Billing (performing arts)


Billing is a performing arts term used in referring to the order and other aspects of how credits are presented for plays, films, television, or other creative works. Information given in billing usually consists of the companies, actors, directors, producers, and other crew members.

Films

History

From the beginning of motion pictures in the 1900s to the early 1920s, the moguls that owned or managed big film studios did not want to bill the actors appearing in their films because they did not want to recreate the star system that was prevalent on Broadway at that time. They also feared that, once actors were billed on film, they would be more popular and would seek large salaries. Actors themselves did not want to reveal their film careers to their stage counterparts via billing on film, because at that time working in the movies was unacceptable to stage actors. As late as the 1910s, stars as famous as Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin were not known by name to moviegoers. According to Mary Pickford's biography Doug and Mary, she was referred to by the public as "the Biograph girl" in all of her films before 1905.
Before Mary Pickford, the public used to call Florence Lawrence the "Biograph girl". In 1910, Lawrence was lured away from Biograph by Carl Laemmle when he started the Independent Motion Picture Company. Laemmle wanted Lawrence to be his star attraction, so he offered her more money ) and marquee billing, something Biograph did not allow. She signed on; with the release of her first IMP film, The Broken Oath, she became the first film star to receive billing on the credits of her film. From then on, actors received billing on film. Also originating during that time was the system of billing above and below the title, to delineate the status of the players. Big stars such as Pickford, Fairbanks, and Chaplin were billed above the title, while lesser stars and supporting players were billed below the title.
During the era of the studio system, on-screen billing was presented at the beginning of a film; only a restatement of the cast and possibly additional players appeared at the end, because the studios had actors under contract and could decide billing. The studios still followed the billing system of the silent era.
After the studio system's collapse in the 1950s, actors and their agents fought for billing on a film-by-film basis. This, combined with changes in union contracts and copyright laws, led to more actors and crew members being included in the credits sequence, expanding its size significantly. As a result, since the late 1960s, a significant amount of the billing is reserved for the closing credits of the film, which generally includes a recap of the billing shown at the beginning. In addition, more stars began to demand top billing.
Billing demands even extended to publicity materials, down to the height of the letters and the position of names.
By the 1990s, some films had moved all billing to the film's end, with the exception of company logos and the title. Although popularised by the Star Wars series and used sporadically in films such as The Godfather and Ghostbusters, this "title-only" billing became an established form for summer blockbusters in 1989, with Ghostbusters II, Lethal Weapon 2, and The Abyss following the practice. Occasionally, even the title is left to the end, such as in The Passion of the Christ, Avatar, Inception, and the Dark Knight trilogy.

Billing order

The order in which credits are billed generally signify their importance. While there are numerous variations, most opening credits use some variation of the following basic order. In the absence of opening credits, these roles will often be credited in reverse order at the beginning of the closing credits.
The name of the studio that is normally credited is the one that distributed the film. However, a studio may not necessarily be the party that produced it. Instead, a separate production company may have actually made the film or financed a substantial part of the film. For instance, on the 1979 film The China Syndrome, the opening titles bill Columbia Pictures as presenting the film, but the actual production was handled by Michael Douglas/IPC Films; IPC Films was a production company of Jane Fonda, one of the three main stars, and director James Bridges got the possessory credit.

Possessory credits

Depending on their standing, the director may be granted an extra, prominent credit before the film's title ; this practice began with directors such as Otto Preminger, David Lean, and John Frankenheimer in the mid-1960s. Sometimes the producer or writer may also get a possessory credit. Up until the establishment of the director's possessive credit, in the early 1970s, some directors were so highly regarded that they received what seems to be a producer's credit, even if they did not produce the film. Victor Fleming was one such director: his films usually featured the credit "A Victor Fleming Production", even when someone else produced the film. James Whale was similarly credited.
Director Kevin Smith refuses to use a possessory credit, such as "A Kevin Smith Film", feeling that a movie is made by everyone involved and not the product of just the director.

