How to put text behind a person in a video

What the effect is, and why it works

A title sits between the camera and the background, and the person stands in front of it. The words look like part of the room, not something laid on top of the picture. You see it in channel intros, thumbnails and the first seconds of short videos.

It works because it adds depth. The eye reads the person overlapping the text and decides the text is far away, which makes a flat shot feel three-dimensional. It also gives a title more weight than a caption at the bottom of the screen.

How to make it read

This effect fails when the viewer cannot read the word. Most of the work is in choosing the text and the shot.

• ·Big, bold text. A thick font at a large size. A thin font gets broken up by the person's outline and stops being legible.
• ·Let the person cover only part of it. A head or shoulder across the middle of a word is the classic look. If the person hides most of the letters, nobody can read the title.
• ·Keep the words short. One or two words, such as a name, a place or a season. A sentence has too many letters for the person to hide.
• ·Use a still-ish subject. A person who stays roughly in place looks best. If they walk or wave across the frame, the title is covered and uncovered all the time.
• ·Contrast with the background. Pick a text color that stands out from the wall behind it, not from the person. A bright color on a dark scene, or the reverse.
• ·Leave space around the head. Frame the shot with room above the shoulders so the text has somewhere to go.

How it is built

The effect is three layers. The bottom layer is the original footage. The middle layer is the text. The top layer is the same footage again, with the background removed so only the person is left. Because the person is on top, they cover the words where they overlap.

Doing it by hand in an editor means duplicating the clip, cutting the person out of the top copy, and keeping the two copies and the text lined up through every cut. In Woven, one setting on the text does it for you, and the person stays in front when you cut or split the clip.

The limits to know

Behind Subject uses a subject cut-out of a person in a video, so it follows the same rules.

• ·It needs a video. A video with a person must be playing at the text's time, in the same group as the text. Text over a photo or a blank background has no one to go behind.
• ·Text takes only a subject mask. A text item can have a subject mask and no other kind. Captions take no mask, so they stay in front.
• ·It does not animate. The cut-out is not keyframed. The person is cut out as they are in the footage, wherever they are.
• ·The person hides the text everywhere. Wherever the person is in the frame, they cover the text. If the text wraps to a second line, that line goes behind the person too.
• ·The clean cut finishes in the cloud. The Mac shows a quick preview straight away. The finished cut-out for a video uses Woven credits, and export waits for it.

Put text behind a person in Woven

Behind Subject arrived in Woven 0.2.40. Text goes behind the person in the video playing at its time, in the same group, and it stays behind through cuts and Remove Pauses. There are two ways in: the text's own Behind Subject switch, or a Reel menu command that does it in one click. You can also ask in chat. The agent sets the subject mask on the text for you.

Common questions