Premiere Pro, one of the most popular cross-platform video editing programs today, offers a few different options for subtitling videos. In this article we’ll explain how to add subtitles or captions for a video using Premiere Pro on your Mac or PC. We’ll go over a few different methods to add subtitles in Premiere Pro.

Option 1: How to manually add subtitles to a video in Adobe Premiere Pro using the Title Tool

The most basic way to add subtitles to a video in Premiere Pro is to use the same Title Tool that you may have already used to create titles in a video. Here’s how it works:

1. In Premiere Pro, set up a sequence and place your video inside it (if you’ve already been editing, just make a duplicate version of your sequence so you have a backed up copy of it using the right click or control click… Duplicate option).

2. Use the text tool or press the letter T on your keyboard to get a cursor. Click where on the video you’d like to place the video and type out the text, just like you would for a normal title.

3. Double click on the title (subtitle) in your timeline and open up the Effect Controls tab (Shift+5 or Window… Effect Controls from the menu bar). From there, scroll down to the text options where you can adjust the font, color, size, stroke, drop shadow and other parameters to make your text more readable.

The next subtitle you create will also have these same attributes (you can also duplicate your subtitle in the timeline by pressing the Alt key on your keyboard, and dragging a copy over on your timeline if you wish to keep the exact text alignment intact).

Pros of this approach: You can customize just about every element of how your subtitles look using the Title Tool in Premiere Pro. Color, size, placement: it’s all up to you. And if you’re already familiar with using the Title Tool, this won’t be a new tool to learn how to use.

Cons of this approach: You’ll have to be pretty careful to make sure that each subtitle is placed in the same exact spot on the screen for consistency’s sake. And also you don’t have any option to import subtitles generated elsewhere with the Title Tool.

Option 2: How to add closed captions using Premiere Pro’s Captioning Tool

What is the difference between making subtitles using the Title Tool, and making captions using Premiere Pro’s official Captions option? Partly it’s how the text looks, and also partly how it function. Here is the subtitle tool on the left, and the caption tool being used on the right. (Both tools can look slightly different using their customization options, but these are examples.)

As you can see, the caption option allows you to put a black rectangle (with a user-selectable transparency level) behind your text for legibility. The normal Title Tool option gives you the choice to add drop shadows instead. Both options allow you to change the size, font, font color, and add a stroke outline around the text to improve legibility.

The other big difference in how these tools are set up is that the Captions tool is designed specifically for captioning or subtitling a continuous stream of video, rather than being for one-off titles like the Title Tool.

Here’s how to use Premiere Pro’s Captions tool:

1. Go to File… New… Captions. For the Standard, select Open Captions (which will allow you to determine the font options etc – closed captions are the television standard). Hit OK.

2. Drag that newly created Caption file on to one of your video tracks in the sequence containing your video. Next, double click on the sample caption it provides to open the Captions setting box. From there you can adjust font size, placement, color, etc, as well as length and timing. To create a second caption, simply hit the + button at the bottom of the captions window. You can also adjust the timing of a caption by dragging either end of it out in the timeline.

3. When it’s time to export your video, go to the Captions tab of the Export screen and choose the Export Option: Burn Captions Into Video. Otherwise, the captions won’t actually be exported in your final file.

Pros of this approach: It’s designed for captions so you can add a nice black box (of your own opacity choice) for legibility. Plus, since the tool is designed for subtitles, it has more features to automatically lock in title placement and so forth that the normal Title Tool doesn’t have.

Cons of this approach: There are occasionally bugs in the Captions tool since it’s newer than the Title Tool. Additionally, it can be time consuming to manually input all these captions and make sure their placement is perfect (especially if you have to add subtitles to a long video). Which is a problem that is solved by the next option:

Option 3: Use a cheap and fast third party captioning service to generate a captions file, then import it into Premiere Pro for burning the captions into the video

If you’ve got a long video (or even if you have a short video but don’t want to spend the time manually typing out the captions and placing them perfectly), you could use a third party captioning tool to spit out a timed transcript and then import that into Adobe PPro using its Captions tool.

Here’s how it works: A service like Rev.com can generate English captions for as little as $1/minute so a 5 minute video would cost you only $5 which is a pretty affordable rate.

Here’s how to use Rev subtitles with Premiere Pro:

1. Go to Rev.com and choose the Captions option. Upload your video (as an .mov, .mp4 or whatever file format you have) and enter your payment information. For caption format choice, choose .SRT:

2. Ater Rev emails you the subtitle file (which could take a few hours or as much as a day), import the .SRT file into Premiere Pro and drag it on top of your video in your sequence, just as you would with a Caption file. You may have to adjust the timing of the first title by dragging the full captions track over a bit, but the rest of the captions should stay synced as long as you’re moving them all together.

If you would like to change the text size, etc of all your captions at once, simply go to the Captions window and select the first caption, hold down the Shift button, and scroll to the last caption and click to select it. This should select all your captions at once, and you can now adjust the font parameters and so forth.

3. When it’s time to export your video, go to the Captions tab of the Export screen and choose the Export Option: Burn Captions Into Video. Otherwise, the captions won’t actually be exported in your final file.

Pros of this approach: Extremely efficient if you have a long video you need captioned. Reduces the amount of manual work you need to do. Also has translation options for foreign language subtitling.

Cons of this approach: Costs money (an hourlong video will cost $60 at the $1/minute caption rate for English captions).

Frequently asked questions about making captions or subtitles in Premiere Pro

How does Rev work? Rev is a captioning and subtitle service that does a first pass using advanced speech to text transcription software which is then cleaned up by humans who correct errors and add punctuation as needed. You still may need to make some corrections (especially if the people speaking in your video are mentioning specialized terms or unusually spelled names), but generally Rev works as a great first pass.

If you’re importing subtitles or captions from Rev into Premier Pro, you’ll still want to watch your video with imported subtitles as a quality control pass at the very least and to double check the timing of various titles (plus to make sure the captions don’t conflict with any on-screen elements).

How do I move caption placement so it doesn’t conflict with something important happening at the bottom of the frame? In the Captions window you can select from 9 pre-defined “title safe” placements for your captions.

Can you add a drop shadow using the captions tool? Currently, as of the time of this article is published, the closest you can get to a drop shadow is adding a dark colored stroke around the edge of your text. Of course, Premiere Pro is updated several times a year and there’s no reason Adobe couldn’t add this feature later on.

See also:

10 Ways to Make Subtitle Styles More Readable

How to get audio/video transcribed – speech recognition & manual transcription programs

What does a documentary script look like? How to write a script for a documentary film

The post How to Easily Add Subtitles/Closed Captions to Video Using Adobe Premiere Pro appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

How to use notecards for story plotting

First, you’re going to need to figure out what your possible story beats are. For documentary films this might be scenes (if you’re following a particular set of characters like in a cinema verite film). Or in an issue-based film, your beats might be more along the lines of “the spot where we introduce this idea or argument.” For historical documentaries, a beat might be telling a specific part of the story, or moment.

Next, write those beats down (each on a separate notecard). Use shorthand if you need to, like “the locker room prep scene before the race,” “packing montage,” “motion graphics segment explaining Sally’s round-the-world travel route” or “Interview – Joane tells the story about finding out who her real father was.” Another notecard might be for “end credits sequence.”

Browse notecards on Amazon.

