On the other hand, you have the practical business of patron safety. As much as we movie mogul type might sit glued to our seats until the last frame of the film, most folk choose to use that credit crawl time to get their butts out of the theatre. Obviously you can't say, well, the film is still running so you are on your own....if you trip and break a leg, too bad, you should have stayed in your seat until the end of the credits. Well, you can say that, but it won't play well with the jury in the "I've fallen and I can't get up and it's the theatre's fault" civil lawsuit that will inevitably flow from an all-lights-out-till-the-last-frame policy. Obviously this is not the solution. You need to bring the house up at least enough so that people are not tripping over themselves.

If one is lucky enough to work in a well designed theatre, the house lighting system will be able to go to a "credits" preset. This is where lighting over the isles can play at a higher level than the seating area and without throwing light on the stage/screen area. This allows people who do want to sit and watch the entire credit crawl, not be distracted by excessive light on them or on the screen. Of course, that's in a perfect world. Most systems have dimmers that simply bring everything up uniformly, or won't allow for a variety of presets. I've been spoiled because all the theatres I've worked in also are live performance spaces and thus have fairly sophistocated lighting systems that you can pretty much set to do anything you want.
In our Cantor Theatre [pictures soon to be posted, right Brad ] we have five settings: FULL, 1/2 HOUSE, CREDITS, SHOW and LECTURE, plus an infinate number of selectable presets that can be customized and assigned to additional buttons if needed. The CREDITS position is just that -- a setting for the credits that brings light up in the isles, just enough for the escapees, while keeping the lights over the audience and stage dim.

Where you don't have those kinds of systems, then I would suggest the best thing to do would be to bring up the lights as high as you need them so that people can see their way out of the theatre safely. You don't what to be named in that lawsuit, stuttering and stammering in the witness chair.

Frank

PS -- Whatever you do, don't use what you see them doing in the multiplexes as a guide to what's the correct thing to do in any aspect of cinema operation.

So, for example, "I am sam" will be projected with no light until children's drawing are shown. Me Myself and Irene until "bad ciaks" will over.

Unfortunately most of the audiences are not interested in meanless credits. So, for example, while the beautiful landscapes of "twister" are shown most of people start rising and people that are watching the images cannot see them anymore.

So in that cases, I'm "forced" to turn on the light after the "directed by" tag.

However also with black titles I usually raise lights after few seconds the "directed by".

Many many theaters in Florence raise light almost before the credits...

I remember Star Wars episode one. One theater turned on the lights while the screen faded with the "circle" (that discovers the "directed by george lucas")...

Same theater turned on the light on Harry Potter WHILE the last image was fading WHILE the orchestra completed the "tutti"...

Terrible.

Only once I tried to keep the light off during "static" credits: customers while were tring to exit, said "why dark?? perhaps lights has gone??"

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

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There are also movies with outtakes during some or all of the credits. Now ideally it would be great to hold off on bringing up the lights until the outtakes are over. But it's a judgment call, since some people will want to leave anyway and might need some light to see where they're going.

Paul makes a good point. Some movies (not very many) do affect the audience in a way the causes many to sit through the credits and ponder what they have just seen. Staff should take this into consideration.

We raise the lights to this level for the credits only after they have established themselves, and this varies according to each movie. Sometimes there's a change in the music, or some picture credits will end, or perhaps static credits turn into rolling credits.

John Wilson's new procedure(tm) is to cue the print at the very start of the credits, then set a delay time on the automation for however long we like until we want the lights to come up. This delay time can be determined with a stopwatch during the first screening. This also has the benefit of standardising print makeup, and allows 'fine tuning' of 'lights up' without touching the cue on the print. Absolutely brilliant, methinks!

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As John pointed out, it is a safety issue.

Paul has a good point with leaving the lights low on films that may have affected people. I (and the other projectionists) did that with We Were Soldiers. People do notice that as someone thanked the projectionist working on leaving the lights low.

My manager is always tells us to bring the lights up so the cleaners can get in and do their job when the showing is very crowded. I suppose he can make a good arguement also.

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The realities are that sometimes cleaning crews have to come in during credits if the next audience isn't going to sit in

Show schedules sometimes don't allow for sufficient down time between shows. When the number of shows per day is set by the distrib. there isn't much you can do.

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