The ending of a film is the last impression that the audience will have of your story, characters, and message. Therefore, it is crucial to craft a powerful ending that reinforces the film's theme and leaves a lasting impact. In this article, we will explore some techniques to create a memorable and meaningful finale for your film.
One technique to create a powerful ending is to echo the beginning of your film in some way. This can create a sense of symmetry, closure, or contrast, depending on how you use it. For example, you can show how the main character has changed or not changed since the start of their journey, or how the world around them has evolved or remained the same. You can also use visual, auditory, or verbal cues to remind the audience of the opening scene and connect it to the final one. This can help you reinforce the theme of your film by showing its full arc and implications.
Always go for a strong out. Not just for a film but if you are shooting a talking head video make sure the end is punchy you don't want a good speaker to just tail off. Produce the speaker up to end on a cogent powerful point.
I'm a fan of leaving the film with a new beginning. Our hero has gone through a transformation and they can now have access to a new adventure.
A superb example in my book is TOOTSIE. Ending the scene which has a couple of beautiful thematic wrap-up moments, including the line "I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was with a woman as a man" is the lovely payoff as betrayal and hurt are acknowledged and forgiven and a future built on all that has been good in the relationship - achieved with "Will you loan me that little yellow outfit?"
Another technique to create a powerful ending is to use a twist or a reveal that surprises the audience and makes them rethink the whole film. This can be a plot twist, a character revelation, a moral dilemma, or a thematic statement that challenges or confirms the audience's expectations and assumptions. However, you have to be careful not to make the twist or reveal too arbitrary, illogical, or inconsistent with the rest of the film. It has to be foreshadowed, justified, and coherent with the theme of your film, otherwise it will feel like a cheap trick or a cop-out.
Ah! The famous 'twist' that all writers love! The key to the twist is for it to follow both emotionally and logically from the rest of the film. For example, in 'Game of Thrones' Robb Stark makes a vow to marry a Frey girl, but he breaks the vow, and he is ultimately punished at the Red Wedding. However, logic is not enough. What made the twist effective is that it follows directly from his character's flaw: just like his father, he followed blindly the rules of honor and justice. The characters, just like us, are sometimes blind to how the world operates, and the twists in our lives come when we are shockingly confronted with the reality of the world. The twist should break and transform the character's perception on something.
Twists, often seen as the Holy Grail in scriptwriting, can, in reality, be double-edged swords. While they can captivate, if misused, they can distort the narrative essence. Great films like Midnight Cowboy and When Harry Met Sally showcase twists as life lessons rather than mere plot tools. They’re meticulously placed, not necessarily at the end, echoing life's unpredictability and the narrative's thematic core. In Midnight Cowboy, Ratso's demise paves the way for Joe's rebirth, a merciless yet profound twist. Twists should emanate organically from the narrative, serving the theme rather than mere shock value, thus transcending conventional scriptwriting paradigms.
The choice of music can be a powerful tool to reinforce the theme. The music can intensify emotions and thoughts related to the theme and also Leave some questions unanswered or issues unresolved, encouraging the audience to continue thinking about the theme long after the film ends. Ensure that the ending not only summarizes the theme but also elicits a strong emotional response or thoughtful reflection, leaving a lasting impression on the audience. The effectiveness of these techniques will depend on the specific film and its thematic content.
A third technique to create a powerful ending is to end with a question or a cliffhanger that leaves the audience wondering what happens next or what the film means. This can be a literal question, such as a character asking another character or themselves something important or unresolved, or a figurative question, such as a symbolic image, a metaphor, or a gesture that implies something ambiguous or open-ended. You can also end with a cliffhanger, such as a sudden cut, a shock, a threat, or a tease that implies that the story is not over yet or that there is more to come. This can help you reinforce the theme of your film by engaging the audience's curiosity, imagination, and interpretation.
Indeterminate ending may help. It gives the audience divert rooms to reflect on the facts and opinions presented in a film and to use these elements to question the themes. For example, a theme on feminism may come with facts and opinions around traditional systems and the 21st century modernisation. A filmmaker, not on an advocacy campaign, may choose not to draw any conclusion in their work but allow their key characters to experience some pros and cons for choosing between the traditional and 21st century approaches to feminism, instead of presenting a straight-forward happy or sad ending in the film. This kind of approach can always draw attention to the said theme.
I love to see a movie with a great ironic meaning. It’s a difficult ending to write, but it has the most profound meaning for the audience and I love it when I feel that ah ha moment like in the movie sixth sense. When I realized the doctor was a ghost, my mind went racing all the way back to the beginning of the film, working to figure it out how I missed it.
