Names, supers and the end of the film

The super, and what it is for

A super — short for superimposition, also called a lower third or an astons — identifies somebody on screen. Name, and a role or a reason we should listen to them.

Its job is narrow: answer "who is this" at the moment the viewer asks it, and then leave. Everything else about it is decoration.

Motion, Sound and Music covers designing and animating one. This lesson is about the editorial decisions around it, which are the ones that go wrong.

When it appears

On the person's first substantial line, not their first appearance. If somebody walks through a shot at minute one and speaks at minute three, super them at minute three.

Two to three seconds after they start speaking, not on their first frame. The viewer needs a beat to register a new face before they can absorb a name; arriving simultaneously means both are missed.

Once per person per piece, unless the piece is long — over about fifteen minutes, or after a substantial gap, a repeat is helpful.

Never over the end of a sentence that matters. The eye goes to new text on screen and stops listening for about a second. Put supers under the less important part of the answer.

What goes in it

Two lines at most:

Priya Ramesh
District Health Officer, Nashik

The second line is the one people get wrong. It should say why this person's view matters, not their full job title. "Worked on the scheme for eleven years" is more useful than "Deputy Assistant Director (Programmes)".

And get the spelling right. Send the exact wording to the subject before you lock, or check it against something they wrote themselves. A misspelled name is the error people remember and the one that is most easily avoided.

Consistency is the whole craft

One template, one position, one duration, one animation, for every super in the piece. Duplicate rather than recreate.

The usual failure is that the fourth super is made in a hurry, twenty pixels higher than the others, with a longer second line that wraps. Nobody can say what is wrong; the piece just feels less made.

Position: left-aligned, starting around 10% in from the left, with the baseline around 75–80% down the frame in 16:9. In vertical, higher — the bottom fifth is interface.

Titles inside the piece

Section titles, chapter cards, statements. Two rules.

Keep them on the picture rather than on black where you can. A full-screen card stops the film; text over a continuing shot does not.

Give them the same treatment as supers — same family, same weight, a size step up. Two sizes for a whole piece is plenty.

Credits

The end of the film, and the part most people improvise.

What to include: everybody who worked on it, the subjects who agreed to appear, music with the attribution string each licence requires, archive sources, and thanks. For a commissioned piece, the client's requirements.

Where the licence obligations land. CC-BY requires attribution in the manner specified; some free music tiers require a specific credit line and a code. This is a contractual obligation, not a courtesy, and the credits are usually where it is discharged. Take the exact strings from the licence log you kept.

Roll or cards. A roll — credits scrolling upward — is standard for anything over five minutes. Cards are better for short pieces and for anything watched on a phone, because a roll at readable speed on a small screen is either too fast to read or too long to sit through.

Speed: a credit roll should move slowly enough that a name is on screen for at least three seconds. Most amateur rolls are twice as fast as that.

Do not roll credits over a black screen for ninety seconds on a platform that measures retention. Cards, or credits over a final shot, or a short roll. The last thirty seconds of a video being empty is a measurable cost with no benefit.

The end card

For web delivery, the last few seconds often carry a call to action: subscribe, a link, the next video.

Keep it short — three to five seconds — and put it over something, not over black. And make sure the actual end of the piece has landed first; an end card that arrives before the film has finished saying its last thing undercuts it.

The things that must appear somewhere

Depending on the piece and the jurisdiction, some text is not optional: a sponsorship or paid-partnership disclosure, a label on synthetic or AI-generated content where required, safety warnings for content that could trigger photosensitive epilepsy, and any statutory credit a funder requires. These requirements differ by country and platform and are changing; check them for your case rather than assuming.

Today

Open a piece you have made with more than two supers and compare their positions, sizes and durations. If any differ, you have found the template you should have built.