Tip: For some types of films you might want to notecards of different colors to denote different types of scenes. For instance, a blue index card might signify an interview, a white notecard might be for verite scenes, etc. Browse colored notecards on Amazon.

Next, try putting them in an order that makes sense. You might be doing this on a large empty table or you might have a big cork board with pins or on a wall with masking tape. In a way, this is almost like a re-order-able documentary paper edit.

Why notecards can be especially useful for story plotting

Now that you have your notecards written out, you can step back and read them in the order you’ve laid them out in. Do you see any possible problems with what you’ve got? Can your story do without a card or two– meaning you might be able to eliminate certain material you had earlier thought was crucial? Shorter and tighter storytelling is usually better.

The key part of using index cards or notecards for story outlines is that you can easily re-organize the story order and experiment with different orders. Using notecards allows you to conceptualize the order of exposition in your story in a way that’s much easier to capture rather than having it all in your head. Getting it down on paper may help you see problems like missing elements or better possible sequences.

As you edit your story and experiment with re-ordering scenes, you can refer to and re-order your notecards. One way to “back-up” your old note card configurations is to take a photo of their order and save it (make sure your handwriting is large enough to be legible!).

Notecards can also be useful when you’re considering a dramatic re-order of the story and want to think it through before you spend all the time and effort before you open up your editing program.

Frequently asked questions about using notecards for story outlines

When should you use notecards for story plot work?

You can use them at any stage of the process, from pre-production and research right up through editing. Some filmmakers will use notecards part-way through filming and use a certain color card to denote material they haven’t shot yet but anticipate gathering before they finish shooting.

Do you have to use index cards specifically?

No! Here are some alternatives to using notecards: In the writers rooms of television shows, writing teams will often use a white board to plot ideas and beats out with so they’re large enough for everyone in the room to see. Some storytellers use sticky notes to experiment with story beat order instead of index cards.

If you prefer to work on a computer, you might consider using a program like Scrivener (available for Mac, PC, and iOS mobile devices) which allows you to simulate a digital corkboard. Additionally you can write a script in various formats in Scrivener too. You can check out Scrivener’s features below:

See also:

What are the steps to make a documentary film? How to make a documentary

What does a documentary script look like? How to write a script for a documentary film

The post How to use notecards for story outlines (documentary filmmaking tips) appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

How to license TV news footage for a documentary film

To begin with, you’ll need to actually find the footage you want to license. Or, if you’ve already downloaded it from YouTube or recorded it off TV yourself, you’ll need permission to actually use it (or to obtain a higher quality version of it from the source). To get this you’ll first want to contact the television network’s licensing branch or archive department if they have one. Major national and international television networks sometimes have specialized repositories that are set up specifically to license footage to other organizations or documentary filmmakers. For instance, some well-known news footage archives are:

• BBC Motion Gallery
• Associated Press Archive
• NBC Universal Archives
• Getty Video

Some of these archives may have a way to search for and preview footage online, others may provide their own in-house research staff for your use (either for free or for a fee). Some services may charge for a screener download of temp footage you can use in your edit to preview how you might use it. This screener will often have a watermark or timecode burned in to discourage you from using the footage in your edit without paying a license fee.

Related: What is the difference between royalty free and rights managed stock photo/film/music licensing?

You can find many other tv news footage licensing bodies here. Not every news network has a licensing office or is “set up” to license their footage. Most local TV news stations, for instance, do not have any formal mechanism to license footage but if you contact the news director of the station they may be able to work out a licensing agreement with you.

How much does it cost to license TV news footage in a documentary film?

Licensing costs vary from outlet to outlet but here are some example costs. News outlets will often require you to license a minimum of, say, 30 seconds of footage, whether or not you’re actually using the full 30 seconds in the edit of your film. If you have to pay for 30 seconds you might end up choosing to use 15 seconds of one clip and 15 seconds of another just to get your money’s worth since you’ll be paying the same minimum license fee anyway.

Example TV news license fee for a documentary (b-roll only): $80-$100/second @ 30 second minimum = $2,400-$3,000

Licensing fees will differ based on which organization you’re trying to license footage from, and what kind of project you’re working on. If you’re working on a documentary that you want theatrical distribution rights, it might be more expensive than a licensing fee for just film festivals and DVDs/streaming on demand. An all-rights in perpetuity (no expiration) deal will cost even more.

And if the footage you want to license includes a reporter speaking or on camera, it might cost you substantially more. For instance:

Example TV news license fee for footage including a reporter: $100-$150/second @ 30 second minimum = $3,000-$4,500.

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) was famously, at the time, the most expensive documentary ever made with a budget of $6 million. A substantial amount of the film’s costs went straight to licensing the huge amounts of television news footage used in the documentary.

If all of these costs are sounding like a lot, you’re not wrong! Licensing television news footage can get quite expensive pretty fast! But there’s a loophole you might be able to use in some circumstances.

The fair use exemption in television news licensing for documentaries

US Copyright law includes a provision called fair use which provides for the use of copyrighted material without licensing it– under a specific set of special circumstances. Some documentary filmmakers have been able to exploit this loophole by editing carefully so that their use of copyrighted material (like TV news footage) falls under a fair use exemption.

Broadly speaking to use copyrighted materials in a documentary film legally under the fair use doctrine, you’ll need to do two things:

1. Make sure that your use of the material is transformative— that is to say that you’re re-contextualizing it and not just using it in the same way that the original media was used. For instance, you probably wouldn’t be able to use a clip of TV news footage reporting the facts that Nixon went to China in 1972. But you might be able to use a montage of TV news footage from 1972 in a way that comments on how his trip to China was perceived by reporters at the time (perhaps showing a bias one way or another).

2. Ideally try not to use too much of the copyrighted work, such that it eliminates the market for the original work itself. There are no hard and set rules about “using just 30 seconds for free” (please ignore anyone who says you can do that!). But judges evaluating fair use claims will generally expect you to use no more of the material than was needed to make your point.

The Center for Media & Social Impact at American University has published a fair use guide for documentary filmmakers best use practices that goes into much more detail. The guide suggests four primary fair use cases for documentary filmmakers:

ONE: Employing copyrighted material as the object of social, political, or cultural critique

This class of uses involves situations in which documentarians engage in media critique, whether of text, image, or sound works. In these cases, documentarians hold the specific copyrighted work up for critical analysis.
[…]
TWO: Quoting copyrighted works of popular culture to illustrate an argument or point
Here the concern is with material (again of whatever kind) that is quoted not because it is, in itself, the object of critique but because it aptly illustrates some argument or point that a filmmaker is developing—as clips from fiction films might be used (for example) to demonstrate changing American attitudes toward race.
[…]
THREE: Capturing copyrighted media content in the process of filming something else
Documentarians often record copyrighted sounds and images when they are filming sequences in real-life settings. Common examples are the text of a poster on a wall, music playing on a radio, and television programming heard (perhaps seen) in the background. In the context of the documentary, the incidentally captured material is an integral part of the ordinary reality being documented. Only by altering and thus falsifying the reality they film— such as telling subjects to turn off the radio, take down a poster, or turn off the TV—could documentarians avoid this.
[…]
FOUR: Using copyrighted material in a historical sequence
In many cases, the best (or even the only) effective way to tell a particular historical story or make a historical point is to make selective use of words that were spoken during the events in question, music that was associated with the events, or photographs and films that were taken at that time. In many cases, such material is available, on reasonable terms, under license. On occasion, however, the licensing system breaks down.

