Many times you want to overlay some easy to read text or other information across your production. Maybe it's the name of the person you are interviewing, a newscaster's name, or even the current score of a sporting event. One way to do this with a little more excitement than simple text on top of your footage is by using a lower third. A lower third is simply a background, either static or moving, that only covers the bottom (or the side or top or whatever you want) of your composition. Your primary footage then shows on the rest of the comp.
It's easy to make great looking lower thirds using Photoshop or some similar image editor and your favorite Artbeats background clip. All you need to do is create a matte with an interestingly shaped lower third and use one of our full screen background clips to play within the shape.
Using Photoshop, create a new document. You'll probably want to work in square pixels, so NTSC users should use 720x540 or 768x576 and PAL users should use 768x576. Make the RGB channels completely black and make the portion that is your lower third white. You can then use a blur or similar effect to give the border of your matte a gradient effect. Often the easiest thing at this point is to save your document as a grayscale image and then set your editor to use the grayscale image as though it were a file with an alpha channel. This is normally called a "matte" or "mask" but the principle is exactly the same. Or, you can save the black and white image as an alpha channel for an all black image.
Creating a lower third in Adobe After Effects.
Next, import your lower third into your video editing application, along with the background clip you want to have playing in the lower third. Of course, you'll also need your primary footage so you can overlay the lower third. Place your primary footage on the lowest layer in your timeline and put your background above that. Then set your editor to use the lower third as an image matte. The exact method to do this will vary depending on which application you use, but it's a very common operation and all halfway decent video editors are capable of it.
Creating a lower third in Adobe Premiere.
I made a couple of really quick lower third mattes that you can download
from the this website. The first is a very basic rectangle across the
bottom of the screen and the other has a crescent shape. Both have a
graduated edge to make the lower third image blend into the main footage. I
also created projects in Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere to show you
exactly how to create this effect. Click on one of the following links to downlod the files.
lowerthirds.zip (Windows, Unix) or
lowerthirds.sit (Mac OS)
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