The Credit Alligator usually
appears late in a multimedia project and has nothing to do with MasterCard or
Visa. This gnarly animal typically lives unseen in the delicate fringes of
workgroup politics, but can appear with great distraction during beta testing,
adding moments of personal tension and occasionally destroying friendships and
business relationships.
After hard cash, the most satisfying remuneration for your sweaty effort and late-night creative contributions to a multimedia project is to see your name on the credit screen. Indeed, this visible credit is a special high-value currency because it can be added to your portfolio to help you land the next job; the more of this currency, the higher your potential wage. And the more likely you will remain employed doing the things you like to do.
Start building defenses against this alligator up front. When you negotiate the original contract with whomever pays the multimedia bill, be sure to include wording such as: "We shall be allowed to include a production credit display on the closing screen or in another mutually agreeable position in the finished work." If you are an individual who is contracting to a producer, be sure it is understood that IF there is a credit screen, you name will be on it.
Not all clients will stand for a credit screen. Apple Computer, for example, uses many outside contractors to produce multimedia, but as a company policy rarely allows contributors to be credited by name. Some contractors and frustrated employeees develop ingenious work-arounds and indirections to bury these important intellectual credits within their work. For example, in an excellent book written by a team of skilled Apple people and published officially by Addison-Wesley (HyperCard Stack Design Guidelines by Apple Computer, Inc.) you may discover a list of talented instructional designers, illustrators, writers and editors in Figure 3-3, an unassuming bit-mapped screen-grab showing an "About" box. The real people that wrote the book are buried here, in this example credit screen.
The Credit Alligator raises its head over the little things, too, and there are often no defenses If your name begins with a letter that is toward the end of the alphabet, it may never appear first on the list of contributors, even if your contribution was major. Of course, if your name is Walsh or Young, you have endured this ordering system since first-grade lineups. Warning: reversing an alphabetic credit list from last to first will only create or heighten tension; to propose such a list is, in itself, ego-driven and self-serving. Learn to live with it.
The most treacherous place where the Credit Alligator lives is in the busy time of finalizing a project and going gold. If you are not participating in the final mastering but have contributed a piece or pieces to the project, you must trust the masterer to do it right. But it doesn't always happen right.
One company recently consulted on a job where their work represented the second-greatest contribution from a group of about fifteen contributors, all of whom had credit screens. Their contract required credit, but in the final version of the storyboard they discovered their screen buried at the end of a four-minute linear sequence of all the other credits and advertisements. They asked the producer to move it up. "Sorry," said the producer, "it was an oversight." Then in the last-minute process of resequencing, the producer also switched that company's custom music to his own company's credit screen, leaving our friend's screen attached to a pretty ugly left-over sound byte. Because the company was not included in the final feedback and approval loop, they discovered this "little mistake" only after mass replication. It's tough to change 50,000 shrink-wrapped CD-ROMs, so there was nothing to say.
Crediting creative talent is sensitive stuff. Avoid recurring bouts with the Credit Alligator by publicizing among your people your policy about credit screens. Talk about intellectual credit openly, not as a last-minute thing. Negotiate hard for inclusion of credit in all the projects you undertake for clients. Indeed, multimedia doesn't spring from the bankrolls of investors and publishers, but is the result of the hard work of talented real people.
After hard cash, the most satisfying remuneration for your sweaty effort and late-night creative contributions to a multimedia project is to see your name on the credit screen. Indeed, this visible credit is a special high-value currency because it can be added to your portfolio to help you land the next job; the more of this currency, the higher your potential wage. And the more likely you will remain employed doing the things you like to do.
Start building defenses against this alligator up front. When you negotiate the original contract with whomever pays the multimedia bill, be sure to include wording such as: "We shall be allowed to include a production credit display on the closing screen or in another mutually agreeable position in the finished work." If you are an individual who is contracting to a producer, be sure it is understood that IF there is a credit screen, you name will be on it.
Not all clients will stand for a credit screen. Apple Computer, for example, uses many outside contractors to produce multimedia, but as a company policy rarely allows contributors to be credited by name. Some contractors and frustrated employeees develop ingenious work-arounds and indirections to bury these important intellectual credits within their work. For example, in an excellent book written by a team of skilled Apple people and published officially by Addison-Wesley (HyperCard Stack Design Guidelines by Apple Computer, Inc.) you may discover a list of talented instructional designers, illustrators, writers and editors in Figure 3-3, an unassuming bit-mapped screen-grab showing an "About" box. The real people that wrote the book are buried here, in this example credit screen.
The Credit Alligator raises its head over the little things, too, and there are often no defenses If your name begins with a letter that is toward the end of the alphabet, it may never appear first on the list of contributors, even if your contribution was major. Of course, if your name is Walsh or Young, you have endured this ordering system since first-grade lineups. Warning: reversing an alphabetic credit list from last to first will only create or heighten tension; to propose such a list is, in itself, ego-driven and self-serving. Learn to live with it.
The most treacherous place where the Credit Alligator lives is in the busy time of finalizing a project and going gold. If you are not participating in the final mastering but have contributed a piece or pieces to the project, you must trust the masterer to do it right. But it doesn't always happen right.
One company recently consulted on a job where their work represented the second-greatest contribution from a group of about fifteen contributors, all of whom had credit screens. Their contract required credit, but in the final version of the storyboard they discovered their screen buried at the end of a four-minute linear sequence of all the other credits and advertisements. They asked the producer to move it up. "Sorry," said the producer, "it was an oversight." Then in the last-minute process of resequencing, the producer also switched that company's custom music to his own company's credit screen, leaving our friend's screen attached to a pretty ugly left-over sound byte. Because the company was not included in the final feedback and approval loop, they discovered this "little mistake" only after mass replication. It's tough to change 50,000 shrink-wrapped CD-ROMs, so there was nothing to say.
Crediting creative talent is sensitive stuff. Avoid recurring bouts with the Credit Alligator by publicizing among your people your policy about credit screens. Talk about intellectual credit openly, not as a last-minute thing. Negotiate hard for inclusion of credit in all the projects you undertake for clients. Indeed, multimedia doesn't spring from the bankrolls of investors and publishers, but is the result of the hard work of talented real people.
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