Titles

Although every film acquires a working title, its makers often pluck the final title late during an agony of indecision. Your film’s title may in fact be the only advertising copy your audience ever sees, so it should be short and snappy and epitomize the film’s allure. Because TV listings and festival programs rarely have space to describe their offerings, the title you choose may be your sole means of drawing an audience:

• Style—Form follows function. Documentary titles are usually plain and unfussy. Find examples among TV documentaries or video rentals. Some of the most artistically ambitious films use brief and classically simple white-on-black titles. You could do a lot worse.

• Font, layout, and size— Choose font for clarity and size, and avoid small lettering. Anything too small or too fancy disappears on the television screen, where most work appears. Because differently adjusted televisions often clip the edges of the image, keep titling well within a safe area. Be aware, too, that images shot in 1.33:1 aspect ratio will likely be cropped top and bottom to make the film fit today’s 1.78:1 ratio. Any titles, especially subtitles, that you place there would be lost.

  In your titles, don’t let the same name appear too often, even if you did do nearly all the work. Keep thank-yous brief, and check and recheck spelling.

• Overladen titles—A sure sign of amateurism is a film loaded with a long and egocentric welter of credits. Don’t let the same name crop up in multiple key capacities, and keep acknowledgments eloquently brief.
• Contractual or other obligations—Participants often grant favors in return for an acknowledgment in the titles, so be sure to honor your debts to the letter. Funding sources may stipulate acknowledgments in prescribed wording, so double-check this and all such agreements before you lock your titles down. A television release will often have a contract specifying the titles and closed captions that you must provide.

• Spelling—Check titles and subtitles scrupulously for spelling and use at least two highly literate, eagle-eyed checkers. The proper spelling for people’s names should receive special care, since a mistake indicates for all time that you cared too little about someone to get his or her name right.

  Time the on-screen duration of a title by reading the contents of each screen aloud one-and-a-half times.

• Title lengths—See box for title length calculations. Long rolling or crawl titles (titles that slide up or across the screen) must run fast, or TV stations chop them off. Check the speed of other people’s titles.

  Keep titles and fonts classically simple and you can’t go wrong. Aim for legibility and to ensure that anyone viewing your film in another aspect ratio won’t miss titles or subtitles.

• Digital titling—Good-looking titles are not difficult in digital postproduction. Editing software comes with basic titling, but you may need a plug-in program for refinements. You should have the choice of a large array of typefaces with drop shadow, movement, crawl, and other exotic behaviors. Resist the temptation to exult in your new freedom; keep titling classically simple—unless of course your film’s topic and treatment call for something more in keeping. Digital postproduction is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) so you can keep experimenting until everything looks right. Superimposed lettering, colored or white, is more legible when you add a black outline, and this is especially true for subtitles. Often they run over a light or dark background, and the black outline is crucial in keeping them legible.

Foreign Markets: Subtitles and Transcript

As mentioned in the previous chapter, a foreign festival may ask for a typed transcript of all dialogue in the film (for simultaneous translation), and they may also stipulate a subtitled print in a particular language. This is straightforward although time-consuming to do. Here are some guidelines:

1. Make an abbreviated transcription of dialogue you want to appear as subtitles. Compress dialogue exchanges down to essentials—you don’t want the audience so busy reading that it doesn’t see your film.
2. Get the text translated by a literate, native speaker (not that friend who took several Spanish classes). Have it typed up with all the appropriate accents and then checked by at least two other people who are literate native speakers.
3. Make a copy of your film ready to lay in superimposed subtitles.
4. Pick a clear typeface in yellow with black edging. Your subtitles must be clearly legible no matter how light or dark the background. Use a size of font that is easy to read on a TV screen and place subtitles well into the TV safe area so nothing gets lost on a differently adjusted set.
5. Place every sentence within a continuous shot. This is because we read the title all over again if it overhangs the next shot. This is very irritating and unnecessary.

6. To accommodate this, break long sentences into short sections, indicating anything that is run-on with an ellipsis (…), as in this example, which is spread out over four shots:

   How are you?	Shot 1
   I feel OK just now …	Shot 2
   … but I am hoping you can …	Shot 3
   … give me some advice.	Shot 4

7. Copyright—At the very end of the titles, remember to include your name and the © symbol, with the year as a claim to the copyright of the material. To file for copyright in the United States, look up the U.S. Copyright Office at www.loc.gov/copyright and follow the directions. If you reside in another country, be sure to check out the correct copyright procedure with professionals.

Legal Omissions

If and when you come to sell your film, legal omissions can be costly or even paralyzing. Be sure you have the legal right to use everything in your film, especially contributions by participants and all music that was not a legitimate part of a location’s sound. No television channel will transmit your film unless you have documentary proof that all contents are legal for them to transmit.

Press Kit and Web Site

Now your film is complete, you can enter it in festivals. People who see or read about your work may look for you on the Internet, so develop a Web site for your film where they can reach you or buy copies. To help you market your work at festivals, carry press kits to give out. This might be a folder containing a leaflet promoting the film, quotations from any praise or reviews it has received, brief details on the careers of the makers, and good quality photographs. Everything printed should include your e-mail and Web site address, phone number, fax number, and mailing address.

Festivals

Find festivals via the Web sites cited in Chapter 36, From School to Film Industry. At last, you get to experience the ultimate rite of passage: seeing your film in the company of your true masters—a paying audience. This can either be thrilling or chastening. Whichever comes your way, it’s the final reckoning, the last phase of learning, and represents closure on that project. Go to all the festivals you can afford and go armed with press kits and business cards. You will be surprised what develops from serendipitous encounters at screenings and conferences.

Now what film will you make next?