A fairly niche topic I'll grant you, but I stumbled across this on YouTube
The credits include "Script Associate: Neil Shand", a credit that I always thought was a synonym for writer on shows that wanted to pretend to be spontaneous and unscripted or pretend that the star was doing all their own material.
So why would Shand also be credited under "Written by"? (I know these days creding the same person twice is not the done thing). And why would Script Associate be before Written by in the credits list?
Pretty sure there may be a difference between Writer and Script Associate.
The writer(s) writes the material for the show, all the gags and what have you, and I dare say the script associate writes the script that dictates how the show flows, its not like the later Back To The Front series which was purely stand up, the above had other elements in it.
The credits include "Script Associate: Neil Shand", a credit that I always thought was a synonym for writer on shows that wanted to pretend to be spontaneous and unscripted or pretend that the star was doing all their own material.
So why would Shand also be credited under "Written by"? (I know these days creding the same person twice is not the done thing). And why would Script Associate be before Written by in the credits list?
I think it's pretty much a synonym for "Script Editor". I had the end of an old Carrott Confidential on an old tape and as it was the last in the series Jasper said a special thanks to "Neil Shand and the band".
As suggested above, Shand presumably commissioned the other writers and helped with all the linking material. I remember reading about how they did The Frost Report, Antony Jay and Frost would write Frost's links and then the rest of the writing team would contribute sketches around that.
Think it probably proves there are more people behind the scenes than the credits let on sometimes. Even something credited to a single writer probably has other people who do the other writing as part of the production - ie Carrott most certainly did the stand up comedy material (as that's what he was known for at the time even though he never started out with that intention) but the precorded material in the linked video is probably somebody else's work and somebody else probably did the shooting scripts and whatever else.
I suspect if we could see the amount of paper that TV and film rattle through just to produce a series of something one could visually see the tree being chopped down
It looks like Neil Shand co-wrote Carrotts material and also wrote one or more of the sketches too. The former he's down as 'associate' the latter as writer.
Script or Programme associate as has been said is usually a term for writer when they don't want to call them a writer for whatever reason. A good example is I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue where Iain Pattinson has been 'Programme Associate' for about 30 years even though he's written the chairman's script for almost every episode in that time
"Dawn French supplied by Saunders and French Productions" was one that I never got my head around. Rik Mayall was never supplied by Rik and Ade, nor was Victoria Wood supplied by Wood and Walters.
"Dawn French supplied by Saunders and French Productions" was one that I never got my head around. Rik Mayall was never supplied by Rik and Ade, nor was Victoria Wood supplied by Wood and Walters.
What's not to understand? French was contracted to her own company and therefore it got a credit whenever she did something that wasn't produced by Saunders and French Productions Ltd. The company took the fee and paid Dawn.
Little Britain had a "With Thanks to Pozzitive Television" credit for supplying Geoff Posner as producer.
The old BBC convention of only crediting the Senior Camera operator still seems to apply now even though working as a distinct crew doesn't really happen so much.
Should "Developed for Television by..." be treated as same as "Created by..."? I get the impression that "Created by..." refers to someone who created a new show with an entirely new concept (like plot, characters, etc.), where as "Developed for Television by..." refers to those who helped adaptating an existing concept into a new TV show.