Be sure to check out the fair use best practices guide for documentary filmmakers for more. To actually leverage a fair use claim in a documentary that gets distributed you’ll probably want to hire an entertainment lawyer to write you a fair use justification letter which will detail each use of unlicensed copyrighted works in your film and write from a legal perspective why each one is justified. This detailed fair use letter will be helpful in obtaining errors and ommissions insurance which is often required for broadcast.

Closing thoughts & more documentary film licensing resources

Clearly, properly licensing television news footage is not as easy as just grabbing a clip from YouTube and incorporating it in your edit. In some cases, copyright can feel almost oppressive to people creating new works. And we would argue that copyright reform is sorely needed to reduce copyright term length and more clearly formalize the fair use exemption. Mandating license fee schemes take into account profit would also help indie creators (if you’re making a short documentary on YouTube and not making any money off it, does it really hurt CNN to use a clip of theirs?).

Extra resources

If you’re making a documentary film that uses substantial archival footage from television or movies however there’s another ally you should consider adding to your team. An archival researcher can help you navigate the complicated landscape of licensing and sometimes save you money overall.

There’s also a fantastic book on archival researching called Archival Storytelling: A Filmmaker’s Guide to Finding, Using, and Licensing Third-Party Visuals and Music. It’s written by archival researchers and it provides you with a wealth of information about how the process works and several resources you can use to make it go more smoothly.

Related: List: Top Books About Documentary Filmmaking

The post How to license TV news footage for a documentary: How much does TV news footage cost to license? appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

The steps to make a documentary film:

No two documentaries follow the exact same path from conception to completion but what follows below is a rough guide for the process by which many documentary films are made. Not every filmmaking process will include every step, and many films will include additional steps beyond the basic ones listed here.

Phase 1: Documentary Film Pre-production

Research & Writing – Every film starts with an idea. Sometimes for a documentary film, this might end up being quite different from the eventual finished product but documentaries often times start with a fair amount of research. That might including writing a documentary script or treatment for what you expect the film may include, and it may involve approximate hypothetical lines that you expect the people in your film to say. Many documentary filmmakers do all sorts of extensive research, much of which doesn’t actually make it into the film itself.

Pre-interviews and interviewee selection – Unless you’ve already decided to make a documentary about a specific historical or living individual, you’ll probably need to do some “casting,” or deciding who will be in your film. If it’s a doc about a particular issue, say, climate change, you might need to choose which scientists or experts you want to interview. Most documentary filmmakers end up talking with many more people than actually end up in their film. You might conduct pre-interviews where you’re doing research into both who will be enough of an expert to be in your film, but also who seems like they can talk in an engaging manner.

Simply being a subject expert is not enough to be “cast” in a documentary– you also need to be good on camera and able to speak in an understandable and engaging way that won’t confuse or put your audience to sleep. As the filmmaker or documentary film producer, you need to vet your film’s subjects and decide whether or not they’ll be good on film for the “role” you need them for. Sometimes even experts who aren’t well suited to speaking on camera (perhaps they have a stutter or they’re located in a remote location you can’t afford to travel to) can still sign on as advisors to your project which can help inform your process and answer subject area questions you encounter or give you feedback on rough cuts of the film later on.

Fundraising & building a team – Next the filmmaker will create a rough budget for what it will cost to make the film. On a super low budget doc you might be able to self-fund it, but often times you’ll need to do some documentary fundraising either through a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign or applying for media grants. There are many documentary film grant-makers but there’s also plenty of competition for their funds. Depending on the type of film you’re making you may also need to start building a team at this phase (hiring camera and sound technicians, an editor, etc). You’ll also want to secure any filming access you will need, like getting permission to film in a government building or confirming with your film’s interviewees or subjects that they’re willing to be part of your project.

Phase 2: Documentary Production Phase

Shoot interviews & follow your subjects – Depending on the type of documentary you’re doing, you may be shooting a variety of material. For a historical documentary, you might be filming re-enactments and collecting interviews with historians. For a documentary film that follows a modern day living person as they try to accomplish a goal (run a marathon for instance), you might be filming them as they train and work to accomplish their goal. Of course, you’ll want to get documentary film release forms signed from all your participants so you can legally use the footage you shoot with them.

Collect b-roll – B-Roll is the material that isn’t interviews in your film. If you’re making a film about woodworking you might want to collect lots of cool footage of people sawing wood or fitting joints into grooves or sanding rough edges or staining finished chairs. This footage will come in handy later when it’s time to piece together your interviews and other footage into telling a story. The b-roll can cover up edits that you make in your interviews and help you stitch together a visually compelling story. See our related article Creative B-Roll Ideas for Documentary Filmmakers.

Find archival materials – Not every documentary film relies on old photos or archival video but many do. If your film does, you’ll want to find, collect and digitize those materials so they’re ready for you to use in the editing process. You’ll also need to get permissions and documentation that you have those permissions from the rights holders or creators of this imagery if it’s not in the public domain or covered under the fair use loophole.

Phase 3: Documentary Post-Production

Editing – Depending on the length of your film (feature or short) your editing process might be quite long and complex or simpler. Feature length documentaries often start with a paper edit or a compilation of interview transcripts that roughly sketch out the structure of the film before any footage is actually edited. Shorter documentaries might just leap into the editing phase, making adjustments where the plan from pre-production didn’t quite match the finished results. You’ll also record any temporary and final voiceover if your documentary has narration.

Getting feedback – Almost every film, nonfiction or not, involves a substantial feedback gathering phase once there’s a rough cut ready to be shown. Just like writing a book, you’d want someone you trust to read it (and preferably lots of people) before you send it off to a publisher for consideration, filmmaking is much the same way. Documentary filmmakers will often hold rough cut screenings of a few people like subject matter experts, general audience member types and other filmmakers to help figure out what the weak or unclear parts of the film are. These days you can also send a private link to the film via email for feedback to people.

Polishing – Finally, once you’ve reached picture lock and your film is done with editing you’ll probably need to get a sound mix and color correction done to really make the film shine. If you have a film score composer they’ll also work during this stage to add custom music underneath some scenes. See our related article: How to boost film production values.

Phase 4: Documentary Distribution

Every film is unique and every film will have a unique distribution trajectory. What follows here are some examples of what the distribution phase may include, not every film will do each of these.

Submit to film festivals – This is a common step in the indie filmmaking process. Documentarians might submit their film to submission services like Film Freeway that will, for a fee, send your film to various festivals around the world. If you’re accepted to some you may attend them in person to show your film, give Q&As afterward to the audience, and sometimes meet with other filmmakers or distribution representatives from companies if there are any in attendance who are interested in your work.

Get a distribution agent to pitch your film to studios – This might be another step although not every documentary film does this.

Submit your film to broadcasters like PBS – Specifically, PBS has their POV and Independent Lens for 1 hour long stand alone docs.

Put the film online for streaming/VOD purchases – Online storefronts like Amazon, iTunes and others will allow you to market your film and sell directly to consumers.

Not every film will include all of the steps in this step by step documentary filmmaking guide, and just about every film will include other unique steps that we haven’t mentioned. But hopefully, now you have a bird’s eye view of what the documentary filmmaking process is commonly like. Browse around our website for more documentary filmmaking information.

