Why is it always the DIRECTOR who get's mentioned?

[MJN SEIFER]

Whenever a movie is being promoted, they always advertise who the director is, not the writer - that doesn't seem right to me. It's the writer who's responsible for the whole thing happening - it's his (or her) story, from his mind, the director just sets up everything while reading a script - I'm not saying that the director doesn't deserve credit as well, but I don't think he should over shadow the writer.

Also, if you loved a movie by a particular writer, but hated another movie with a partiular director, and then you see a move advertised the announcer says it's by that director, you might ignore it, thinking it's going to be another crap movie. However, what you don't realize is that the writer is the same writer as the movie you loved (that move had another director). See what I'm saying guys?

[VeloZer0]

Because it is only feasible to advertise a few names in association with the movie, and most of the billing already goes to the actors.

Just from reading a script there are a million possible interpretations. In fact the script will most likely be tweaked at the directors discretion as they go along.

Think of it this way, the classical play version and the modern day set Romeo and Juliet are essentially following the same script. They are, however, vastly different movies.

[LunarWeaver]

Unless it's an indie movie or the director is powerful enough to do both, a lot of people work on one script, and then perhaps script doctors after that. Trailers want to ruin the best moments, not make a huge list. Nobody will ever care about who wrote Transformers. They want to see a few pretty people listed and know Michael Bay will give them boom-boom and move along.

Maybe it's unfair considering they do an important job, yeah, but it is how it is. I guess you'll have to write novels if you want a real name.

[Del Murder]

I've wondered the same thing myself, and I think the answer is that the director is considered the 'boss' on the set and so they're responsible for what the final product ends up being. I believe they have a lot of control on how the script gets interpreted. There's probably been many good scripts that have been ruined by a bad director. Similarly, a so-so script may have become a blockbuster with the right director (ie Transformers).

[Bunny]

It's my understanding that the writer plays a relatively small role in the development of a film. They write the script and typically sell it to the company, who is then responsible for making the changes that they desire and hiring all the staff to make the moving happen, including a director. The director then makes his own changes to the script, usually in correlation with the company who now owns the script, in order to "make it better". The reason scriptwriters do not get first billing in movies is because they are somewhat unimportant in the scheme of things. Also, few people care who writes a movie. Almost everyone who sees a movie wants to know who directs it. Afterall, you wouldn't have seen Inglorious Basterds if it were directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. Even if it were written by the greatest writers you can think of.

[rubah]

Authors who write books create environments with their words. Summarily, they are usually less than useful at creating environments with lighting, placements, etc. There is usually tension when an author is called to write a screenplay, because the author wants to protect the literary merit of their work, but the director wants something that translates that into the screen. An inner monologue explaining one character's yearning for another in a novel can be expressed by one lingering camera shot on a look of desperation on that character's face, you know? And it has to, to fit in 118 minutes.

Anyways, directors are the ones who decide what lighting there is, who decide what mood music should be playing in the background, how close together the actors should stand, whether the shot should focus on their faces, or be a wider frame.

Basically, they are creating environments and lives.

No one's going to give James Cameron any awards for the story he told with Avatar, but for the environment he created? ~~

[charliepanayi]

Because writers are the great ignored in Hollywood, unless you're really lucky (e.g. Aaron Sorkin).

[NorthernChaosGod]

Directors are largely responsible for the finished product that people will see. Not only can scenes be moved around or outright deleted by the director, but they also oversee pretty much every aspect of the movie to make it what it is. The story really is only one part of a movie, so writers will probably never get first billing.

[Elskidor]

I think the writing gets undone so many times that by the end it might be just a shadow of what they originally intended.

[Shiny]

Anyways, directors are the ones who decide what lighting there is, who decide what mood music should be playing in the background, how close together the actors should stand, whether the shot should focus on their faces, or be a wider frame.



Directors are largely responsible for the finished product that people will see. Not only can scenes be moved around or outright deleted by the director, but they also oversee pretty much every aspect of the movie to make it what it is. The story really is only one part of a movie, so writers will probably never get first billing.

That is not true. It's true in Cameron's case, but a lot of high profile directors don't have their hands on everything; which is how it should be for film productions with a large amount of cast and crew anyway. People are hired to head certain departments for a reason. There is the music supervisor which of course heads the music department. There's the art director who deals with make-up and wardrobe departments. There is the director of photography who heads the grip, gaffers (light crew), etc. basically all the technical crew who deal with the look of the film.

The director of photography is usually largely responsible for how the film looks and main editor is in charge of what gets pieced together -- from how the film is sequenced, graphics, music choice, musical placement. After some time, a good director then takes a look at what has progressed, and then decides whether to make changes from there. There are also other aspects of filmmaking that most people never see such as getting the locations, getting to the locations, getting a large amount of people to the locations, budgets of SAG actors and extras, props, catering, etc. etc. all these things most directors don't deal with at all.

Some directors, however, don't even actually direct. They don't do their homework and come to set unprepared with no shot list, storyboard, or no-how of what they want a scene to look like so then most often the director of photography has to then come up with on the spot, how the scene should be lit, the blocking, etc. all while the director is still deciding what he wants. But, time is money. Directors are fired if they go too far out of the budget of the film or over the allotted time to complete a film. I've seen it happen on large productions, but I have also seen when producers hired more camera men. It was on a Matt Damon film. The director was taking too long to complete so to rush they just hired four more cinematographers to get shots simultaneously.

