.

Yes, in film school I hated seeing short films with ridiculously long credits. One time I'd had enough, so as a joke I made a 2-minute short and then tacked on the entire end credits to Independence Day. Good for a chuckle.
 
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