Related:
How to write a script for a documentary film

How to boost film production values

Download documentary film release forms

Best documentary filmmaking cameras

10 Common Documentary Filmmaking Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

How to get audio/video transcribed – speech recognition & manual transcription programs

The post What are the steps to make a documentary film? How to make a documentary appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

Boosting production values isn’t just about vanity or wanting to make your doc seem “like a real movie”: it can also help your film succeed in getting selected for various film festivals or distribution. Often times programmers and distributors will only watch the first few minutes of a film before deciding to give it a chance. And starting off with a bang (or at least not obviously shoddy amateurish production values!) can be a major help to your film’s prospects.

10 Ways to boost your documentary film’s production values

Let’s get started!

1. Add some killer additional b-roll

Let’s say you already have the meat of your story down, but maybe you don’t yet have the absolute best visuals to illustrate it with. Sometimes scheduling an additional b-roll shoot or two where your only goal is to capture really great shots of the process or exterior locations and so forth can make your storytelling go the extra mile. You can also use tricks like:

• Shooting on a dolly, slider, or steadicam style stabilizers for extra smooth footage
• Using a drone or a jib/crane to get a high angle shot
• Shooting using a DSLR or other camera with a large sensor to get shallow depth of field
• Using specialized mountable tiny action cameras for a unique point of view (Related: GoPro comparison chart)

If your film is about a carpenter for instance, you might schedule an entire shoot day just to get creative angles of them putting together a piece of furniture. No interviews to stress about, just plenty of time to really nail nicely lit shots at interesting angles of them doing their work. Depending on the environment if it’s indoors, it may be worth bringing along a documentary film lighting kit to augment available light or make things look cooler.

Check out our related article Creative B-Roll Ideas for Documentary Filmmakers for more on shooting b-roll to increase your film’s production values.

2. Supplement your own footage with some slick stock footage

Of course, you may not have the time, equipment, ability or travel budget to get every shot in your documentary, and that’s where licensing stock footage comes in. Licensing some relevant stock footage or photographs to help you tell your story can help increase your film’s overall production values. Some examples of stock footage that documentary filmmakers commonly license include:

• Time lapse footage
• Drone/aerial footage shot from helicopters of various locations
• Footage of a specific location you can’t get to
• Licensed news footage (or used under the fair use doctrine for documentary filmmakers)

3. Get a killer custom soundtrack composed for your film

The purpose of music in a film’s soundtrack is to tell the audience how to feel about what is happening. Stock music really doesn’t hold a candle to custom composed songs written by a real film score composer.

Original music can is often much more subtle than stock royalty free music and it working with a good composer can really boost your production values by augmenting even scenes you wouldn’t have thought to put a bit of music under.

4. Get your film color corrected properly

Color correction makes a huge difference to make your film look more professional. As such colorists are some of the most highly paid technicians in Hollywood, often commanding day-rates well into the four figures. Even if you don’t have the money to hire them, getting your film color corrected properly with a program like DaVinci Resolve by someone who knows how to use it can be a big step up.

5. Get a professional sound mix

You knew this one was coming. Having a poor quality sound mix, often faster than anything else, can really make your work seem unprofessional. Even unsophisticated viewers notice the flaws in sound even faster than the flaws in picture quality. Which is what makes it a shame that the sound department often gets short thrift on indie films!

Sound mixing isn’t just balancing things out and adjusting the levels. Getting a great sound mix for your documentary may include:

• Sound sweetening or adding of foley sound effects for sounds that weren’t captured on location
• The addition of environmental or background sounds to certain scenes to sonically flesh them out
• ADR or re-recording of key lines that weren’t captured cleanly on location

6. Do an editing pass to clean up messy dialogue or unnecessary material

First time film editors and even more experienced editors can sometimes fall into the trap of including all the “ums” and “uhs” that their characters say, when they’re actually irrelevant. Doing a dialogue clean-up pass of editing can help polish your work and make the people in your film sound more articulate than they actually are (which helps the entire film feel smarter and “more together”). Look for any loose language or unnecessary fragments of sentences. Really be brutal and ask yourself if every part of each soundbite is necessary to tell the best version of your story. When it comes to filmmaking, tighter is usually better and trimming off the fat can sometimes do wonders for how professional a film feels.

7. Consider adding motion graphics, nice titles, or animation to help illustrate a point

Motion graphics and animation in particular can be a money pit for indie documentary filmmakers to spend their entire remaining budget on. But deployed strategically, these elements can also seriously boost the production values of a film.

Motion graphics can be deployed to explain complicated concepts or explain the history of something.

Animation can be used in lieu of archival footage where it does not exist, or to explain something complex

Nice title design differentiates professionally made films from amateurish ones by establishing a distinctive look and feel for the film’s opening and closing, credits in addition to the main title and lower thirds, labels, and interstitial titles throughout the film.

8. Start the film off with a bang

Often times film festival programmers will commit to reviewing only the first five or ten minutes of a film before rejecting most titles as not grabbing them. So starting your film off with a bang both in terms of the action that happens (an intruiging or exciting “hook”) and in terms of the quality of the first scene or two is crucial. If you have a choice between starting the film with a well-shot scene or a poorly shot scene, consider carefully whether or not you can start with the nicely shot scene.

9. Apply stabilization effects and vignettes where appropriate

Editing software like Premiere Pro has surprisingly good stabilization effects and if you’re shooting in 4K and delivering in 1080p you’ve got a lot of room to stabilize shaky or unsteady footage. This can help boost your production values. Similarly, adding vignettes around archival imagery or historical sequences can add an extra bit of “sheen” and “sparkle” to your film.

10. Use archival footage and photographs when appropriate, at the highest resolution possible

Great and unqiue archival footage and photographs either from your film subject’s own lives or general historic archival imagery and footage can help illustrate history and set the mood for your story.

Related:

How to Make a Low Budget Documentary Film – 10 Tips

Creative B-Roll Ideas for Documentary Filmmakers

10 Common Documentary Filmmaking Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

How to Make a Low Budget Documentary Film – 10 Tips

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Unlike fictional films which have fairly rigid shooting script formats, documentary filmmakers may use a variety of script formats to get their point across either for their collaborators or to submit along with funding proposals as is sometimes requested by grant-makers.

There are three basic types of documentary script formats. In this article, we’ll introduce each one, explain how they’re used, and give examples of what they look like. Some filmmakers might use all three types of documentary film scripts, and others might only use one or some type of modified combination (a small number of filmmakers may not write at all, especially for very short films).

The basic types of documentary film script formats are:

• A Treatment – This is a sometimes hypothetical pre-shoot narrative document describing what happens in the film from start to finish
• A Split Script – A side-by-side two column format with one side telling what the audience will see and the other side detailing what the audience will hear at the same time
• A Paper Edit – A detailed accounting of visuals along with the precise soundbites that will accompany them which match what was actually recorded in interviews

Let’s jump in and examine each of these in detail, as well as learn how to write each one.

What is a documentary film treatment?

A documentary film treatment is often written before a film has begun shooting (although it may also be written at a later stage). It forecasts the visuals that the filmmakers plan to collect and the and interviews that they might be paired with. It even may guess what types of things expert interviews might contain. Sometimes the finished film is quite close to what the original treatment contained, and other times it turns out to be quite far off from the final cut of the film.

