Film End Credits (stage 7)

Why this stage exists

A film that ends on its last shot feels unfinished; a film that ends on a social-media-style card with an avatar, colour gradients and italic type feels cheap. The convention that reads as cinema is narrow and easy to get wrong when generated ad hoc: black, white, still, spare. This stage produces it once, correctly.

What it produces

Three cards, 16:9, black background, white text, sans-serif, no italics, no avatars, no logos except the brand's own on the brand card:

Between cards: 0.3–0.5 s dip to black. Before card 1: the last shot dips to black over 0.5–1.0 s. After card 3: hold black 1 s.

Rules

• Black and white only. No gradient, no texture, no vignette, no colour. The film's palette ends with the film.
• No italics, no script fonts, no drop shadows. One weight, tracked capitals for the title, mixed case allowed for the name.
• No avatar, no photo, no social handle. A director's card is a name.
• Brand assets are real. The logo is the supplied file, composited, never redrawn from a description. Slogan text quoted exactly.
• Language is the film's language. Cards for an English film are in English. State it in the generation prompt: "all text in English."
• Stills, not motion. The cards are images; the edit adds the dissolves. Generating them as video introduces drift in the type.
• Generated from a fixed prompt. Vary only the words. The layout prompt is reused across films so every film in a series closes the same way.

Prompts

Title card:

Cinema end-title card, 16:9, pure black background, the words "THE WICK" centred in white, tracked capitals, clean geometric sans-serif, single weight, no italics, no decoration, no texture, no gradient, no logo, no other text. All text in English.

Director card:

Cinema credit card, 16:9, pure black background, two centred lines in white: "DIRECTED BY" in small tracked capitals, then "LYSON OBER" below in larger tracked capitals, clean geometric sans-serif, single weight, no italics, no decoration, no photo, no avatar, no other text. All text in English.

Brand card (logo supplied as an image reference):

Cinema closing brand card, 16:9, pure black background, the exact logo from the reference image centred in the upper third at moderate size, unchanged, and beneath it one line in white: "Give your world its first heartbeat." clean geometric sans-serif, no italics, no decoration, no other text. All text in English.

Generate each with gpt-image-2, quality high, 2048×1152. Reject any card with colour, italics, an avatar, a redrawn logo, non-English text or extra words.

Assembly

# 3.5 s per card, 0.4 s dips, black tail
ffmpeg -y -loop 1 -t 3.5 -i title.png -loop 1 -t 3.5 -i director.png -loop 1 -t 3.5 -i brand.png \
  -filter_complex "[0]fade=t=in:st=0:d=0.4,fade=t=out:st=3.1:d=0.4[a];[1]fade=t=in:st=0:d=0.4,fade=t=out:st=3.1:d=0.4[b];[2]fade=t=in:st=0:d=0.4,fade=t=out:st=3.1:d=0.4[c];[a][b][c]concat=n=3:v=1:a=0,tpad=stop_mode=clone:stop_duration=1[v]" \
  -map "[v]" -r 24 -pix_fmt yuv420p credits.mp4

The film's final shot gets fade=t=out:d=0.8 before concatenation with credits.mp4. Music from the audio pass may continue under the cards and resolve on the brand card; no new cue begins here.

Output

films/<slug>/credits/{title,director,brand}.png, films/<slug>/credits/credits.mp4, and a line in continuity.md recording the title and director as shown.