Why do movies still have credits?

Summary:

1. Legal/contractual obligations to list all staff who've worked on film
2. Evidence that staff have worked on film, which can be used to help them gain future employment
3. Some movie-goers are extremely interested in credits and finding out who was responsible for what

Detailed Answer:

Union Rules/legalities

E! Online were asked a question about why movie credit were so long and as part of their answer stated:

"Films have always employed dozens (if not hundreds) of people in various jobs," Clark University director of screen studies Tim Shary tells this B!tch. "But before the '60s, they tended to be in teams, and usually only the leader of the unit received onscreen credit. So, the art director would be listed but not all of the people (painters, decorators, landscapers, carpenters, etc.) that worked for him or her. "Now, almost everyone who works on a film is a member of a union, and they have expectations about getting onscreen credit."

Could a director like Spielberg or a producer like Scott Rudin decide to eliminate those credits during one of his 18 daily ego meltdowns? Not likely, I'm told. During film's golden age, most movie workers were under contract to a studio, so the suits could credit their drones--or not--as they saw fit. Today, people hire themselves out film by film, giving them and their unions more power.

"The presence of many credits today are adjudicated by unions and guilds," says Penn State senior film lecturer Kevin J. Hagopian. "So, Steven Spielberg, even as a producer, could not decide simply to leave off these names."

...One other factor: cheaper movies. Black-turtlenecked indie fans love to joke that the size of a small film's credits is inversely proportional to the size of its budget. (What, you expected these people to have a real sense of humor?) Instead of paying cash, indie-film producers often offer key spaces in their credits as a thank-you.

"When freelancing replaced the studio contract system, studios and producers realized they could pay people less if they gave them credit," San Francisco State University film professor Joseph McBride says. "So, the proliferation of credits went bananas in the '70s and '80s, to the point that now even the honey-wagon driver is credited."

So there does appear to be legalities involved in having people gain credits. Some examples of this can be seen for particular "groups":

1. Writer's Guild
2. Producer's Guild

Acknowledgement used as a form of intellectual property

Quoting directly from Wikipedia, which rather nicely sums it up:

In the creative arts and scientific literature, an acknowledgment (also spelled acknowledgement) is an expression of gratitude for assistance in creating an original work.

Receiving credit by way of acknowledgment rather than authorship indicates that the person or organization did not have a direct hand in producing the work in question, but may have contributed funding, criticism, or encouragement to the author(s). Various schemes exist for classifying acknowledgments; Cronin et al.give the following six categories:

a) moral support
b) financial support
c) editorial support
d) presentational support
e) instrumental/technical support
f) conceptual support, or peer interactive communication (PIC)

Apart from citation, which is not usually considered to be an acknowledgment, acknowledgment of conceptual support is widely considered to be the most important for identifying intellectual debt. Some acknowledgments of financial support, on the other hand, may simply be legal formalities imposed by the granting institution.

So it appears many people, from actors through to cameramen, can use the fact they are included in credits as a form of "proof" on their CV so to speak, to absolutely guarantee they were involved in a project in that particular role.

An example of this on a minor stage, is the IMDB Credit System, which explicitly states that anyone can add their name as an actor to a film, but their system will check it against the official "credits" and remove it if not featured.

Public interest

Whilst I imagine the majority of film watchers do not watch the end credits, there are a some who do (call them Dawsons) and are genuinely interested in how a particular part of a film was achieved (e.g. how a sound effect was completed or who was in charge of animal safety, etc).

Edit:

To add in some of the fantastic points made in the comments:

Tom: People want acknowledgement for their hard work with a place in the credits, regardless of whether the audience will watch it.

Damon: The credits add to the length of the movie which increases the amount of money it can be licensed to broadcasters for.

Claudio Miklos: The credits are a piece of film history, recording for all time exactly who did what with a film.

In addition to the other answers, I find credits useful for many things.

1. When I hear a great song in a movie, I rely on the end credits to tell me the name of the song, the artist who performed it, and maybe even the title of the album.

2. End credits often tell me the locations where the movie was shot, and how many crews were used. New Zealand Crew, US Crew, Canadian Crew. That tells me that movie crews were in three different places, and different parts of the movie were shot there.

3. End credits for pictures with special effects, makeup, post-production houses, may give details to people interested in the special effects houses used, or other production and post-production used.

In general sense, movies still need credits because every single person who worked very hard for the movie needs recognition.

I still remember, Danny Boyle who got an Oscar award for Best Achievement in Directing for Slumdog Millionaire mentioned Longinus Fernandes for forgetting his name in the credits and thanked him.

At the 81st Academy Awards ceremony, director Danny Boyle thanked Longinus Fernandes in his acceptance speech, while receiving his award for Best Direction, and also acknowledge missing out Longinus Fernandes name in the credits.

Check this for Danny Boyle's Oscar acceptance speech.

Aside from the many valid issues found in Andrew's answer, there are a couple other considerations:

• Showmanship: The movie going experience is a show and every detail counts. What happens when the credits roll?

As you said, people leave. They gather their bags, stretch. The soundtrack is still playing, the lights are still dimmed but are progressively turned on. People start heading for the door at their own pace. For the few movies who hit the mark, people linger and enjoy to the last bit the movie going experience, especially those with a great score - without your attention on the story and the action on screen, the soundtrack shines through.

Consider the alternative: display "the end", cut off the sound and turn on the lights? After a couple hours in the dark, turning on the lights at once would hurt the eyes. Obviously the lights have to remain somewhat dimmed, but with nothing on the screen, it's a bit weird, no? Same for the sound: you can continue playing the soundtrack specifically composed to match the mood of the film and the expected mood of the spectator at the end of the film, or you can cut off the sound or play whatever music the theater chooses. People need a couple minutes to adjust themselves to the fact the movie is over and get back to their day to day life. Rolling credits exists for historical reasons, but it does also serve a purpose: it's the perfect transition from the film's fictional world and reality.

• No harm done.

Once everyone is out, whether there is still 15 seconds of credits or 20 minutes makes no difference: the projectionist turns off the projector. As such the full length of the credits is never an issue in theater.

• Learning opportunity - Gives a good grasp on what it takes to get a movie done.

It's a more geeky reason, but for some movies, I like to see how they organized the various teams and how much personnel they assigned for specific tasks.

Up until circa the 1960s movies didn't have end credits. The director, writer and main cast were credited in the title sequence at the beginning, and movies ended with a simple "THE END" title.

This was during the studio system, when films were produced in house by crews employed directly by the studio on a long term basis. These studio employees weren't credited separately on screen for every film they worked on.

After the collapse of the studio system, the studios (MGM, Paramount, Universal etc.) stopped producing films themselves; they turned into financing and distribution companies; the production of films was farmed out separate production companies, who hire crew for each production they work on.

As the crews who work on films are no longer permanent studio employees but are put together for each film, the unions have negotiated that everybody who works on a film receives an on-screen credit, as a record of previous experience is an important basis for finding future employment.