Once upon a time, Sergei Eisenstein paid a visit to his friend Eduard Tisse.
“Eddie, my dear and sincere friend, I want to shoot a film!” he said.
“Well, you don't say!” Eddie replied.
“Yep, a revolution-themed one at that, a film that will fully reflect the merciless exploitation of working people! What's more, with an armor-clad ship!
“An armor-clad ship?”
“Yes, with an ironclad, a revolutionary ironclad! But there's a problem!”
“What kind of problem?” the famous cinematographer became concerned.
“Contemporary cinematography is unable to convey voices! And as you know, Eddie, the revolutionary-minded masses have slogans which need to be conveyed. Conveyed so expressively that they evoke a response even from the most stone-hearted audience!”
“Then write them down!” Eddie shot back.
“What do you mean? How?” Sergei was surprised.
“Let me show you!” Ed replied enthusiastically and proceeded to teach Sergei how to add captions and subtitles.
Adding subtitles
“Look here, Sergei, once you've shot all the episodes of your film, you will merge them together using the movie maker online, won't you?”
“Eddie, my friend, of course! Why?”
“So, Sergei, once you've uploaded and prepared all the video clips, add your slogans using the Add button. But prior to that, you have to enter your slogan in the text and subtitle field.” “Wow, so simple! Wait, Ed, what if I want to change the text color or add some kind of a strong and austere font?”
“It's a piece of cake! Look here, I'll show you how to set a certain style for the text and subtitles.”
A short archival video record demonstrating how Tisse taught Eisenstein to add subtitles in the movie maker online:
Adding a text and subtitle style
“So, Eduard, when you need to change any parameters of the text, scroll down the movie maker window a bit. Below the editing field, you'll see pretty much every possible text and subtitle parameter: font, size, outlining, position in the frame, aligning, appearance effects, scale. Everything is simple and clear. You can also set a fixed duration for each subtitle. There are two ways to do this: precise and approximate.
Approximate
There's the slider in the lower part of each subtitle. Move it to set the approximate duration of the subtitle.
Precise
- Select the subtitle and press the edit button.
- Set a suitable duration in the subtitle editor.
- The selected value is saved automatically, after which you can go back to the movie maker.
Going back to auto duration
- Select the subtitle and press the edit button.
- In the subtitle editor, click on the duration parameter. Then press the “Use default” button in the lower part of the dialog box.
- Go back to the main window of the movie maker.
“Wow, is it really that simple?”
“It is! But that's not all. Let's say you suddenly decide to switch your great film director's career for an ace advertiser's one. To make commercials, you'll likely need to know how to create a creeping line!” Eddie said in a mysterious tone.
“Tell me!” Sergei implored.
“Of course, there's nothing I can't spare for a good friend!”
Below is another archival video record that has remained intact. It shows ever-to-be-famous Eduard Tisse's Apple MacBook Pro desktop screen when he was teaching Sergei Eisenstein to adjust the text parameters.
Creating a creeping line
“The main thing you need to create a crawler message is the “Fit video width” switch. In the main editor, the value applies to all text and subtitles by default. If you're editing a specific subtitle, “Fit width” will apply only to it.”
“When the switch is on, no matter how long the text is, it automatically fits the frame widths. When the switch is off, the text is displayed as is, without fitting to width. So, we should type up the text without line breaks (without pressing Enter) and turn the switch off.”
“After that, we have to set the crawling direction, duration, and speed. This is adjusted via the appearance and disappearance parameters. For example, we need the text to crawl from right to left. So, select the right-to-center arrow in the appearance effect field, and the center-to-left one in the disappearance effect field. If you want the text to grow or shrink as it crawls, set the appearance and disappearance scale correspondingly.”
“Effect duration, Sergei, is another important parameter. For the text to crawl continuously, set the maximum duration value for the appearance and disappearance effects. If you want the text to remain on the screen for a while, adjust the appearance and disappearance effects so that their total duration is shorter than the text's on-screen time! Visually, you can monitor this looking at the narrow bar to the left of each file. Its broadening and narrowing show the time of appearance and disappearance, respectively!”
“Of course, as I've already said, you can apply this setting to all subtitles or transform only one subtitle into a crawler!”
“It's a bit complicated, but I got it! Thanks, Ed, you've helped me a lot. I don't even know where I'd be without you!”
“You're welcome!”
This is the last still-intact archival video record of the historical dialog on creating a video with a creeping line in the online movie maker.