The Kindness of Strangers: Working with Amateur Cast & Crew (page 2)
Where Credit is Due
Though all these suggestions will reward and motivate your personnel, there's nothing, no, nothing like screen credit. After all, credit and maybe a program copy are all your devoted helpers will get. Here are some tips for making screen credits as rewarding as possible.
First, make each job title as exalted as possible without being silly. Though "Production Logistics Facilitator" might be too fancy for "gofer," "Production Associate" is subtly more rewarding than "Production Assistant." (By the way, avoid cute titles like "Turnip Wrangler." Production insiders may laugh, but your general audience will be irritated by obvious jokes that they don't get).
Next, use title pages (PowerPoint style) rather than rolling titles. You want to give your volunteers as much screen time as possible, but very slow credit rolls are also audience turn-offs. Instead, offer pages in series, each with three or four credits, like the example in Figure 1.
Here's the secret: if you leave this title on long enough to read all three credits, the people will think they each have three times as much exposure because they're looking only at their own names! (When planning credits you must know no shame).
Finally, let multiple credits stand alone. Instead of "Key Grip, Dolly Master, Best Boy and Cable Puller: ALICE B. STEIN," give Ms. Stein a separate credit, including her name, for each job she performed on the shoot.
In the final analysis, all this advice is simple common sense. But when you're the writer/director/producer/videographer/editor of a complex project, it's all too easy to forget that your seemingly eager assistants are really in it for what pleasure and reward they can get for themselves. And since your crew is probably not receiving monetary compensation, providing them with the professional courtesies outlined here should be enough to keep them happy, increase their loyalty and improve their reliability.
