How to Shoot an In-Camera Special Effect: the Superimposed Title (or Subtitle)

Want your opening title superimposed on your opening shot? Need a fast, single subtitle for a scene? For the low-budget auteur, this is a low-budget solution that saves you the cost of the title shooter and the optical printer. But be careful. While this can be a great trick for the film student, it takes careful preparation and a keen eye for detail.

In section two, we'll discuss how to do it even more cheaply if you've just blown your last pennies on a six pack of beer and Twinkies.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A plain computer monitor
• A 16mm camera with a reversible motor

Superimposing Titles The Low-Budget Way

1. Shoot the opening shot you on which you want your title super-imposed. Shoot until you get the right take, but take careful notes on the starting footage count of each shot until you get the shot you like. This will be critical.

2. When you get the take you like, write down the starting and ending footage numbers of the take. In this case, we'll say it was take two, from 25 feet to 55 feet.

3. While blacking out the lens with the lens cap, or taking the camera into a dark room, rewind the film back to the 25 foot mark on the counter.

4. Can't rewind? You have two options. 1) In a pitch black room or changing bag, take the film out of the camera and manually rewind it by hand. Or 2) reverse the reels in the camera, placing the load reel on the take-up spindle and the take-up reel on the load spindle and run the camera again in forward (effectively "rewinding" the film) until the reel spins out. Make sure the film is completely rewound and the footage counter reads zero. With the lens cap still on, or in a pitch black room, advance the camera forward until you're at the beginning of the shot you want, i.e. where the footage counter reads 25 feet again.

5. Set up your title card on your light box, take a reflective light reading and frame the title as you want it to appear over your footage.

6. Shoot your title, re-running the same footage through the camera, re-exposing it to the title on the light box. Take care to only run the camera from 25 feet to 55 feet (the beginning and ending of the selected take) or other parts of your film will also have the title superimposed over them.

7. Develop and edit your footage as usual...

Superimposing Titles nThe No-Budget Way

8. Don't have a light box? Don't have time to build one? Follow the instructions above, but instead of using a light box, use these alternate steps.

9. Use a standard computer monitor to shoot your title. Simply take any of a number of programs on the market, from Paint, to Photoshop, to Word. Create a black screen with white lettering in the font you want for your title.

10. Center your title on the screen and frame your camera so that the edges of the monitor don't appear. Shoot in a dark room to prevent any light spill.

11. Take a reflective light reading and shoot your title, re-running the same footage through the camera, re-exposing it to the title on the screen. Take care to only run the camera from 25 feet to 55 feet (the beginning and ending of the selected take) or other parts of your film will also have the title superimposed over them.

12. Develop and edit your footage as usual...

Tips & Warnings

• There is the slight possibility you will see a frame "roll" (a gray line) through your titles, due to the frame rate of your computer monitor, though generally the brightness of the title will wash it out.