What are the duties of the "presenter" in a HK mov

[ewaffle]

Presenter shows up as a credit on most if not all Hong Kong movies over the past couple of decades--if not longer.

It doesn't have an equivalent credit on U. S. movies and I am at a loss regarding what the presenter does. I know that credits differ from country to country--many French films, for example, have credits for "scenario" and "dialogues" which I also haven't figured out.

Presenter could be part of the producer function, or might be some of what the distributor does. Anyone know the answer to this one?

[MrBooth]

I think "Presenter" is similar to "Executive Producer" - basically somebody who greenlights the project and signs the pay checks but doesn't have much to do with the day to day running of it.

Scenario and Dialogues are different flavours of writer, I believe

[calros]

"Presenter" is the "Executive producer-in-chief". Mr. Booth describes very well his job .

Between us, "Presenter" actually means "owner of the production company" and also deals with the distribution channels (circuits, etc.) of his movies.

[KMGor]

"Scenario" is the rough equivalent of "Story" you see sometimes in American films. Someone came up with the basic concept, in other words. I've seen that credit in older American-made films. One that pops to mind is Sunrise (well, arguably American anyway). A lot of silent films have the credit for scenario.

Dialogues is what it sounds like - they wrote dialogue.

[kenichiku]

My take on the matter is purely semantics giving mention to the managing or the main $$$ person usually being the executive producer slot (money people like their names big on print even if they only signed checks) so I second Mr Booth's definition.

You'll often times see 'Steven Spielberg presents a Joe Dante film' used as a verb in the USA but you'll rarely see 'Steven Spielberg, Presenter' committed to print. He'd alternately be known as 'executive producer'. Actually the term 'presenter' I'm not used to seeing clarifies since the title producer is such a broad one like 'developer' or 'engineer'. However I've occasionally seen: 'Presenter: Ken Russell' or 'Presenter: Harry Towers' used in past British Commonwealth media more often than anywhere else. In our context, you'll catch this phrase associated with the 'chu pin ren' title in most past HK/Taiwan indies produced by the non-majors* when their then HK based title designers who acculturated their formal English skills from the UK translates their credits.

(*) personally I've never seen 'Presenter' used as a noun associated with names like 'Runme Shaw', 'Chu Kok-Leong' or 'Raymond Chow' ever phrased as such.