Every summer, theatres across the country are filled with big blockbuster movies and part of the draw is the parade of mind-blowing special effects. Also mind-blowing, perhaps, are the budgets of these movies.

These kinds of special effects involve scores of technical specialists and a laborious process that is well beyond the scope of most lower budget or indie film projects. But that doesn’t mean motion graphics and special effects will be absent entirely from your project. Almost every film has titles and, at the very least, uses basic special effects technology to enhance selected shots or to fix problems.

If you’ve taken a look at the effects available to you in your editing software, you’ll probably find an alarmingly large list. But many of these effects are very specific and won’t be that useful to you. In this chapter, we’ll cover the visual effects tools that you’ll use the most: titling, motion effects, and basic compositing (mattes and keys). We’ll also show you how to integrate still images into your project, how to handle mixing SD and HD footage, and how to fix basic image problems using the special effects tools available in your editing application.

Titles

Although your production might not need fancy special effects such as 3D-rendered dinosaurs or complicated composites and morphs, it probably will need a title sequence at the beginning and a credit roll at the end. If you’re shooting a documentary, you might also need to use titles to identify interviewees and locations.

Most editing packages include titling functions that let you superimpose simple text titles over your images. Some packages include more advanced functions such as rolls and animated text. Your editing program’s manual should cover everything you need to know to use the built-in title tools. No matter what software you use, there are several things to keep in mind when building your titles.

Title Titles

As with everything else related to filmmaking, there are a whole bunch of terms related to titling. Whether you use these terms or not is up to you.

nTitle card: A non-moving title.

nMain title: The title card featuring the name of the film.

nOpening credits (or head credits): The typical series of title cards that fade in and out at the beginning of a movie. Typically, opening credits follow (roughly) this order: studio or production company, sometimes a producer, main title, lead actors, casting, music, music supervisor, costumes and makeup, designer, director of photography, editor, executive producer(s), producer(s), writer, director.

nEnd credits (or tail credits): The credits at the end of a movie. Typically, if a movie skipped opening credits, it will present the opening credit information in reverse order as end credits, before going on to a normal end credit roll.

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Title Titles (continued)

nTitle roll: A long list of titles that scrolls from the bottom of the screen to the top. Usually used for end credits. A very efficient way of presenting titles, as every name is on-screen for the same duration.

nTitle crawl: A line of titles that moves horizontally across the screen, usually at the bottom. Used more in television.

nSupers (or super’d): Titles that are superimposed over other video.

nLower thirds: Titles that fit into the lower third of the frame. Usually credits identifying a speaker, such as you might use in a documentary. Also called “Chyrons.”

nPad: A colored background or stripe behind a lower-third title. Pads improve a title’s legibility.

nTextless version: A version of your project with no titles. These are almost always necessary for foreign distribution.

Choosing Your Typeface and Size

You’ll need to consider the final goal of your project when choosing the typeface (or font) and the size of the text for your titles. These days, there are so many typefaces available that choosing the typeface is an art in and of itself. Experienced title designers often mix and match different typefaces, for example, if they prefer the question mark symbol from a different typeface or a different capital letter. Having the knowledge of the many different typefaces out there is a huge asset, and if you don’t have that knowledge, plan on some time doing research.

If it’s meant to be projected, you can choose a smaller size, but always keep in mind that many people will watch your project on a video monitor or as streaming video on the Web, which means you’ll need to make sure the titles are large enough to read on a small screen or if they are highly compressed.

When creating titles that will play over video, be certain that the typeface you choose is readable throughout the clip. Fast-moving images with lots of clutter will make smaller, finer-lined typefaces more difficult to read.

When choosing a type size, legibility should be your first concern. At small sizes, some typefaces will be more legible than others, but in general, anything below 20 points will be too small (see Figure 17.1).

Installing Fonts

If you find a typeface you like but don’t own, you’ll have to install it on your computer before you launch your editing software.

Figure 17.1

Be sure to consider both legibility and composition when creating titles.

Ordering Your Titles

If you’re working with union actors, their contract might specify where their name must appear in the title sequence. Similarly, credit position might have been stipulated from a “producer” when you talked him (or her) out of some funding. Be sure to consider all of these agreements and obligations when ordering and creating your titles.

Start with a Text File

If you have a long list of titles, such as lower thirds for a feature-length documentary, subtitles for an entire film (or even just a scene or two), or a long credit list, use a word processing program to create the list of titles, and be sure they are proofread and error-free before you start creating graphic titles. You can easily cut and paste them into your title tool when you’re ready to create your graphics.

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Coloring Your Titles

The simplest choice is to put white text over a black screen, but if you want to do something more colorful than that, or if you are planning to superimpose your titles over moving images, text color choice is critical. First, finding a color that contrasts enough with your background can be difficult. If the video you’re superimposing over is changing a lot, then finding a color will be even more difficult.

Your first impulse will be to go for really saturated colors, but remember that heavily saturated colors might bleed. It’s safest to stick with a Web safe color. If your project is intended for broadcast television, it’s still best to stick with NTSC safe colors even though your footage might be HD. (We discussed safe colors in Chapter 16, “Color Correction.”)

If you’ve got a really busy or really colorful background, your best way of making your text more visible is to add a drop shadow or an edge. A drop shadow will place a light border behind the text to separate it from the background, while an edge will simply stroke all of the edges of your text with a specific color. Both of these techniques make text much more readable (refer to Figure 17.1).

Be certain to watch the entire clip that your title is superimposed over, and make certain that the text is legible throughout the entire clip. Although a blue title might look great at the beginning of a clip, make sure there are no blue, title-obscuring objects moving through the frame later in the clip.

Placing Your Titles

If you’re planning on superimposing your titles over video, you’ll want to give some thought to their placement, not just for the sake of readability, but for good composition as well. Hopefully, you shot the underlying videos with titles in mind. Although titles might sit on top of an image, they should not be thought of as separate. Be sure to consider the composition of the entire image—titles and video—when placing your graphics. If your titles are going to move about the screen, make sure they are readable across all action over which they are superimposed.

Legible titles don’t really do any good if the viewer doesn’t have time to read them. A good rule of thumb is to leave the title up long enough for you to read it two times aloud. Usually, this means two to four seconds for each page, not including fades in or out. Even if you read fast, the title will probably be up long enough for most people to read it.

In general, pay close attention to the pacing of your opening title sequence. Remember: this is the beginning of your presentation and it is a chance for you to set an initial tone for your story. If you have already presented a “prelude” before the credits, your title sequence can function as a dramatic beat to prolong what has come before. Although you don’t want to bore the audience with a long title sequence, if the beginning of your story is somewhat somber, a slower title sequence might be just the thing to bring your audience down to a more receptive pace. Titles can serve as another beat in your storytelling process, so give them some thought.