Bevibel Design

Why is this on my portfolio?

Supertitles sound like a pretty straightforward affair, or at least they did to me when I took on this job. Type them up, throw them up on a screen, and done. Might take a while, but it's all pretty much grunt work. Right? Turns out that is not the case at all. There is a fine art to crafting supertitles that are clearly legible and non-redundant, and running them is not easy either. Here's what I learned about what makes good supertitles:

• They need to be large enough to be easily legible at a glance, but not so large that it becomes difficult to fit what needs to fit on the screen to convey a chunk of meaning. This requires some careful planning, because remaking 500+ PowerPoint slides in a different size font is not something anyone wants to do.
• They should not be visible whenever someone is singing. Sections of text often repeat, and then, depending on the situation it may be best to project the whole thing again, part of it so people realize it is repeating, or nothing at all. Many of these instances were hammered out with the director.
• They should be translated in a manner that is clear and concise, but also as close as possible to a literal translation so none of the meaning is lost. I don't know French myself, so I worked off of two different translations and sometimes appealed to the director to find out exactly what something translated to.
• They need to be precisely timed with the music, which means coming up and going out on in rhythm, and they should ideally go up in a rhythm consistent with the music in any given section. This requires following along with the score and notating each cue's exact location in the music.
• Ideally, they provide some possibilities for comedy! Phrased correctly, supertitles can carry some of the jokes in the original language into English. (see the video below for an example)

512 slides created and run in PowerPoint.

Video Excerpt

Production Stills

Video and photos courtesy of Eric Meyer