as a big computer dork
FUCK PERIOD ACCURACY, DO WHAT YOU WANT
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I’ve been thinking about where to get sound effects, so I re-downloaded WorldsChat and went through the installation folder on the off chance that its sound effects would just be chilling in .wavs for me to use. Not only are they in there, there’s also an enormous treasure trove of midi music I can use! I’d been waiting on a friend of mine to make some 90’s midi style ambient music, but it turns out the real deal was just sitting here waiting for me.
Normally I’d be concerned about the copyright implications of borrowing this music, but since it’s a documentary about the software shot within the software, the legal territory is already weird enough that I’m just going to go for it.
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The actual viewport through which you can see the game Worlds only takes up about 2/3 of the screen, so I’m putting little animated character portraits of my guest and I in the bottom 1/3. For a while I’ve planned to also put in a little dialogue box containing an animated waveform of our speech as we talk. Today I thought: You know what, maybe I should actually put subtitles in there instead. It’s a hell of a lot more useful than waveforms, it makes the film more accessible to the hard of hearing, and it comports with what seems to be the new thing to do to get your video to go viral - always include subtitles so people can follow the preview without clicking the video.
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People are baking in subtitles now? Youtube supports them, but I guess that’s for twitter? How does Facebook video and instagram work?
I believe that content farm style video producers are typically baking in subtitles right now, especially for Facebook Video.
I’m working on this again for the first time since October! I’d been busy working on releasing Sarasota Half in Dream, but now I have plenty of time to finish this thing off.
I’d been unsatisfied with my performance on my narration, and I’d been really dreading re-recording. It’s always a pain in the ass for me, especially in my current place, where I have 4 housemates and my recording space gets tons of street noise. Luckily, when I dug back into my original recordings, I found an alternate take I liked much better, so I was able to avoid that whole mess.
Working on putting the subtitles in right now, and then I just have to finish the end credits and I think I’m good to export and release!
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Been doing a ton of work on the subtitle effects for this. I’ve finally got the concept working in After Effects, but it is a SLOG to actually go through and subtitle the whole film. Worth it though!
Here are some screenshots of the way I’m presenting it. The text scrolls like a video game dialogue box, and when it’s done scrolling, a little “next” arrow appears until the next line of speech starts to display.
What do y’all think? I’d love any suggestions you might have about the text, e.g. font, size, and colors. The text colors in particular I think could probably use some tweaking.
Credit to @HOBO for the awesome portraits and windows! I made the arrow all by myself like a big boy, but I modeled it after his art.
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I’m also now considering whether I should make a new window to frame the main footage so it looks like it’s encased within a window the same way the portraits and text are…
very nice
I’d try lowering the font size by about 30-40%; it looks pretty big for a game. I’d also give it a margin to breathe next to the window borders.
I can’t tell if a monospace font looks correct or not for what you’re going for; the font and window dressing is going for ‘Mac + color’; it’s a bit harder to read a monospace font, and of course it’s a space hog, but maybe that’s the right decision. It’s something I’d play with for a while
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I appreciate the feedback! I make the text a little smaller in order to put more of a margin between the text and borders. It looks much better that way! The idea about going monospace is interesting, but I like the current font display because it strikes a balance between computery and readable.
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Ah, that font looked monospace to my eyes. I definitely agree, more monospace would be problematic. And yeah, it definitely feels like a computer font, and, as one tied so deeply to '80s Mac culture, an ~~ elegant ~~ computer font
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It looks like plenty of shit I played on Saturn TBH.
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It might be worth increasing the contrast between the words and the text box background, unless that’s an essential part of the style. Light on light can be tiring to read.
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Yeah just add drop shadow to everything. That’s my new belief. It probably always works.
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Good call on the contrast! I increased saturation on the green text and added drop shadow to both green and yellow. Here’s where it’s at now, still interested in any further feedback folks have:
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i like the increased contrast in the top box! but now the letters there are darker the drop shadow muddles the forms a bit i feel. they’re fine on the lower one though, since that’s light text/dark bg
also i would maybe try shrinking the text even more? the tall letters feel like they have less breathing space against the box borders than they do between lines
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update: nah it looks fine
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Heh, thanks! I took your point but the janky way I’ve been setting these effects up meant it would have been a lot of work to change anyway at this point, so I think I’m locked in anyway. Making extremely slow progress on this film, but it’s getting there!
I have newfound respect for people who create subtitles. This is mind-numbingly boring and incredibly slow work, which I’ve made three times worse for myself because each line also needs to be properly animated in my fake UI. It’ll look cool, but I’ve set myself up with a very thankless job.
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So this film is done and… will also be appearing on Means TV! It’ll be exclusive to their platform once they launch, but in the mean time if anyone here wants to see it then PM me! I certainly owe this community for offering a ton of feedback and help as I developed it.
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