Top and above-title billing

The actors whose names appear first are said to have "top billing". They usually play the principal characters in the film and have the most screen time. Frequently, top-billed actors are also named in advertising material such as trailers, posters, billboards, and TV spots.
The two or three top-billed actors in a movie will usually be announced prior to the title of the movie; this is referred to as "above-title billing". For an actor to receive it, he/she will generally have to be well-established, with box-office drawing power. Those introduced afterward are generally considered to be the supporting cast. Well-known actors may be given top billing for publicity or contractual purposes if juvenile, lesser-known, or first-time performers appear in a larger role: e.g., Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman were both credited before the title in Superman, while Christopher Reeve, the then-unknown actor who played the title character and protagonist, was not, even though Brando only appears in the introduction while Hackman was the main antagonist. Similarly in Apocalypse Now, Brando was billed first even though he only appears at the end as the film's chief antagonist, while Robert Duvall was billed second despite a brief supporting role that earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and Martin Sheen, who portrayed the main character, was billed third.
It used to be common practice to give top billing based on a person's level of fame, regardless of the significance of their role in the film. For example, Marlon Brando received top billing in The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Superman. Maximilian Schell was billed fifth in Judgment at Nuremberg after Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, and Marlene Dietrich, yet Schell went on to win the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role. In recent decades, however, the practice of giving top billing to a star actor has largely been discontinued especially if they only play a bit part ; some major actors may have a cameo where they are only noted within the other cast during the end credits.
If an unfamiliar actor has the lead role, they may be listed last in the list of principal supporting actors, their name prefixed with "and introducing". However "and introducing" is now mostly used in feature films by a young actor who appears for the first time in a motion picture. Sometimes, they may not receive special billing even if their role is crucial. For example, the then-unknown William Warfield, who played Joe and sang "Ol' Man River" in the 1951 film version of Show Boat, received tenth billing as if he were merely a bit player, while Paul Robeson, an established star who played the same role in the 1936 film version of the musical, received fourth billing in the 1936 film.
If more than one name appears at the same time or of a similar size, then those actors are said to have "equal billing", with their importance decreasing from left to right. However, an instance of "equal importance" is The Towering Inferno starring Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. The two names appear simultaneously with Newman's on the right side of the screen and raised slightly higher than McQueen's, to indicate the comparable status of both actors' characters. A similar situation occurred in 2002 with Chicago, where Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones received "stacked billing" on the film's poster, where a person reading from left to right would read Zeta-Jones' name first and a person reading from top to bottom would read Zellweger's name first.
If a film has an ensemble cast with no clear lead role, it is traditional to bill the participants alphabetically or in the order of their on-screen appearance. An example of the former is A Bridge Too Far, which featured 14 roles played by established stars, any one of whom would have ordinarily received top billing as an individual. The cast of the Harry Potter films includes many recognized stars in supporting roles who are billed alphabetically, but after the three principals who were initially child actors.
In the case of the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet, there were many famous actors playing supporting or bit roles, and these actors were given prominent billing in the posters along with the film's actual stars: Branagh, Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie, and Kate Winslet. In the actual film's credits, they were listed in alphabetical order and in the same size typeface.
If an actor is not an established star, he or she may not receive above-the-title billing, or even "star" billing; they may just be listed at the head of the cast. This is the way that all of the actors were listed in the opening credits to The Wizard of Oz; Judy Garland, although listed first, was given equal billing to all the others, with the cast list reading "with Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley", etc. F. Murray Abraham, a supporting actor at the time of Amadeus, did not receive special star billing although he played the lead role of Antonio Salieri; his onscreen credit reads "with F. Murray Abraham", although his name does appear first in the cast.
In some cases, the position of a name in the credits roll can become a sticking point for both cast and crew. Such was the case on the 1960s TV sitcom Gilligan's Island, where two of the stars were only mentioned by name in the closing credits. In fact, the characters of The Professor and Mary Ann were the only ones whose mention in the opening theme song was abbreviated simply as "the rest" in the show's first season. Bob Denver, who played Gilligan, was so upset with this treatment that he reportedly told the producers that since his contract stipulated that his name could appear anywhere in the credits that he wished, he wanted to be moved to the end credits with his co-stars. From the show's second season, the studio capitulated, and moved Denver's co-stars to the opening credits of the show, and also changed the theme song's lyrics to include "The Professor and Mary Ann" instead of saying "and the rest".