Personally, I like to let the credits establish themselves first, then bring the lights up to a low preset. I have also on certain occasions, gone back and moved the cue if I find a better spot for the lights to come up after I've run it.

I enjoy the credits also and used to leave the lights down until the curtains touched. (Ahhh...curtains...)

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In theaters which have only one dimmer pack I prefer to at least go in and slow the dim rate a bit to make things more smooth. Half lights during the trailers and credits are a MUST for stadium seating theaters and insurance purposes.

There is nothing more annoying to me than ceiling lights that do not extinguish all the way, as I wear glasses and the lights can reflect on my lenses which is an incredible distraction. I also cannot stand wall lights that are placed too close to the screen so that they wash out the sides of the image. Those lights should be removed completely.

Our automation uses a Center cue (Proximity) for lights up to 1/2. I HATE that! You can see it on the screen! I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to hide it. Here's what I've discovered:

1) If the end of the movie "hard cuts" to black, that's easy. The sudden darkness makes it very hard to notice if you make the cue small. Just put it on the first frame line after the "cut".

2) If the film is hard matte in FLAT, make the cues small enough to fit in the black space between frames. If your automation needs a sustained pulse put 3 or 4 of them right in a row. (Provided your automation doesn't interpret that as something else. -- My failsafe/detector (FM-35) interprets any string of cues that are less than 5 frames apart as if it were one long cue.)

3) If it's "Credits-over-picture" (I HATE that!) put your cue sideways along the frame line. If you think your fs/det will miss that, stack them as above.

As far as I know, most proximity sensors are capable of operating in the KHz range with a delay of =< 1 milisecond between pulses. A piece of 5/16 foil tape moving at 18 inches/sec is well within that range. The limiting factor is, "Can your automation pick up the pulse?"

SWAP THE WIRES! That's it. Just swap the wires coming from the cue detector into the automation.

I discussed "contrast killers" in the article I wrote for the December 1999 issue of "Film Notes for Reel People":
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/newsletters/reel/december99/pytlak.shtml

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If you really want to get rid of that center cue you might consider our QX-10 accessory. This decodes binarily the various combinations of the three cues into seven outputs. You could then use a number "5" cue (an outboard plus an inboard) an have nothing in the center. Please note, however, that this circuit works differently than the FM-35 by itself and you would lose the ability to stretch our the cues by multiple applications. If this is a major problem, we could easily modify the time constants in the QX-10. There is more on this at:
http://www.componentengineering.com/webdocs/qx10instructions.pdf