Forum:Wolf crew template
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.
Opening Post
I strongly believe that a new crew template is needed to replace {{wales crew}} for the new era we find ourselves in. After all, BBC Wales no longer produce Doctor Who, and production has changed quite a lot since 2005. Many old roles no longer exist, while many new ones have been created, and I feel that the old template is now too complex to properly handle the new credits. I wanted to use this forum to brainstorm how best to present the layout of the new template (which I plan to call {{wolf crew}}) and to recquisite feedback from others about my ideas.
Firstly, I want to look at the main categories. Currently, these are "General production staff", "Script department", "Camera and lighting department", etc. I'm thinking something like the following:
- General production staff
- Script department
- Camera and lighting department
- Sound
- Art department
- Special and visual effects
- This one will cause some issues. Discussed later
- Costume, hair and make-up
- This is a merger of the current "Costume department" and part of the "Make-up and prosthetics" categories. Looking at the recent credits, make-up is more linked to costume than to prosthetics. Prosthetics would be folded into "Special and visual effects".
- General post-production staff
- Music
- This is a new one. Currently, these are placed in the top section, but I feel they'd work better as a category in the main section. Not convinced here, though.
We also need the heavy hitters. The following are on the final page of The Star Beast's credits:
- Casting director
- Music by
- Editor
- Director of photography
- Production designer
- Costume designer
- Hair & make-up designer
- Financial controller
- Line producer
- Production executive
- Head of production
- Production executive for BBC Studios
- Executive producer for the BBC
- Commissioning editor for the BBC
Maybe I'm blind, but I don't actually see the general executive producers credited anywhere. It's very similar for Boom. I don't know how to deal with this.
We also need to look at the special and visual effects credits. Pretty much, for the specials, there are multiple effects companies credited for each episode, each for different aspects of production and sometimes with identically named credits. I would like to differentiate these companies and I feel that the best way to do this is, for episodes with multiple companies, to split the special and visual effects into it's own section at the bottom of the template with multiple columns and subheadings for each company. For stories without multiple companies, the category would take up the normal amount of space in a shared column as normal.
So far, all of this is just a rough sketch and further discussion will be needed. I just wanted somewhere to put some thoughts down and perhaps get some wider input. Bongo50 ☎ 22:08, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
Discussion
Yeah, the full on EPs aren't in the credits, you have to get them from the BBC website. I'm not sure if a new template is the way to go or just modifying the old one, but some discussion is needed at least. Najawin ☎ 22:14, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
- I definetly think that a new template is the way to go. Updating the old one is a mess. By starting from scratch, we can cut out the old and now unused variables, make the template more maintabale and reorganise things to make them work better for the modern era without having to worry about those changes rippling all the way back to the TV Movie. Are there other positions credited in official places other than the end credits? Does that make those positions uncredited? This is way messier than I was originally hoping when I began to look at it. Bongo50 ☎ 22:21, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
- The EPs are credited after the opening titles, aren't they? Aquanafrahudy 📢 🖊️ 22:35, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
- The website is pretty barren. It just has the full EPs. Najawin ☎ 22:38, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
- Aquanafrahudy, so they are. That's very helpful. In both The Star Beast and Boom, the positions credited there are:
- Executive Producer
- Producer
- Director
- Along with writer (which is in the title sequence), these are all obvious candidates for the heavy hitters section. The question then becomes whether we want any of the positions from the end of the credits sequence up here as well and, if so, how we decide who. Bongo50 ☎ 22:43, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
- Idea: all of the credits from the start of the episode go at the very top, in a similar position to EPs at the moment, like how there are multiple credits in that space on TDW 1 (using {{BTS crew}}). Then, all of the positions from the end of the credits go in the region below in the multiple-column arrangement. This seems like the least arbitrary way to do this. Bongo50 ☎ 22:47, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
- Aquanafrahudy, so they are. That's very helpful. In both The Star Beast and Boom, the positions credited there are:
- The website is pretty barren. It just has the full EPs. Najawin ☎ 22:38, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
- The EPs are credited after the opening titles, aren't they? Aquanafrahudy 📢 🖊️ 22:35, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
I like that idea – looking at the TDW page there's maybe a bit too much space in the producers section, but in this new season especially we're getting a lot of executive producers for some episodes, so something like that would work quite well. What if we had some of the last-page positions, like DOP or costume designer, appear in bold or something at the top of their respective crew sections, basically as heads of department? Something to recognise their significance without separating them so much from the rest of the credits; and then chuck the fancy-money-person types in their own mini-section.