Treatments are sometimes requested by grant-makers as part of documentary film funding proposals. They can also be used by filmmakers to plan what their film will contain in a loose manner without having to write a rigid document.

What is the documentary film treatment format?

The format for documentary film treatments is less formal than other scriptwriting formats. Some people may not even consider it technically a script at all. Generally speaking the treatment (also used in fictional filmmaking) tells us what the audience will see and hear, starting with the beginning of the film and proceeding in order until the end of the film. A documentary treatment might read like this:

We see the inside of a Hershey’s chocolate factory. Industrial food equipment pours liquid chocolate into molds in the shape of the Easter bunny. We see factors wearing hairnets inspect each chocolate bunny before it is placed into packaging.

A representative from the Hershey’s company explains the challenges in producing large quantities of bunny-shaped chocolate but talks about how much demand has grown for them in recent years. We see lots of mouth-watering shots of chocolate being packaged.

As you can see, this treatment could be written speculatively before the filmmakers even arrived at the factory and set up a tripod. It guesses the types of footage and interview sound bites they may collect, and gives the reader both a rough sense of what watching this scene will be like and also what types of footage and interview they filmmakers will need to collect on site. This can be used to formulate a simple shot list and interview question list for the shoot itself.

Some filmmakers are sticklers about not including any speculative soundbites “in quotation marks” because they don’t want to set their heart on any particular wording that their interviewees may or may not give them. Other filmmakers will try to guess roughly what their interviewees will say and who they will be, regardless of how close that ends up being to the finished product. Similarly, some treatments may be short, encompassing an entire film in a page or two, whereas other treatments may be extremely detailed blueprints, going on for ten pages or more. There is no right or wrong choice for how to write a treatment as long as it gives the reader a sense of what watching the film will be like from start to finish.

What is a documentary film split script?

A split script is visually quite different from a treatment. Instead of being a narrative accounting of what we expect the film to contain, a documentary split script is based on a two column format with the left column describing the imagery that the viewer will see and the right side of the page telling us what we’ll be hearing. Sometimes the two will be in unison – sync sound, such as seeing and hearing an expert in an interview speak on screen – and sometimes the two will diverge such as hearing a narrator explain something that we are watching unfold.

Documentary film split scripts are often useful in post-production because they can be a detailed blueprint that a producer or director can hand off to an editor and say “make this!” The editor, theoretically, will understand the scaffolding of what they need to construct.

What is the documentary film treatment format?

Documentary scripts of this type are typically a two column table with a heading for picture and sound. They look something like this:

Some split scripts may have exact word for word quotes around what soundbites to use from interviewees that were actually captured verbatim on set, and others may be written more loosely. Although split scripts don’t always need to contain shot for shot accountings of which footage to use, they generally do specify if b-roll is needed what the imagery should depict. If they are extremely specific with exact quotes and information about timecodes, split scripts might actually bleed into the next type of documentary script format, which is…

What are documentary film paper edits?

If a treatment is a rough sketch, and a split script is a blueprint, then a paper edit is a detailed diagram that contains measurements, numbers, and an exact ingredient list for the steps to construct a documentary. The paper edit is most often used near the end of the filmmaking process when all the interviews have been shot, the b-roll has been collected, and the producer or director is ready to hand off their entire vision to the film’s editor.

The documentary paper edit might also be used as a document for the director, producer, or editor to gather their thoughts and imagine what the shape of the final film might be. Many drafts of a paper edit might be discarded before a final version is greenlit for the editor to work on. Often a paper edit is cobbled together from transcripts that have been made from interviews.

What is the documentary paper edit format?

Documentary paper edits might be split script documents like the example above, only with exact verbatim quotes from interviewees and timecode and tape numbers to help the editor find the relevant footage. Or they may match more of a narrative treatment format with timecodes and exact quotes and reel numbers included. They may also take a spreadsheet type format like this:

Back in the old days, filmmakers might even cut and paste pieces from typed transcripts onto a single piece of paper, page by page. Paper edits should be written to make it as easy as possible to find the material needed to edit the film in the video editing program as possible.

In closing, documentary film scripts take many different shapes and forms but the most important thing is that you choose the format that’s most useful to you at whatever stage of the game you’re in to communicate whatever you need to communicate, whether that’s for a funder, a collaborator, or even just yourself to organize your thoughts.

Related:
What are the steps to make a documentary film? How to make documentaries

How to boost your documentary film’s production values

10 Common Documentary Filmmaking Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

How to get audio/video transcribed – speech recognition & manual transcription programs

The post What does a documentary script look like? How to write a script for a documentary film appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

The most obvious idea is probably to throw it up on YouTube or Vimeo, post the link on Facebook and hope it goes viral. But we’ve got some more sophisticated ideas. Check out our short documentary distribution guide below.

Submit Your Short Film to Film Festivals

The festival circuit may not be a good fit for every short documentary but with so many film fests out there these days you can probably find a few venues for a mini-doc on just about any topic.

Festivals will typically program shorts either as companion pieces for short feature films (showing them as an appetizer before a thematically related feature-length film) or in blocks of shorts in which a handful of shorts are programmed together to fill up a normal film’s time-slot.

Knowing what types of films a festival is looking for will radically improve your chances of acceptance. Film festivals can be grouped into roughly these categories:

• Top tier prestige festivals (e.g. Sundance, TIFF, etc)
• Local film festivals (Chicago International Film Festival, San Diego Film Festival, etc)
• Thematically programmed film festivals (Bay Area International Children’s Film Fest, Austin Music Video Festival, etc)

There are also film festivals that program documentaries primarily or exclusively, and even specific sub-genres of documentary (like music films). Choosing fests that are either thematically or location-wise relevant to your film will often improve your chances of getting programmed. Getting your film accepted into some film festivals (and maybe even winning an award or two) can help market your film and also help market yourself as a filmmaker for future projects.

What length is your short film?

In addition, it’s worth considering what length of films fests are looking for. It’s easy for a programmer to find slots for short docs that are 1-5 minutes long. It’s a tiny bit harder to find room for films that are up to about 10 or 12 minutes long. After you get past 15 minutes it becomes increasingly difficult to find time-slots to program your short in. If your documentary doesn’t fit into these time-slots, you may have difficulty getting selected unless your subject matter is extremely relevant to the festival. Each fest will have a different cutoff for how long a short film is but it may be worth shaving down your film to fit into an easily-programmed lot.

Resources for finding appropriate fests and submitting your film to festivals: Film Freeway, Withoutabox.

Submit Your Short Documentary to Broadcasters

Many short documentaries may not be a good fit for broadcast because of their length but if you have a film that’s too long for many film festivals, you might consider trying to get it broadcast in a half-hour time-slot. For documentaries, local PBS affiliate stations may be a natural fit, especially if the subject of your film is location-based in the same area as the broadcast (i.e. a half-hour documentary that explores housing issues in Miami might be a good fit for WPBT, South Florida PBS). You can generally find information for the programming director of PBS affiliates by searching or using the Contact Us page on their website. If all else fails, you can call them up and ask for the email address of the person you can submit to. If you can get a local broadcast, you might end up with tens of thousands of people watching depending on the size of the market and the number of times the program is repeated– many times more than any film festival can accommodate.

