The Curious Case of Movie Credits

I was watching a trailer of a Ghanaian film today and I saw a single card credit "An Angela XXX Film." I thought Angela XXX (I made up the name) was the director, only to find out that Angela XXX was the producer. Why was this person given a directors credit then? To tell the world the movie belongs to her.

Now that, is ridiculous.


Does it matter who the movie belongs to? This is how the I Sing of a Well movie crumbled. Lee Daniel's The Butler had 41 producers. Each one contributing something to the film. They all have a share in the film. Think of it as a pie chart.

For everyone's contribution, they get a piece of the pie. Indeed, there is one person who may have his/her signature on the copyright certificate and that would be the originator of the project. Its possible that it's more than one person. If its in the name of a production company, anyone with shares in the production company shares in it and maybe one person is designated as the administrator.

I'd called Universal sometime back about music. Two individuals owned the rights to the song. These two people hired a company to manage their rights. Assuming I'd bought the song, if person A has 40% share, 40% of what I paid goes to him.

CREDIT. It brings about so much drama. But, who's film it is, (not ownership) always belongs to a director. Whether the director invested in the film or not, it is A Director's Film and A Producer's Production.

For example, A Leila Djansi Film (Because I am the director) and A Mabel Germain Production (because she is the producer). NEVER A Mabel Germain Film. NEVER.

I don't understand why people want the world to know they have the money and that it is their money that went into a film. It's vanity. Losing sight of what's important. I see credits of Executive Producer/Producer for the one person.
If you went to a bank for a loan for the film, the banker who handled your loan should ideally be your executive producer or your attorney or your distributor. You are the producer, the originator of the project. It is your responsibility to raise the money, you shouldn't be praised for doing your duty now should you?

A producer is heavily involved in casting, on I Sing of a Well, my co-producer demanded casting director credit. A producer and the director finalize and are very very involved in the casting process, why should you be given that credit?

A director is supposed to write a shooting draft of the script. A lot of times, the director ends up making a good number of changes to the script and the fight for writer credit begins.You recreated the material from another's foundation. I think that person should retain writer credits.

We fight over such vanities; money, attention, power, prestige... at the expense of friendship. Sad.