When Does a Movie “End,” Exactly?

Welcome to The Queue — your each day distraction of curated video content material sourced from throughout the net. Right this moment, we’re watching a video essay that appears at one thing all of us take for credit score: the place motion pictures finish.

To not via an ontological wrench into your innocent moviegoing expertise, however when does a film finish?

Frequent sense would dictate {that a} film ends when the credit roll. The story is over as soon as that laundry listing of hard-working filmmakers begins to crawl its method down the display screen, proper? Properly, not all the time. As with all issues price discussing, it’s slightly messier than that.

First, let’s strategy the query from a distinct angle. The matter of when a film begins can also be debatable. There’s a lengthy and storied custom of filmmakers utilizing opening title credit and even studio logos to set the temper, introduce musical and visible themes, and even get the plot rolling. The identical, albeit to a lesser extent, may be mentioned of a movie’s finish credit. Whereas finish credit are inclined to carry out the pragmatic operate of letting impatient moviegoers know that they’re welcome to stand up and go away, some closing sequences blur the road between the place paratext begins and the narrative stops.

There are extra apparent examples of finish credit that also “rely” as a part of the film: compelling graphical decisions, fourth-wall-breaking stingers, blooper reels, and epilogues. And there’s additionally a case to be made that even essentially the most minimalist credit — the onerous proof that these individuals made this film — must be thought of as an integral a part of a movie, not simply the inexperienced flag to hurry out of a theater. Because it seems, “when does a film finish?” is mostly a query with a number of solutions. A few of that are eloquently supplied within the video essay under …

Watch “The End … or is it?”:

Who made this?

This video essay on when a film ends, precisely, is by Mathias Korsgaard, whose scant Vimeo presence you’ll be able to try right here.

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Meg Shields is the standard farm boy of your goals and a senior contributor at Movie Faculty Rejects. She presently runs three columns at FSR: The Queue, How’d They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She can also be a curator for One Good Shot and a contract author for rent. Meg may be discovered screaming about John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ on Twitter right here: @TheWorstNun. (She/Her).