Step 7: Finishing Touches

Titles

• I prefer to use yellow letters on a black background. Slightly off-white is the colour usually used by professional movie makers.
  
• Superimposing the titles on video scenes is not a good idea, some of the audience will miss them.
  
• Don't use fonts with thin lines or excessively fancy fonts.
  
• Multiple colours are bad idea, except that a thin black outline to a colour is usually necessary when superimposing the letters on a video scene.
  
  When we read, we don't recognise the letters one at a time, we recognise groups of letters that correspond to syllables. I have seen one example with multiple colours, you had to read it one letter at a time, it was useless. The editor could read it because he knew the names of the actors and did the editing. Take note of the fonts you see on professional movies.
  
• The height of the capital letters should be no smaller than 1/25 of the screen height, 1/20 is a nice size for the credits. Allow the audience time to read the information twice.
  
• The expert advice says to keep away from the edges of the screen by about 1/8 of the screen width so as to be in the safe area. I go very close to the edge without any problems - my tv monitor must be correctly set up. Of course if your movie is going to be shown by other people it is better to play safe - their equipment may trim the edges off your picture.
  
• Two cards (letters on a black background), the first one shows the movie title, the second one shows who made the movie. Refer to the first part of Clip 12, extract from The Wild West Frontier. (2¼ minutes) - play / download. - this is my preferred layout where the movie is 10 minutes or longer. If the movie is shorter, show two title cards before the establishing shot.

The credits at the end

My comments on fonts for titles (above) apply here too.

1. I recommend a vertical scroll up the page with yellow letters on a black background. Using a centre gutter, with job titles to the left and names to the right, is a popular layout. Use lower case or capitals or italics as you wish. Have a one line space between the various parts of the title - the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) use this system e.g.
   Refer to examples of centre gutter in Clip 4, Mum’s the Word and Clip 8, extract from The Problem with Harry
   Clip 4, Mum's The Word. (play / download.)
   Clip 8, The Problem with Harry. (play / download.)
   
   
2. Another system the ABC editors use, which is the one I prefer - is, scroll the credits up the left hand half of the screen on a black background - with a picture or video shot showing on the right hand half of the screen. Some parts of the credits may encroach a bit onto the picture or video shot.
   
   Refer to the second part of Clip 12, extract from New Beginnings (play / download.).

Add music

Leave this to be the last job - if you alter the edit after the music is added - you can run into a lot of strife, it takes experience to handle the problems.

Royalty-free music is now readily available for amateur movie makers. I have two sources:

1. My iMac computer has the iMovie software. This includes the iLife sound effects, which contains a huge amount of music as well as lot of sound effects - all royalty free.
   
2. The other source is three DVDs Vol.1, Vol.2 and Vol.3 which I obtained from The Newcastle Video Makers Inc. (Australia), this is an Australian movie making club that sells what they call Kevin Macleod's really "royalty free" music - as fund raising disks. [These can also be downloaded free from http://incompetech.com.]
   
   Volume 1 has 6 1/2 hours of royalty free music.
   Volume 2 has 3 hours of royalty free music.
   Volume 3 has 3 hours of royalty free music.
   
   Any one can buy it. You do not need Kevin's express permission to use this music, but you must credit "Kevin Macleod".
   
   The following is extracted from the statement supplied to me by Newcastle Video Makers Inc., club:
   

   "this music is produced under the creative commons licence, which to all intents and purposes is absolutely royalty free even for commercial purposes. As a club (Newcastle Video Makers Inc. (Australia) we have Kevin's permission to download and present his works on a DVD and inform you that "his works are royalty free" and be able to sell it as a fund raising project. The creative commons licence requires that this permission be granted. The key feature being to be able to tell you "that you may use it for free". You need to read the licence to understand that, but that is what we have to do. We also pay him a royalty on each disk that we sell. What we have done is collect it all together, convert those that needed converting to Mp3 format, we have indexed them and we have saved you a lot of download time and bandwidth which you have to pay for. Also we use the proceeds for our club projects. We are an incorporated club, which means "not for profit" and we are publicly audited each year. We do more than a few community projects each year without any charge. Our most successful series has been for the local riding for the disabled association, who, with our help have won two international "riding display" competitions, that are judged via the video medium that associations enter, instead of all travelling all over the world." Buyers in Australia should send $10 (AUS) plus $5 (AUS) postage = $15 (AUS) total for each Disc. Buyers overseas from Australia should send $10 (USA) plus $5 (USA) postage = $15 (USA) total for each Disk. The URL to the Club's Web Page is www.nvm.org.au .

   Kevin Macleod also has royalty free music you pay for. His web page advises that if you need some type of music that is not available, contact him at, mail to <kevin@incompetech.com> he cannot produce all requests - but he will consider them all.

Trimming the music

Overlap the music fades onto the ends of the dialogue. Beware of placing music behind the dialogue - it is difficult to find the correct volume that won't cause hearing problems - best to avoid it.

Adjust the music volume and fade it at the ends
Use the DVD audio calibrator - as described in Step 6 - "Adjust The Dialogue Audio Volume."

Take care with the iLink cable connection.
If you force this connection into the socket - the wrong way - you will need a costly repair to your video equipment. A Sony Service Centre has reported that this is the most common fault that they have to repair.

Perhaps the best tip that can be given to a beginner editor is to look at as many short videos and television programmes as possible in the particular genre of interest. Comedy and drama are edited differently to documentaries and there are many cases where the rules have been disregarded but with surprising effect.

Just go for it!

And get a third party to critique your work.

< Part 16 | Part 17F | Part 17H | Part 18 >

© copyright Arthur Bullock, 2008