🎬 #192 The Importance of End Credits.
What seems like just a practical acknowledgment of everyone who put their hard graft into the making of a film - also, for me, function as an important, impermeable barrier between film world and real world.
Please enjoy
Bry
Kyle Cooper’s design for the Seven end titles are one of the most cited, because they are beautiful - they round out the story, running in reverse order to how usual titles are laid out. Reflecting the chaos and horrific logic of the film you’ve just seen. But no matter what the end titles look like, they don’t all have to be as masterful as Cooper’s work, they serve a critical function. The opening and end credits especially serve as a boundary between the world outside and the world that envelops you when you’re deeply submerged in a film. Like an anaesthesiologist dialling in the various compounds that control our consciousness, the titles bring us into a different state of mind, ready to accept what we’re about to watch. Our consciousness is primed for story - just like hypnotists count us in and out of our altered consciousness. Even the various production company logos serve this purpose. We know what they mean and even if we’re not aware - they shift us gently into film mode.
Maybe even more importantly, end credits/titles gently guide us back to the surface of reality. After being taken on journey, they give us time to readjust, to let everything we’ve just seen and felt sink in properly. To let us emotionally come out of that space. Even the classic movement of the title gives a trance-like effect, or anti-trance effect, taking us out of the spell, who’s cast who’ve just been under. Cleansing our eyes and heads from all the visual and emotional stimulation. It makes me sad, when you’re watching films on a lot of streaming platforms - that they’re so keen to interrupt this important time to serve us another film / show we might want to watch. Totally disrupting the function of the credits. It’s discombobulating and takes away from the power of what we’ve just seen, not giving our minds time to come to terms with the story we’ve just been invested in. It’s the equivalent of someone turning all the lights on and cutting the end credits short in the cinema. I’d love to see the end titles in particular getting the respect they deserve.
Imagine watching The Zone of Interest and coming straight back to reality, or Come and See. Two films in particular that benefit from that all important buffer between film and real life - where the full scope of what has just been experienced can bubble up gently.