Question on endings

[Blast Doors]

Hey all. I've got a quick question regarding a little-used technique at the end of films - the textual explanation.

As an example, in the film 'Stand and Deliver,' there's quite a few text passages on the last shot explaining the effects of the teacher on his students over the years after the events portrayed in the film. This technique is also used often in crime stories to reveal how much time the criminal had to serve, where the victim currently resides, etc.

My question is, how does one write this into a script? Would it be as simple as WHITE TEXT ON BLACK, followed underneath by the text?

[wcmartell]

"White text on black" is... directing!

Just say...

SUPERED:

Bluto was elected Senator of California in 1984, but lost re-election due to a scandle involving Oakland Raiders cheerleaders...

(let the director decide the color of type and background color... don't worry, it'll still end up white on black.)

But... when was the last time you saw this used? STAND AND DELIVER is a true story, so they were giving information about what really happened after the story took place.

Make sure you're using it for good reasons, not just as an easy way out or because your script really didn't have an end. It's going to be unusual so you want to make sure the reasons for doing it outweigh its "weirdness".

- Bill

[TinaRM]

I think I saw this type of ending in The Green Mile. The problem was that they should have used Black on White because some of the words were hard to read against the background of the scene at the end of the movie.

Nothing is more irritating than not being able to read something - leaves you wondering....what happened? Or nudging the guy next to you, "What did that say?"

Actually, I could probably think of a few things more irritating than that....shall we even go there? Nay!


Tina

[PteranoDon]

I hate going to the movies and having to read. The only exception is if it's a true story, and if something else happened that I might like to know but wasn't big enough to do a scene with.

[Couchguy]

THE GREEN MILE and ANNA AND THE KING both used titles at the end to wrap things up. Schindler's List used titles at the end as well. So it's obviously not taboo. Still, I agree with the previous post...tread cautiously.

Your pal,
Couchguy