Lower Third
Name-and-title text overlay in the bottom third of the frame. Broadcast TV's name tag.
- COINED
- 1980s
- TAXONOMY
- ON-SCREEN
- RELATED
- 4
- TEMPLATES
- 0
The lower third is the name-and-title text overlay in the bottom third of the frame. It's broadcast TV's name tag - a CNN convention that documentary, podcasts, and YouTube interview channels adopted wholesale.
The reason lower thirds work is they answer a question the viewer is already asking ("who is this person?") without stealing focus from the speaker. They go in the bottom third because that's the least informationally-dense area of most face-forward shots.
Design choices matter. Sans-serif reads as broadcast; serif reads as documentary. Solid background reads as news; semi-transparent reads as modern. Animation in and out reads as professional; static reads as cheap. Hold one for 5 seconds when the person appears, then again every 3-4 minutes. Beyond that you're advertising your editing software.
Introducing speakers in interviews, documentaries, news. Identifying titles, locations, dates.
On a single-speaker tutorial - the audience already knows who's talking. In dramatic narrative - it shatters the illusion.
Terms next to this one.
Generic name for on-screen text generated by a character generator. The hardware vendor became the noun.
Text superimposed over picture - captions, names, locations. "Supered" comes from "superimposed."
The portion of the frame guaranteed to display on any TV or platform. Keep critical info here.
Captions baked into the video file. Can't be turned off. TikTok-style word-by-word lives here.