PBS does also occasionally gives national broadcasts to truly exceptional short documentaries through its POV strand.

Submit Your Short Documentary to Online Outlets

There are several online outlets for short films. Depending on the style of your film, one or more of these might be worth submitting to. Here is a selection of a handful though you may find others by searching.

New York Times Op-Docs – The NYT pays a license fee for exclusive short documentaries, typically under 10 minutes. These can also be part of a longer work, cut down to fit their length requirements, although films should also work as a stand-alone film without any other context required. Submission information is available here.

Upworthy – A venue for short uplifting videos that get shared on various media platforms. They are looking for “original stories that support our mission of creating a better world.” Submission information available here.

Field of Vision – A clearinghouse for short documentaries with a global focus (although US-based films are welcome too). Submission information is available here.

Al Jazeera and its video-only site AJ+ – Provides visitors on multiple platforms with newsy topical short documentaries and news pieces. Submission information available here.

Subject specific websites – Depending on what your short documentary is about, you may be able to find a great home on a website that’s about that topic. For instance you could imagine a short film about a soccer player might earn ESPN.com‘s interest.

Depending on the style and content of your short doc, you might also have luck pitching the film to outlets that don’t normally accept solicit video submissions like BuzzFeed, Vox, Vice, NowThis, or The Guardian. Local newspaper websites in your area might also be receptive to your pitch depending on how “newsy” or “current” it feels if the topic is a local focus.

Upload the film to YouTube, etc

Once you’ve researched, submitted and perhaps exhausted all other outlets first, you should consider uploading your film to YouTube. Some outlets like the NYT’s Op-Docs have exclusive submission policies, meaning if you upload your film publicly to YouTube first they won’t consider it. So you may want to save posting the film to YouTube for last. But when the time does come to post the documentary online for everyone to watch for free, here are some ideas for success:

1. For general distribution, YouTube videos are more easily shared than Vimeo videos. Most non-filmmaker people aren’t quite as familiar with Vimeo but everybody knows how to share a YouTube video. As a result, videos posted to YouTube have a higher chance of going viral than ones posted to Vimeo. Of course, you can always post to both as well, but the YouTube version is the one we’d use to share on social media.

2. Speaking of that, share it to social media! Be sure to give it appropriate tags and a nice long text description to help search engines find it. Post the video on Facebook and other social media accounts and invite your friends to share it too. Email a batch of your friends, colleagues, and family and ask them to help you share it with others. You may also have luck submitting to various communities on sites like Reddit which feature niche forum boards who may be interested in your film. Posting your video to topic-related Facebook groups may also be a good idea. (Be careful to avoid the appearance of shameless self-promotion, however.)

3. Make sure your description or the end of the video gives people an opportunity to learn more about your work or subscribe for future videos of yours. If your goal is to build a following for your future work (and we’d argue that should be your goal even if it isn’t yet), offering viewers an opportunity to subscribe or visit your website or join your newsletter is a great idea. Your fans can help fund your future films through crowd-funding campaigns and they can help share them as well.

The post How to Distribute Your Short Documentary: The Ultimate Short Doc Film Distribution Guide appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

Getting great sound for documentary style sit down interviews is extremely important and if you’re reading this article you’ve probably already realized that on-board (on camera) microphones just don’t cut it. Generally speaking there are two common ways to mic a documentary interview: either with a lavalier microphone (skip down to this section) or a shotgun microphone suspended above the interviewee (skip directly to that section).

Both of these approaches can work extremely well and both of them can also have drawbacks. In order to help you decide which microphone to use for an interview, we’ll do a how-to for each technique in detail below, and include links to all the gear you need to set each one up. First up, let’s look at how to mic a documentary interview with a lav mic.

How to mic a documentary interview with a wireless lav mic:

Probably the most common way to capture sound for a sit-down documentary style interview is by affixing a wireless lavalier microphone to the interviewee. As pictured above, a lav mic, sometimes called a lapel microphone, typically affixes to the interviewee’s collar, shirt, jacket or tie.

Pros to using a lav mic: If you’re doing a shoot with an interview subject that’s walking around and completing tasks as well as a sit-down interview, it can be convenient to keep a lav on them for the duration of the whole day. If you plan on doing some “walk and talk” interviews it’s also handy to use the same microphone. Using a wireless lav mic also reduces the number of cables that people can trip over on-set.

Cons to using a lav mic: They take a few minutes of your subject’s time to set up properly and to wire the cable up someone’s shirt. Depending on the type of clothing a person is wearing, they may not be easy to rig up (women’s dresses are a classic example). Some filmmakers find lav microphones tacky looking and depending on the aesthetic of your film or video this may be a consideration.

Sloppy lav placement with a cable exposed

Tips for using a lav mic: Always hide the cable between the microphone and the transmitter pack so you don’t have it dangling into frame which looks very tacky or amateurish (see photo). Disconnect the microphone and cable from the transmitter pack and give it to your interviewee to thread through or drop down their shirt, then reconnect the pack and give it to them to put in a pocket or belt. In some circumstances, it is possible to conceal the microphone itself although depending on the type of shirt or fabric the interviewee is wearing, it may lead to scratchy clothing sounds or muffled sound. Be sure to remind interviewees not to hit their chest because that will often create a heavy thump sound on the microphone.

Recommended Wireless Lav Mics:

Sennheiser EW 112P G3-A omni-directional EW system

The Sennheiser G3 is the rugged workhorse of the documentary film industry. It’s probably the most popular wireless lav mic for indie filmmakers, documentarians and broadcast reporters today and for good reason. It features a plethora of frequencies for interference-free reception of crystal clear audio up to about 100 feet away with an easy to read display and menu navigation. The transmitter pack also features a “Mute” switch which allows your subject to turn off recording when they go to the bathroom or step out of the room to take a phone call without having to take off the lav completely or fiddle with turning it off. Both the transmitter pack and the receiver pack are powered by two AA batteries which typically last several hours before a swap is necessary. This kit comes with the clip on transmitter, a receiver with a camera mount plate that fits atop your camera’s hot or cold shoe mount and adapters for both XLR camera inputs and 1/8th (3.5mm) jack inputs.

Movo WMIC70 Wireless 48-Channel UHF Lavalier Microphone

If the Sennheiser G3 is out of your budget range, we recommend the Movo 70 wireless microphone system. It features a wide range of selectable operating frequencies and it works with both professional XLR input cameras as well as 3.5mm inch jacks on DSLRs and other prosumer camcorders. Comes with a belt clip for the transmitter and a cold shoe insert to mount the receiver on top of your camera. Both the transmitter pack and the receiver use 2 AA batteries.

How to Mic a Documentary Interview with a Shotgun Microphone:

Photo credit

Using a shotgun microphone suspended from on a boom pole or jib arm just out of frame is a slightly more complicated way of doing sound for a documentary interview but it can yield terrific results and it also has some special advantages over using a lav in some circumstances. For one thing, having a shotgun microphone already set up and suspended above the interviewee’s chair even before the interview starts can reduce the amount of setup time needed and make more time for actual interviewing if your subject is pressed for time (like a CEO or politician).

