Fade out

1. The picture fades into blackness while the sound softens evenly, sometimes into silence. Especially in the middle of a story music often continues after the picture fades out, and it is faded into new music or sounds.
   
   Narrative fade out usually ends a sequence (or scene), after which there is a short black break suggesting that there is a rather long change of real time into the next scene (cf. dissolve).
   
   
2. Fade out is a short, relaxing phase just before the final texts. In the fade out the protagonist is returned to the normal, away from the battle scene or the turmoil of emotions.

According to the Swedish film dramaturgist Ola Olsson, the drama structure of a fiction film has six parts:

• start-up sequence
• presentation
• amplifying
• culmination of conflicts (acceleration)
• resolution
• fade out

See also: Structure