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title safe and 16X9
Hi, My client has shot interviews in exteeme CU that require subtitles. When I keep the text
in title safe the words are often over the person’s mouth. Through my own experience and
talking with a very knowledgable online editor (thanks jh), I feel confident in advising her
that she has to accept this, short of letterboxing and putting the titles in the black which
compromises the format. The plan is to output only to DVD, but once out in the world,
we can’t anitcipate how the film will be shown, so I am pushing for keeping the text in title
safe. But she is unhappy and I promised that I would ask around some more and see if anyone
has a solution I haven’t thought of. Reformatting shot by shot is not an option; there are subtitles over
80% of the film.
Thanks!Real Life is Your Best Entertainment Value
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4 Replies
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Any chance of doing two versions? One for theatrical release which allows you to push the titles a bit further down and one for TV release with the Titles in Safe area.
Or, instead of letterboxing, simply push the CU interviews up the screen a little to give you some black area below the person without covering their mouths. Certainly not elegant, but less distracting than covering their mouths.
There’s a great company started by one of our Cow leaders called Aspect Correct which actually displays safe title on both camera LCD screens and regular CRT monitors and are great in the field to protect for this very issue. Doesn’t help with this project, but at least the producer can be protected in the future.
https://www.aspectcorrect.com/
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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I’ve thought about that, but the client is very traditional in her filmmaking style. Some invertivews are MS and the subtitles are fine and they are bearable with b-roll. I know she won’t want to affect some shots and not others and we can’t change the aspect ratio of the whole show. She is also
completely out of money and I hate to be crass about it, but I have no desire to jump through
hoops for free. Thanks for your response and I’m hoping for more so she understands that there
is no “magic bullet” out there.Real Life is Your Best Entertainment Value
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Unless she wants to reshoot, the only other option I can see under the conditions you have outlined is to put the titles at the top of the screen on those extreme CUs. Hopefully there’s more room between title safe and the person’s eyes.
She shot it that way. There’s no more real estate on the screen. She made a mistake when shooting that you can’t fix given her constraints on you. If she would have been thinking about the entire project when she shot instead of trying to get a “cool shot”, she may have realized that the cool shot would wreak havok on her ability to subtitle without destroying the cool shot.
Therefore, the cool shot isn’t so cool.
If you can find a diplomatic way of telling her this, try. Otherwise, take what money she gave you and run after this is over. Unless she can learn from her mistakes, you don’t want to go through this again. Because you are asking for advice here in the manner that you are, it seems that she is incapable of seeing that this is because of her mistake in the field and expects you to just “fix it in post”. You don’t want a career of that!
Just my 2
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Esactly. My client is new to the business of producing and directing.
Hopefully, she’ll have learned a lot from this experience and not make the same
mistake again.Real Life is Your Best Entertainment Value
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