Photo credit

Pros to using a shotgun mic: Reduces the amount of setup time while your interviewee is in the room and can eliminates any risk that your subject may feel uncomfortable about putting a cable down their shirt. Using a shotgun mic for an interview also means it doesn’t matter what type of clothing your interviewee is wearing because you don’t have to affix anything to them or hide any microphone cables. Finally, using a shotgun mic also allows you to rotate in and out several interview subjects in the same space very quickly if you have a “hot seat” in the same place and want to capture many interviews in a limited period of time without rigging and re-rigging everyone for sound with a lav.

Cons to using a shotgun mic: You will need a jib arm and a stand in order to suspend the microphone above your interview subject. This means more gear to buy and also pack and transport, assuming you’re traveling to the interview location. If you’re not careful it can also mean you’ve got another cable for someone to trip over (the XLR cable).

Tips for using a shotgun mic: Always tape cables to the floor using a wide gaffer’s tape so people can’t trip over loose wires. Also be sure to weigh down your lighting stand with film sandbags to reduce the risk of it falling over.

Recommended gear for recording interviews using shotgun microphones:

Rotatable boom stand for microphones

The first thing you’ll need is a good quality stand with a jib arm/boom pole to suspend the microphone from. This stand can get up to 13 feet high with an arm that can reach out up to 6.9 feet in length. It also comes with a sandbag although you may want additional film sandbags to use around the base of the stand too.

Adjustable shotgun microphone shockmount

You’ll also need a mount to hold the shotgun microphone in place at the end of the boom arm on the stand. This basic shockmount will do the trick, plus it’s adjustable which allows you to customize the angle at which your microphone is directed. It’s wide enough to handle most microphones and quite sturdy.

For more, read our related article: Boom Pole Stands & Boom Pole Holders: How to Set Up a Boom Mic on a Stand

Sennheiser MKH416 Super-Cardioid Shotgun Tube Condenser Microphone

Of course, you’ll also need a good quality shotgun microphone for capturing great documentary interview sound if you use the boom pole method. If you don’t already have one, the Sennheiser 416 is one of the industry workhorse shotgun microphones used in film, reality television, and documentary. It’s super-cardioid so its pickup pattern will be precise, meaning background noises will be mostly eliminated. The 416 is an industry standard and a great documentary interview microphone although if it’s out of your budget range, consider the Audio Technica 897 instead. If you don’t have a nice long XLR cable to connect this microphone to your camera, you’ll need that too.

Frequently asked questions about how to get sound for documentary interviews:

Should the interviewer’s voice be heard on screen?

That’s an aesthetic question that nobody but the director can answer. However, if you plan to include audio of the interviewer asking questions during interviews, we recommend micing them up properly (often with a simple lav microphone). Poor audio can take the viewer out of the film faster than anything else and it feels very amateurish. For more on this topic, we’ve written a whole article answering the question should the questions be heard on screen?

Is there any reason I shouldn’t just get a cheaper wired lav microphone instead of a more expensive wireless one?

Although wired lapel microphones do exist, they’re somewhat old fashioned and leftover from the days when there was a more substantial price difference between wired and wireless models. Back in the old days wired mics were way cheaper and so documentary filmmakers used them more often but they have several drawbacks. First, although you won’t run into any wireless frequency interference problems, they do have limited range: however long your cable is.

Second, it adds another cable that the person you’re interviewing can trip over or forget is connected and start to walk away with, yanking your camera or a light stand with them. Finally, even though you might save a few dollars by opting for a wired microphone, you will sacrifice versatility, which we’d argue is unwise. Even though a wired microphone might work all right for a sit-down interview, you may not be able to use it for other types of shoots later when a wireless solution is required, like walk-and-talk interviews or covering events.

Is it possible to wirelessly operate a shotgun microphone on a boom pole so it doesn’t have to be connected to my camera?

Yes, there are solutions for this. See our article on wireless shotgun microphones on boom poles. Note that they may add a little bit of extra weight to your shotgun microphone so if you have it suspended on a jib arm or boom pole above your interviewee, you’ll want to make sure your counterweight is heavy enough so it doesn’t come crashing down on their head in the middle of an interview.

What is the best way to mic an interview with two or more interviewees?

Two-person or group interviews are notoriously difficult to shoot for a variety of reasons. But if you really need to do one, we recommend having a sound operator with a boom pole who is manually moving it from person to person to capture whoever is speaking at that given time. With only two interviewees it may also be possible and economical to use dual lav microphones– one for each of them.

What is the best way to mic an interview where the interviewer is seen as part of the film?

In films or videos with a host or reporter who is seen on screen interviewing people, we recommend recording sound for both the interviewer and the interviewee in the same way. If you’re planning to use a shotgun mic on a boom pole suspended above the interviewee’s head to capture their sound, we suggest you do the same with the interviewee. If you’re planning on micing one of them up with a lav mic (and honestly this is more common for TV-journalism style two person interviews) then we suggest doing that with both of them. The reason you want them to ideally match is that if both the interviewer and interviewee talk a substantial amount and both are seen on screen, it may be jarring to have two very different sounding microphones for each of them, and it may seem as if they are not even in the same space together.

Related Articles & Resources:

Boom Pole Stands & Boom Pole Holders: How to Set Up a Boom Mic on a Stand

Ten Killer Documentary Filmmaking Interview Tips

Best Interview Lighting Kits for Documentary Filmmakers

List: Top Shotgun Microphones for Documentary Filmmaking

Best Wireless Lavaliere Microphones for Documentary Film

The best reporter style handheld microphones for street interviews

The post How to Mic a Documentary Style Sit Down Interview appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

The subtitles in the image above aren’t very easy to read at all. This is a common problem and it almost always occurs because the background (whatever the subtitles are being laid on top of) is too close to the subtitles itself, making the text difficult for our eyes to distinguish. With light colored subtitles, light colored backgrounds can be especially difficult. Similarly, if you have a particularly busy background with lots of small details, it can be difficult to read subtitles too.

Many of these subtitling tricks can be done in just about any video program, so the software you’re using isn’t as important as the style you use with which to apply the subtitles. Without further ado, here are 10 ways to make subtitles more easily readable.

1. Give the text a thin outline or stroke

Many video editing programs provide you with the ability to add a stroke or outline to text. In this case we’ve added a 2 pixel black stroke around our text, making it more legible. Pros: Makes the text more legible no matter what your background is or how bright it is. Cons: Depending on how thick your font is, your stroke may look chunky or ugly.

2. Make the subtitle text bold

This is one of the easiest changes you can make to try and make subtitle text more legible. By making the subtitle font (in this case Avenir 28 point) bold, you can often easily make your subtitles more readable. Depending on the background, this may not be enough to do the trick however.

3. Change the color of your subtitles

White is a fairly common color in video and in life so it’s not surprising that light colored backgrounds often make white subtitles hard to read. Often changing your subtitle color to yellow (another common sub color) is enough to do the trick. We recommend playing around with this.

4. Add a subtle drop shadow

Adding a slight drop shadow on your subtitle text can be less chunky or ugly looking than an outline or stroke, but it can achieve the same result in increasing legibility. If your subtitle drop shadows are too far away from the text, or they’re too hard, it can make the subtitles less readable however. Here’s an example with subtitle outlines that are too far away from the text to make a positive difference:

Making hard subtitles that are closer to your text can have a good effect on legibility however, as in this example:

5. Add a darkened box around your subs

You may have seen this approach on Netflix or YouTube’s closed captions. Adding a dark box of approximately 50 percent opacity can make your light colored subtitles pop out and suddenly become more readable. One possible drawback of this approach is that if your editing/subtitling software doesn’t have this feature built in, it can be tedious to add the correct sized boxes to each subtitle– especially if you have a lot of them.

