Tips for movie and documentary producers

Those interested in producing a movie or documentary or any audio-visual production for television, DVD or cinema, and possessing a certain amount of ambition, would be well advised to take the subject of subtitling into consideration.

It is hard to believe: movie and documentary producers spare no cost or effort to produce a high quality product, but wind up ruining it by overlooking some of the basic principles of subtitling.

A little basic knowledge can prevent spoken dialogue from being excluded from subtitles at the end of a scene, fragments of subtitles disappearing at chapter breaks and, even worse, subtitles appearing across people's faces.

Basic knowledge about subtitling
-subtitles belong at the bottom of the screen,
centered or aligned to the left.
-subtitles should have a minimum duration
of about 1.5 seconds.
-a single line of subtitling, consisting of some 40 characters (including spaces) can be read in 3 seconds.

Do's and Don'ts
-place graphic titles (names of interviewees, information about time of place such as 'Atlanta, August 1956' and 'ten years later' at the very top right or left hand side of the screen, whichever looks best, but never at the bottom.
Why? To prevent subtitles clashing with graphic titles, which looks awful. Subtitles aligned to the right or moved a little to avoid clashing with graphic titles are no solution, as they clutter the screen and may show up on the chin, nose, or even eyes of a talking head. Anybody watching Discovery or National Geographic channels will witness this horrible phenomenon.
-give the subtitle enough time should an important line be spoken just before a scene change or fade-out. Too often subtitlers are forced either to bring in the subtitle too early or leave it too long (into the fade-out or even the next scene), both alternatives to avoid the subtitle disappearing before it's been read properly.
-take chapter breaks into consideration. No subtitles are allowed during the four frames before and after chapter breaks, as this will cause them to disappear on DVD's. A movie maker ignoring this rule ruins his own work. One of the few producers who seem to take this into consideration is Joss Whedon, creator and producer of, for instance, 'Buffy the Vampire Slayers'. In his DVD liner notes he reminds his colleagues not to use dialogue in fade-outs, and his own dialogue is always completed in time.

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