But to get more on track with the thread, producers get the scripts and pitch the ones they like to companies with a business plan. The producers will work out a deal with the screenwriter(s) and the company. The writer(s) is paid and the producer and company purchases the right to adapt the screenplay for film. After that, the writer has no influence on the film whatsoever. They don't even have control over what gets taken out of of their story or dialogue changes the actor and director may make. Even if they are writing and directing the film, an editor and/or producers (or Edward Norton lol) may decide that something should not be in it and take it out.

This happened in Apocalypse Now. Coppola (writer and director of the film) later released his director's cut which tbh, was not as good as the original. So in short, the writer just writes the story. They don't do anything else because most of them can't do anything else to protect the integrity of their stories. At least they will receive protection and credit under the WGA, and if there are spin-offs/sequels, they could receive money from those as well even if they don't actually write the screenplays to those. Only a few writers have actually had the power to go to a director and say I don't like how you're adapting my screenplay, change it. Paddy Chayefsky was one of those few. If you want more control over your script as a writer, also become the producer of the film and if you want pretty much all the control, you'd have to be writer, director, AND producer under your own independent company.

So yeah, Bunny has the gist of it. Directors (and actors) are more marketable and more people assume that the director is involved in everything which they wouldn't assume with a writer.

EDIT: There's a hierarchy in filmmaking and the director is at the top. The writer is at the lower end, but even the director isn't the first of that hierarchy.

[NorthernChaosGod]

What kind of directors are you talking about? o_O If they're advertising a director like the OP is talking about it's probably the likes of Cameron or some other big name director.

[Shiny]

The OP was talking about why directors get billed over screenwriters. It doesn't really matter if the director isn't on the same level of notoriety as Cameron, they will still get most of the credit and attention over the majority of the other crew aside from the people starring in the film. Essentially what I was saying is because people assume that directors have most the involvement in the film, it makes more sense to give them the most credit for it, but there are some who don't do as much as people think they do -- which applies to some high profiled directors as well. I was talking about major feature films distributed under big companies, not indies. That's a whole other ball game.

[NorthernChaosGod]

Okay then I guess it's just me that was assuming it was actually from directors that do a lot.

[The Captain]

In so many words, Directors often sell tickets more then writers. Certain writers have a track record and a proven fanbase, a la Charlie Kaufman, Aaron Sorkin, etc, but the Directors and the Actors are the more visible moneymakers, fair or not.

A film is in essence a collaboration of many, many people. So many in fact that credits often take 6-10 minutes to run! The vastly overlooked include not just writers, but the DP's, the Editors, the Art Department, the Effects Department, etc, etc.

A quote that is sort of glib but is also true best sums it up: "Theatre is the actors showcase, TV is the writers showcase, Film is the directors showcase."

Theatre is such a bare, personal artform with usually just the actors and the audience, TV has such long periods of time to fill that a true overreaching story can be written and told and film is very much the visual medium with the director creating the shots that get used.

Take care all.

[Mirage]

I don't know. Some movies advertise the producers and sometimes writers too, if the writers were involved in other very well received projects, and the director of this new movie is sort of unknown or don't have the best reputation.

[kotora]

In so many words, Directors often sell tickets more then writers. Certain writers have a track record and a proven fanbase, a la Charlie Kaufman, Aaron Sorkin, etc, but the Directors and the Actors are the more visible moneymakers, fair or not.

A film is in essence a collaboration of many, many people. So many in fact that credits often take 6-10 minutes to run! The vastly overlooked include not just writers, but the DP's, the Editors, the Art Department, the Effects Department, etc, etc.

they're all just support personnel though. Whatever it is they do could be seen as manual labor they do according to the director's vision.

[Del Murder]

Coming soon, from the Key Grip that brought you...The Godfather...

And the Gaffer from...Lord of the Rings...

With the catering company that provided lunch on the set of...Avatar...

[The Captain]

"And the Gaffer from...Lord of the Rings..."

Do you mean Samwise's Old Gaffer?



"they're all just support personnel though. Whatever it is they do could be seen as manual labor they do according to the director's vision."

True on some level, but not on all. The Editor and DP are just as essential to any film as the director. Even the best films would be ruined without either of them. They are the real heroes of most films as they are literally in charge of what you SEE on the screen, creating the director's vision.

Take care all.

[Ouch!]

If there's anything that I've learned from my creative writing classes at a university with a pretty strong film program (and the obnoxious amounts of time I spend around film majors) its the screenplays are typically written by committee. Others have already touched on the most important aspects of this: that while one or two individuals may be responsible for the original script, a multitude of changes ultimately turn it into something only vaguely reminiscent of what it started as.

The process of screenplay writing and writing credits is so convoluted that there is an enormous industry in intellectual property law in Hollywood based solely on distributing exactly how the writing credits for a particular screenplay are divided. It's an entire business deciding who gets credit for what parts of each script.

Consequently, it's easier and more accurate to credit a director who is typically responsible for cohesion on the entire project.

[Shiny]

There is also that one guy (a writer) that is generally mentioned. Charlie Kaufman, but he has also directed before so I dunno if that counts.

Producers aren't advertised, but they tend to have much more control over the project than most people are aware of -- even more than the director which is why some directors opt to also produce their own films. And many major films, the director has very little control over their own creative idea. This is especially troubling if the director also wrote the film. The studios will ask things to be changed and what not. For the most part I agree with what The Captain said. The screenplay is changed often during the film, and even after the film has been shot in the cutting room, things will get cut out. The reason is sometimes as simple as something written just ending up not working visually, or it may be as stupid as the studio saying, "ew, this is too long we need it to be around 120 minutes not 150. Cut it down." So entire pages of the story could be cut out or changed to point where the screenwriter basically was just a part of the rough cut of the idea.

[Peegee]

The OP was talking about why directors get billed over screenwriters.

THIS

Thanks Shinies :D