Movie Openings

Remember this video, What If Microsoft Re-Designed the iPod Packaging?



Sitting through some really long beginning to movies made me think of this. The start of movies is just not created for the audience at all. After sitting through commercials and then trailers, the movie starts 10 or 15 minutes after the theater time said it would. But then it begins with video logos of various production companies. Since movies are now routinely financed and distributed by multiple production houses we get several of them. Then the we see the names of those production companies usually on still frames and then you get to the opening credits where you'll see these companies repeated again with "Presented by" or a "A such-and-such film".

Newsflash, no one picks a movie based on the production company and no one cares what the name of the company is. They care about the film, probably the stars and maybe, just possibly maybe the director or even more rarely the writer. If anyone in the audience does care about anyone else involved in the film, they already know everything about it anyway so there's no need to waste time telling them about it.

Now I know that long ago, under the studio system, people probably did know the company that produced the film, but that's because they also owned the theater so you went to an MGM, Columbia or a Paramount theater. And they had stars under contract so if you wanted to see you're favorite star, you knew which theater would have them. But even then, look at the those old films (a lot of them are great), the opening credits were shorter than the logos at the beginning of films now, and there were no closing credits!

Imagine if movie credits were designed by movie fans...