MPA Certificate info under Miscellaneous Company section

Maya, the issue persists. Whoever is adding these listings specifically for The Muppets and The Smurfs is now adding multiple listings with roles such as "logo", and "animal wrangler", the latter an obvious effort to circumvent that "acknowledgement" and actual provision of certificate numbers under role are being deleted. These multiple additions have been made to a number of other titles as I type.

@gene_chin- Thank you for report! We are following up on this issue with the appropiate team. 

Hi @gene_chin,

Thank you for your patience. 

I am confirming that this issue can now be considered resolved. Should there be any further examples of this issue, please let us know and we will investigate further. 

Cheers!

Thanks Ozzy and all.

I do have one more question. Many of the same issues were listed under the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America. I have deleted instances of certificate numbers listed under Miscellaneous Companies under this page, although only those movies from 1935 onward when numbered certificates started being issued. I gather the role of the organization was different prior to 1935, with further differences up to 1929. I am unsure about the role of the organization in these pre-1935 eras and thus if the appearance of the organization's logo in movie credits from these eras does also not belong under Miscellaneous Companies. gromit, you seem to have a better handle on the nature of the MPA as a whole, and thus you may have an opinion. Ozzy, Maya and other staff, there are currently just over 500 titles under this page listed under Misc Companies solely as "acknowledgement" or "logo".

@gene_chin​ The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) was founded in 1922. In 1945, it changed its name to Motion Picture Association of America, and in 2019 they dropped "of America" to just become the Motion Picture Association. It's the same organization continuously through the last century, just under different names.

In 1930, the MPPDA developed the Motion Picture Production Code to establish standards for the content of movies for censorship purposes. The Code was not actually enforced until 1934, though, which is when the MPPDA started issuing certificates/code seals. (Certificate #1 went to The World Moves On (1934).)

The appearance of the MPPDA/MPAA logo with a certificate number in the credits of older films should not be listed as a Miscellaneous Company on IMDb, either. Their role in giving a certificate can also be covered in IMDb by their certificate being listed in the Parental Guide. For IMDb certificate purposes, I believe that would be listed as US:Approved for films given certificates/code seals by the MPPDA/MPAA from 1934 to 1968 (when the rating system was introduced).

I don't know why the MPPDA logo would appear in a film's credits before 1934; if you can provide a link to an online video of a pre-1934 film which has the logo, that would be helpful.

@gromit82, thanks for the reply. As you've requested, the following is a screenshot of one card of the opening credits of the 1933 movie Sweepings. The logo can be seen in the middle of the screen.

Gene: Thank you for providing this example. I had not known that the MPPDA's logo would be on screen in films from that era, and I don't know what it specifically signified.

Hi, everyone:

gromit, here are two more examples of films from before 1934 that feature the MPPDA logo:

• The Smiling Lieutenant (1931): 

• The Miracle Woman (1931):
   
• This document may also be of interest to you.

I've been removing MPA certificate numbers from the “copyright holder” section for a long time (checking my emails, I've done about 200). I admit that on a few occasions (certainly no more than 10) I have added a company entry for the Motion Picture Association with the role acknowledgment during the audit of a film's credits, though. It has always been shortly after seeing a similar entry for the MPA in some other movie and wondering if that was correct. What my instinct tells me (and my final decision) in the vast majority of cases has been to refrain from adding the company credit. However, the IMDb guidelines (#1, #2) do not explicitly prohibit the inclusion of this type of entry (at least I have not found anything saying so) and, as Peter has rightly pointed out above, "not many other classification boards seem to be named in end credits" (for example, in the case of Spanish films, all require an ICAA certificate to be released in theaters, but not all display the ICAA logo in the credits), which has led me to wonder whether it would be interesting to collect that information (the presence of the entity's logo in the credits).

I believe that if we conclude as a working guideline (after all, this is the policy discussion forum) that this type of company credit is not eligible (I agree), it should be made perfectly clear in the guidelines (those "strict company filmography guidelines..." 😋)

Cheers!

Thanks for your comments, @ljdoncel, and for your similar efforts to delete the certificate info from the Copyright Holder section. That inclusion of certificate numbers under Copyright seemed to have popped up overnight at the time (it must have been a lot of work for whoever did it, all for not!). Your insights about the MPA's counterparts in other countries leads me to think similar to you that the the pre-1935 instances of the MPPDA logo in movie credits also does not belong under Misc Companies.

Await to hear from staff.