6. Add a background stripe to your subtitles

Sometimes video editors choose to add a dark stripe to the bottom of their video (either letterboxing it or laying it over the existing video) and then they put their subtitles on top of that to ensure legibility. Besides aesthetic concerns, you may want to be careful about the title safe area of the screens that may display your content to make sure your subs won’t be cut off. For instance we would caution against this method if you plan to display your work on televisions.

7. Blur the background behind your subtitles

If your video editing software allows you to selectively apply a blur to your video, this approach can work.

8. Change the location of your subtitles

In some cases subtitles may be difficult to place at the bottom of the screen, usually because there is other important information for the viewer to be able to see down there. For instance there may be some important activity down there or lower third (chyron) titles identifying people’s names. In the example above instead of using a subtitle, we’re using a supertitle which sits at the top of the screen.

9. Darken the entire video so your white subtitles are more readable

For the example above, we’ve darkened all but the left-most sixth of the screen (so you can see the difference it makes). If you darken the video in a subtle way your viewer will probably not notice it’s not as bright as it might otherwise be, and your subtitles will pop out at the viewer.

10. Give your subtitle area a subtle gradient background

In this example we’re using a very subtle dark color gradient underneath the subtitle on top of the video. Basically if you were to imagine your video as a sandwich, the top layer would be your subtitle text. Underneath that is your subtle gradient which only overlays on the bottom of the screen where your subtitles are. Finally on the bottom video track is your video itself. Take a look at this diagram for more of an explanation:

When done subtly, this effect is often virtually impossible for the casual viewer to notice– all they notice is that your subtitles are clear and easy to ready. If you’d like to use a similar subtle gradient as the one we’re using in this example, download this 1920 x 1080 subtitle gradient here as a PNG file with transparency.

In summary

With more and more web videos getting subtitled– partially to make Facebook and twitter videos understandable without sound, as more and more viewers are starting to watch videos without sound.

Generally speaking in order to make subtitles more readable, you either need to change the subtitles or change the background of what they’re on top of. Choosing a font that isn’t too thin is part of the struggle, as well as a color that will stand out from the background. When that doesn’t work, it’s time to experiment with changing the background, either by adding an overlay of some sort or adjusting it in a different way.

Related:
How to Easily Add Subtitles/Closed Captions to Video Using Adobe Premiere Pro

The post 10 Ways to Make Subtitle Styles More Readable appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

Supplies you will need to create an infinite white background video:

1. A video camera with manually adjustable exposure settings. For example, the Panasonic HC-X1000 4K Ultra HD Professional Camcorder:

2. A white backdrop for video or white screen background. For example, this infinite white video backdrop kit:

Here’s another example (below) that’s a collapsible disc that folds up and doesn’t need a stand as long as you have a wall you can lean it against. It’s also the one pictured at the top of this article, used in conjunction with two lighting stands.

One of the nice things about this white studio background is that it’s easily portable and that also it includes a long train that folds out on the floor so you can capture “full body” shots including the talent’s feet if you want to.

3. Plenty of sandbags to hold the lighting stands in place– these are especially important because of how unwieldy a large background can be and how easily they can topple over without counterweights. For example:

4. Daylight balanced lights. Specifically at least two lights powerful enough to evenly light up your white background and additional lights to light your subject with. For example:

This LED lighting kit (above) with two LED lights and two stands will probably supply enough wattage to light your white backdrop. Here are some great features of these types of LED lights for video:

• They have built in dimmers so you can adjust the brightness level without using diffusion or changing color temperature with external dimmer boxes
• They don’t get hot like tungsten lights
• They’re already the right color temperature for shooting white background videos (daylight balanced)

You’ll need additional lights to light your talent (whoever you’re shooting in your white background video). You could easily use another pair of the same lights, or a different pair of lights with a softbox like these:

If you don’t have the budget to buy multiple lighting kits you could also try getting a kit with four lights included like this one. You could also potentially use just one light to light your subject/talent if you use a bounce disc to provide fill light like the example setup seen in the first photo of this article.

How to create a white screen background for your video:

To understand how all these components fit together, check out this diagram below.

Essentially you will be lighting the backdrop separately from how you’re lighting your talent (whoever is being filmed in front of the white background). This is because you’ll want to overexpose the background– that is, blow it out, make it super bright and white, but you’ll want to expose your subject (the person) normally. Using a single set of lights to do both won’t work well and the result will be uneven. You’ll want to use separate lighting so you can adjust one and not the other.

Step 1: Set up your white video background or backdrop and then place the lights that will be lighting it. You’ll want to play around with the placement of the lights, how bright they are (if they’re dimmable) and the angle at which they’re lighting your white background. You’ll want to be able to play them relatively close to the backdrop itself so they won’t spill too much on to your talent.

Step 2: Set your video camera’s white balance and exposure settings so that when you’re zoomed in on the white background, it looks like it’s pure white. If you don’t have quite enough wattage (your lights aren’t bright enough) you may be able to fake it by setting your camera’s exposure to “open up” a bit more, making the image brighter.

Step 3: Add in your talent and light them. Have whoever you’ll be filming (or a stand-in) sit or stand wherever they will actually be, usually a few feet in front of the background lights. You can now light them with your other lights using either two lights (one for each side) or a key light on one side and a bounce card for a fill light on the other side.

Additional tips for creating an infinite white background video:

• Use an external HDMI monitor with a zebra peaking feature so you can easily preview how things look even while you’re setting them up. Using a larger monitor than the LCD screen on your camera can be beneficial because it A) allows you to see with greater detail what’s going to be visible, like wrinkles in the fabric, B) allows you to see how things look from across the room if you have the screen pointing towards you selfie-style and C) allows you to see peaking and zebra information for the white background if the monitor supports that feature.

• Test out shooting a white background video before you actually have to use it for something – As you shoot some test footage and import it into your video editing program, you’ll be able to experiment and play around with how much you can do color correction in the edit to improve any imperfections.

• Choose your talent’s clothing carefully — if they’re wearing a white shirt that’s probably a bad idea for instance. Close-together stripes can also look strange on video too.

• If you’re shooting a full-body shot and as a result end up with a frame that goes beyond the edges of your white background because it isn’t quite wide enough, you may be able to cover the sides with a white mask in your video editing program afterward. Similarly, if you have shadows or uneven lighting around the corners of your video you may be able to cover them up with white patches afterward as well.

• If you use a white paper photographer’s backdrop instead of fabric it won’t have any wrinkles but it may also be harder to transport because white paper backdrop rolls are very long. If you use a white fabric backdrop and you notice that it has some small wrinkles, they may not be fatal because you probably won’t be zoomed in on a close up of the backdrop anyway. And if your talent is standing or seated several feet away from the backdrop, the less visible the wrinkles will be. We’ve been surprised by how much in the way of wrinkled backdrops you can get away with.

• If you don’t have daylight balanced lights and all you have is tungsten (warmer indoor balanced ones), use blue daylight gels to make their color balance correct. You can also white balance with your camera to adjust further.

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