Admittedly, this is a very long time ago. When Shirley Lewis, Janet
Macdonald, & I were working on the rules for cataloguing nonbook
materials (late 1960s early 1970s), we visited/wrote to several film
production companies to ask who was responsible for the content of a
motion picture or whether it was viewed as a collective effort. Many
replied that the director was responsible; the actors, the camera
person, the sound people, etc., all did as he/she directed. A few
claimed it was the producer (he who controls the money calls the tune).
Others that it was a collective effort. We came to the conclusion that,
when one, two, or three person filled all the important functions in
the creation of the film, the motion picture should be entered under
that the first named or most prominently named. If more people had
major roles, enter under title. I don't think that there can be one
rule for identification of MPs.
Ben Tucker, then Principal Cataloger at LC, agreed at a public meeting
that LC entered an MP under personal name when it was obviously the work
of one, two, or three people.
Jean Weihs
Adam L. Schiff wrote:
John Attig wrote:
In the case of motion pictures, the extensive nature of the
collaboration involved makes it extremely difficult to identify ANY
role as that of creator -- which is probably why the practice of
identifying such works solely by their preferred titles, without
including the name of a creator, makes sense.
I think there needs to be flexibility in how a moving image work is
treated. There is no doubt in my mind that some moving image works have
creators and should be identified by the creator. Consider the case
of an
amateur student work that is written, directed, filmed, and acted in by
only one person. Or the numerous works in YouTube created by a single
person putting a video camera in front of themselves and making something
for the rest of us to see. While these types of resources might not
often
be cataloged by a library or even a film archive, there's very little
doubt in my mind that sometimes a creator is involved in the creation
of a
moving image work.
Adam Schiff
