rstander211
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Friday, July 11th, 2025

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credit order

I know that IMDb prefers to use the "most complete on-screen listing" as the reference for credit order, and that's "usually the end titles." Does this mean the main titles at the end of the film, or just the end credit crawl? The main titles at the end of the film often have an order dictated by contracts. But if the crawl is in order of appearance, does that mean IMDb will prioritize appearance order and ignore the order used for the end of picture main titles? I'm hoping to update the order of credits for an existing title to reflect the order in the main titles. Right now, the order of credits on IMDb matches neither the main titles nor the crawl (which is order of appearance).

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6 months ago

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Peter_pbn

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10 months ago

When there are main titles with only the main cast and an end crawl with the whole cast, the end crawl is the most comprehensive cast list.

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martin_695862

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6 months ago

I have always understood that you use the order in the most complete list. Sometimes a title has a few main actors listed in the opening titles, and then a complete list, including those main actors, in the closing credits. In that case, use the closing list and ignore the opening one. Or else you get some actors in the opening and others in the closing credtis (but not those in opening titles). In that case, put all the opening actors (in screen order) followed by all the closing ones (in screen order). If the closing credits list the main actors and then there is a complete list that includes those same people, ignore the main-actors list and use the complete list.

(edited)

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Peter_pbn

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Agreed. However, I quite often find that the opening credit order has been used even though the complete cast is listed in the end credits of a series. Perhaps the guidelines could be clearer and include more descriptions like martin's above.

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6 months ago

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martin_695862

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Yes I am forever correcting cast order for films and TV programmes where people have put the starring actors first. Sometimes they are in the order that they are listed in the opening title seqeuence. Sometimes they seem to be in the order that someone subjectively things they deserve to be in. I've come across cases where the IMDB order bears no resemblence either to opening titles main-actor order or to closing credits order - just a complete free-for-all. I always correct to the order in the closing credits as long as this is a complete list. There are "funnies". Holby City went through a phase where it used a standard opening titles sequence with the same actors/characters every week (so there were a lot of "credit only" atributes needed if that character wasn't in that episode) and then the closing credits only listed the guest actors/characters and not the full list. That was Case 2 in my original example. The other thing I'm forever correcting is descriptive character names (eg "Police Officer" or "Pub Landlord") where previous submitters have chosen only to capitalise the first word ("Police officer" or "Pub landlord") despite the help section saying "transcribe as in the credits or else [if credits are all upper-case] capitalise every word except prepositions". Yes, maybe the help text needs more examples and use-cases. I give IMDB permission to base their help text on my wording above ;-)

(edited)

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6 months ago

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