Intertitles

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi,

 

I'm going to shoot some intertitles soon. I'm going to create them on my PC and then print them "A4"-size (for the USA: that's approx. "letter"-size) as filming paper glued to a wall is easier than filming my laptop's screen (no flicker, ...).

Now my question: How many lines of text are appropriate for Super8 (Kodak Vision3-200T)? 3? 4? Or more/less?

 

Thanks,

Jörg

 

[Marc Marti]

It depends mostly on the size of the text. I think a classic silent movie can give a lot of inspiration.

 

About filming from a screen, any modern monitor (TFT, LCD,...) is capable of outstanding results with no flicker at all. I shoot my titles this way, with 100 ASA films at around f1,8 and frame-by-frame, but you have to do some testing with your equipment.

Vision3 200T looks like a perfect candidate.

[Alan Duckworth]

The readability of the font is also a player here - a very legible font such as Arial [aka Helvetica] can be smaller - therefore more lines/words per title than any fancy font eg "ClownHats" [i just made that name up - I don't think it is real].

 

To me an overlooked issue is the duration of the intertitle - it should stay on the screen for twice the time it actually takes to read - remember the viewer is seeing it for the first and probably only time.

 

And, leave suficient safe area so the text doesn't bump against the edge of the frame when projected/viewed.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi, thanks for your hints. I guess that I'll simply downsize the intertitles to 400x300pixels and then try to read them on my monitor.