A fourth technique to create a powerful ending is to use a callback or a payoff that rewards the audience for paying attention and following the film. A callback is a reference to something that happened earlier in the film, such as a joke, a line, a prop, or a situation that is repeated or revisited in the ending. A payoff is a resolution or a consequence of something that was set up earlier in the film, such as a promise, a goal, a conflict, or a mystery that is fulfilled or revealed in the ending. Both techniques can help you reinforce the theme of your film by creating a sense of satisfaction, continuity, and coherence.
Motifs, motifs, motifs. Make it connect to your overall theme, and make its meaning evolve just as your characters should have. Circular storytelling has tremendous staying power and they are amplified with beautiful, vivid motifs.
All drama must have a great payoff. The audience is along for the ride to see what happens to the characters. If it's well written, they will care about the characters, so the ending must be a big payoff. Do they Die? Do they save the Day? Do they live happily ever after? Those answers depend on the story being told, but they should always payoff based on the events earlier in the story. Never write about Part A, then B, then C. No, It must be, Part A (first Act setup), then because of that B happens, and their actions and decisions in response lead to Part C (The conclusion and Payoff).
A fifth technique to create a powerful ending is to subvert or invert the genre conventions and expectations of your film. This means that you deliberately go against or flip the typical or clichéd endings that are associated with your genre, such as a happy ending, a tragic ending, a twist ending, or a moral ending. For example, you can make a comedy end with a tragedy, a horror end with a comedy, a thriller end with a mystery, or a drama end with a satire. This can help you reinforce the theme of your film by making a statement, a critique, or a commentary on the genre itself or on the broader issues that it represents.
If your story is set up as belonging to one genre, then you can subvert the expectations and change the genre at the end. Take 'Get Out' for example, it starts out as a family drama, only to flourish into horror, and by the end it is a social satire. Or take 'Mulholland Drive' that starts out as a thriller/detective story only to transform into a tragic romance between two women. It is all about playing with the expectations of the audience: they think they are watching one thing, only to subvert their expectations and offer them another thing.
Subversion of plot or genre reversal can be a powerful way to make memorable films. When looking at classic or "the greatest films of all time" consider the mashup of genres or how the style of film changes. Apart from the obvious benefits of polarising the direction or tone of the film with genre change is that it is not just ONE thing that changes. The entire context of the story then changes - meaning and a whole new range of feelings can be created and expectations change fluidly.
A sixth technique to create a powerful ending is to make it personal and emotional for the audience and the characters. This means that you focus on the emotional impact and the personal significance of the ending, rather than on the logical or factual details. You can do this by using music, cinematography, editing, performance, and dialogue to convey the feelings and the motivations of the characters and to elicit the emotions and the empathy of the audience. You can also use a voice-over, a narration, a letter, a diary, or a flashback to reveal the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters or to provide a personal perspective on the ending. This can help you reinforce the theme of your film by connecting it to the human experience and the universal values that it expresses.
Every good story has something rooted in a personal experience. That's why we love movies so much: they are surrogates for the possiblities of our own lives: the what if's and maybes. So when creating, create from real and intimate experiences. Translate them, change their clothing, spice them up. But at the core, your convictions and phenomenological perspective will inform a creative process that is powerful for both you and the audience.
Often times, reality tells a more powerful story than fiction ever could. Bringing your own emotions and life experiences into a story, brings a certain conviction and believability to it that would otherwise be noticeably absent. Two people can write the same tragic story, but the better story will be written by the person who lived through it and has the pain, emotions, and life experience to add an extra layer of depth and conviction. You will know when you're reading it that this person has some sort of first hand experience with the subject matter, and the story will be better because of it. Art is a beautiful medium of self-expression that can lead to healing. It is a gift to the creator and viewer, both.
Knowing whether your characters are static or dynamic from the beginning of writing will help you shape the denouement of your story. Every character has a desire and a need. Sometimes they line up, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes a character changes, and gives up what they want for what they truly need. In “Finding Nemo,” when Marlin lets Nemo go, overcoming the trauma of losing his wife (his need), it’s only after giving up on his want (searching across the ocean to find his son). And, these emotional struggles are represented by simultaneous, entertaining, physical struggle/victories — like Nemo rescuing the fish caught in the net.
Give me new endings and I’ll reinvent literature, someone quite famously said that, I do not recall who. An ending must create such a lingering effect on the audience’s subconscious, that even if they forget the film, they do remember the ending, just like I forgot who said it, but I remembered this saying, in other words, it must ‘speak’ to you - personally - and echo that feeling to the larger universe! For that to happen, a ‘connect’ has to be established early on in the narrative, audience must invest themselves to the point of atom in ‘that’ - which can be the story or the character or both and then before the end, a dip must set their hearts ablaze before it’s quenched by ‘that something’ which audience was searching, like - Rosebud