The Art Of The Title Sequence
Stylish opening titles-even if it's only ten seconds long with your name and the name of your YouTube clip-can do much to set the mood of the video, and when properly executed, add an immediate air of professionalism. The reverse is true as well. Create an amateurish-looking title sequence and your project immediately is off on the wrong foot with your viewers. So let's take a brief look at what to do-and what not to do-when it comes to video titling.
In the film industry, there are two main approaches to titles. The James Bond movies and Alfred Hitchcock's later films begin with stunning, expensive title sequences. In contrast, Woody Allen is famous for his clean and stark movie titles, which almost invariably feature nothing more than white text on a black background, which he began using as a reaction to those expensive Hollywood opening titles.
But of course prior to video-and in particular, modern-day video software-everything had to be painstakingly crafted by hand and assembled with an optical printer. While the minimalistic titles that Woody prefers can work fine with the right project, there's no need to limit yourself to them. So let's look at some simple, but creative techniques for better titles.
Judging by what's on YouTube, most video editing programs default to a sans-serif font such as Helvetica or Arial, with no outline or drop shadow. And it's tough to get much duller than that. Title cards that look like this are often a dead giveaway of a newbie at work:
(Click to enlarge)Between products such as Digital Juice's stylish font collections and even the myriad of default fonts available for use with typical video software, there are seemingly infinite potential font choices. Ultimately, two main rules apply, which helps to narrow things down:
1. Make sure the font is readable on screen.
2. Make sure the font is thematically appropriate for the subject matter.
In Hollywood, a sensitive love story set in the 18th century will likely use a different title font than a hard-hitting war movie. Similarly, a wedding video should likely use different fonts-at least for the actual title of the production-than a film documenting kids pulling off gnarly skateboarding action. What would both of those productions look like with the wrong fonts? Probably like this:
(Click to enlarge)As with matching the title fonts to the subject matter, the audiences watching your videos have a lifetime of conditioning from watching movies and TV, and they bring with them informal rules about titles and compositions.
(Click to enlarge)The project's title is typically large and centered onscreen. The lower third of the screen (with or without a separate "Lower Third" anchoring graphic underneath the text) is useful for naming persons or locations. Reversing those conventions can lead to definite audience confusion about what-and who-they're watching.
Speaking of shot composition, don't forget to check credits against the safe area of the screen. This is less crucial for Internet video, where you often have control over how viewers will see the video. But the vagaries of broadcast television, not the least of which is the variable quality of televisions of the viewers at home, demand checking titles against the video safe area. Most video-editing programs will generate optional safe area reference lines that look like this:
(Click to enlarge)There are typically two lines shown, Title Safe, and Action Safe. Action Safe is the wider of the two, and represents the theoretical limit of most consumer televisions' overscan amount. Experienced TV camera operators are trained to avoid having any important action in these areas, for fear of having it cut off an older TV set. The Title Safe area is even smaller, and it helps to sure that a presentation on TV doesn't appear with a title such as:
(Click to enlarge)If there's any chance your video might eventually wind up being viewed on a consumer television (as opposed to an embedded clip viewed on a computer monitor), it's best to make sure the text in your main title sequence fit comfortably with the safe areas.
