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Credits are the bane of my existence – OT rant
Ladies and gentlemen – this should not be so hard. Broadcast productions need credits which need specialized formatting which is made essential by the fact that they grow ever longer as producer’s hand out credits like candy to a five year old and they always need to be corrected, at the last minute, and then once the show is sent out they need to be corrected again at least twice, if your lucky. And computers were built to take the drudgery out of repetitive tasks, like reformatting a five page long credit file because someone spelled the assistant to the assistant publicist’s name wrong and oh yeah can we add the name of the payroll accountant’s dog, because, well, she’s so darn cute.
Well this shouldn’t be so hard in a time of 4K, HDR, VR and magnetic timelines – but I’ll be darned, it still is.
The requirement for a decent credit roll creator is that it has to be able to “know” the difference between the elements of a credit roll – Job title, Crew Names, Thank You’s, Special Names, Special titles and the spacing between them – So that when some idiot says “can you change all the Crew Names to all caps, make the special names Blue and make the spacing between lines a little bigger – it should take you about 10 key strokes to do this, even if the credits have a thousand lines. You should be able to format in single column, with different fonts for Job Names and Crew Names, you should be able to handle double columns and you should be able to actually mix the two and go back and forth as necessary. Oh yeah and handle graphics for unions and corporate logos.
I don’t need any fancy twirling animation here, I just need to handle the basic credit roll options – start, stop, feathered edge. The software has to be able to import from an .rtf file so the producer can pre-format the file in Word and get it spell checked. I’ll want to add any special formatting at this stage so i can take advantage of things like “search and replace” to quickly automate this process.
I’m working with Ppro right now but don’t mention it’s pathetic CG or creating the tittles in Photoshop and then doing the roll in AE – that’s fine if you have a 20 line credit roll but it is absurd with anything like typical broadcast credits. Graffiti stinks for credits, all the FX factory stuff is crap, I’ve been using a freebee called Manifesto but it can’t handle double column, nor can almost anything else I can find.
The one piece of software that I know that does this properly is from a little company called CHV that made a credit roll in it’s text plug-in for FCP Legend. It has a horrible GUI but it works, however it doesn’t work with PPro. But it does work with Motion, but since I’m on “El-Capitan” my old Motion won’t open so now I’m buying the new version just so I can buy the new version of CHV Text that I need to run with it – look it’s not the money, both programs are dirt cheep – I’m willing to pay 5 times more for an elegant solution to this eternal problem, but nobody wants my money.
Time for a drink.
Have a good weekend one and all.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
28 Replies
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Perhaps you should check out-
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP Exchange – FCPX Workshops
XinTwo – FCPX Training -
Funny you should bring this up as I just ran into a twisted credit knot recently myself.
I was working on a small doc and after about a month hiatus from it I got together with the producers to do some notes that we just hadn’t had the time to do before some screenings. One of the changes was to the credits (just removing a couple of names) and I’m like, “No problem, that should just take a second”.
So I go to the end credit roll and it’s an MOV. “Oh, that’s right, I exported a QT from AE.”
So I go to AE, click around a bit and quickly realize that the credit roll is just a single TIFF in my comp. “Oh, that’s right, I made the TIFF in Photoshop, but animated it in AE.”
So I go to Photoshop. I see my credits but I still get edit any of the text. “Oh, that’s right. These are just TIFF ‘cards’ of the credits that I pieced together into one big TIFF.”
The actual credits, the editable files, were created in Keynote by one of the producers.
So I open up the Keynote file, find the ‘card’ with names that need to be removed, remove the names, export that single card as a TIFF, bring it into PS, replace the old TIFF with the new TIFF, export out a new TIFF of the whole credit roll, bring it in AE for animation, export out a new QT, bring the new QT into PPro and…. DONE!
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the type of convoluted, yet successful, workflow you end up with when under the gun.
Time for that drink now.
-Andrew
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[Noah Kadner] “Perhaps you should check out-
I know about this site – I’m guessing t’s for features and probably a little expensive for our show, but I’m keeping it in mind. I shouldn’t need a third party to handle this – I’m about to use some 10 year old software which, once I load it, will probably work fine.
I’m just surprised my choices are so limited for something so essential and easy for a computer to do.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
Lol:)
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[Herb Sevush] “but don’t mention it’s pathetic CG or creating the tittles in Photoshop and then doing the roll in AE – that’s fine if you have a 20 line credit roll but it is absurd with anything like typical broadcast credits”
Why? I’ve used Photoshop numerous times for shows and features and I find it by far the easiest of all the methods. Most of the plug-ins simply bog down with lengthy credits. In Photoshop, simply build each block as a layer. Make one long document and then it’s just two keyframes to animate the roll in AE or PPro.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Why? I’ve used Photoshop numerous times for shows and features and I find it by far the easiest of all the methods.”
How easy is it for you to show the producer the difference between single and double column layouts when using Photoshop, or change the color of all the job titles without affecting the color of the names, or switch between All Caps and Uppers & Lowers for cast names only?
I get these kind of requests all the time and they should be simple to do, even on 1000 line credits. My current project has about 300 lines of credits for a :30 roll. It goes by too fast for a single column layout, which is what we normally use. I want to show the producer what it would look like in “feature” style double columns, with break outs for single columns in certain areas. I find it absurd that in this day and age I have to spend hours on something that should be near instantaneous, once you’ve entered the text data.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
My thoughts exactly.
I used to do credits using the Photoshop-AE method twenty years ago. So recently I offered to do end credits for a full length feature thinking, how hard can it be. There must be a software or plug-in I can buy and pronto. Since I had access to an Avid I thought I’d try NewBlue Titler Pro that’s free with an Avid subscription. The demo videos show it all as possible and in real time.
But for a feature film scroll with hundreds of lines, I kept getting a beach-ball for every change. Even a small typo fix gave a beach ball for a few minutes at a time.So, I went back to the Photoshop-AE method.
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Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India -
If you have CC I’m wondering if InDesign would be interesting to try for building a credit roll.
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP Exchange – FCPX Workshops
XinTwo – FCPX Training -
[Herb Sevush] “I have to spend hours on something that should be near instantaneous,”
How are you billing? By the hour? 😉
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Herb Sevush] “How easy is it for you to show the producer the difference between single and double column layouts when using Photoshop, or change the color of all the job titles without affecting the color of the names, or switch between All Caps and Uppers & Lowers for cast names only?”
I understand your dilemma. In my case, though, usually those design choices are figured out ahead of time. Typically we look at existing styles and pick one to copy. Maybe temp a few blocks first to make sure we are going in the right direction. Then commit.
Features and TV shows typically have set styles that everyone follows, including which credits go at the head and which go at the end. Often I’m given the blocks already figured out in a Word doc, so more often than not, there’s a lot of cutting and pasting. Honestly I have a much harder time getting the producer to wrangle all the correct names (gee, isn’t that part of their job?) than it is to decide on style.
The best results are with those producers who like static credits instead of a roll. I found that Motion was a good tool to build that style of credits. Just a bunch of single cards.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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