Separately, would it be possible to add a flag to the template (either manual or automatic) for when some credits aren't displaying because they're new positions and the relevant variables still need to be added? I usually put the crew table up first thing after each episode, and I'm always paranoid that some well-meaning person right after will see it's not complete yet and redundantly add credits with inaccurate titles. Starkidsoph ☎ 12:40, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
- Okay, this is a complete list of all credits since The Star Beast, sorted into categories I think vaguely make sense. I haven't done much with the order here, it's mostly just as they come in the credits but with the major positions (shown in bold) basically folded in.
- At the very top would be Written by (up to 2), From a story by (up to 2), Executive Producer/s (up to 7), Producer, Director, Title Sequence (credited to “Painting Practice & Realtime Visualisation”), and The Meep and The Wrarth created by / The Toymaker created by, etc.
| Movement | General production staff | Camera, lighting and sound | Art department | Costume, hair and make-up |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Stunt Coordinator/s (up to 2)
|
Series Producer
|
Director of Photography
|
Production Designer
|
Costume Designer
|
| Music | Special and visual effects | Post-production | Executive |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Music by
|
|
Editor
|
For Bad Wolf
|
- The length of the lists is misleading, obviously, since no single episode contains all of them. Specifically, the italicised sections of "Special and visual effects" denote lists of crew from external effects companies that were given only in the 60th Anniversary specials – the second one is actually collated from three different companies for the three episodes.
- I'm no expert on television crews, so please do correct me on matters of placement and precedence; regarding my departure from Bongo's suggested categories, I think "Script department" is not really big enough to justify on its own, I folded "Sound" into "Camera and lighting" because it's ...camera-adjacent?, and I'm not sure about the name "Movement" but we do need stunts to go somewhere. (I'm almost tempted to propose combining it with music because of the dance number, but that really doesn't make sense from a production standpoint.)
- The obvious question at this point is whether there's a way of coding the template that could allow variables to accept lists of any length (comma-separated or similar) as values. If it were possible to program in each new variable with a preset singular and plural but no upper bound on the number of people described by it, there wouldn't have to be a whole manual update to the template every time a 15th carpenter is credited, or what have you; but I'm guessing this is not nearly as easy to do as one might wish? Starkidsoph ☎ 13:29, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
- This is incredible work and very useful. I think you make good points about "Script department" and "Sound". To be honest, as I feel that you know the current credits system better than anyone, I'm tempted to just go with your categories. Does anyone have any other thoughts on this? Regarding "Movement", perhaps "Stunts and doubles" might be a good name? Regarding automaitcally accepting lists of any length, I already have the framework to do this in {{CrewCredit}} which I plan to construct the new {{wolf crew}} from in a similar manner to {{BTS crew}}. This allows any number of people to be listed for the majority of credits using variables like |camera=, |camera2=, |camera3=, etc. as far as is needed without manual modification to the template. I plan to improve {{CrewCredit}} sligthly more to make it work with more complex credits. Bongo50 ☎ 17:46, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
- Oh, that's really good news about CrewCredit! (I'm just going to keep updating the table with minor additions from the remaining episodes this season, if that's all right? Let me know if you want me to start a new list instead.) Starkidsoph ☎ 00:19, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
- I've made some improvements to {{CrewCredit}} that will make creating the new template relatively simple from a technical standpoint. I still need to propogate these improvements back into {{BTS crew}}, but that's non-essential for now so I should be able to get to work on {{wolf crew}} as early as tomorrow. Bongo50 ☎ 21:23, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
