Video Treatment

All videos should have captioning. Videos will have either open captioning or closed captioning depending on where the video is going to be published. For videos published on multiple platforms, the video should be adjusted to cater to each platform. It is critical to have captioning available for accessibility issues.

Open captioning

Open captioning refers to captions that are “burned” into the video, meaning that they are put on the video in production and exported with the captions on the video itself. This is the type of captioning necessary for publishers like IGTV or Twitter, where there isn’t an option to turn on captions.

Open captions typically provide the most creative control over how the captions will look. Captions should have white text and should be in the roboto font and be heavily weighted. If it’s difficult to read the captions, put a bar behind them. The bar should be a consistent height throughout the video, but can change width depending on the length of words on screen. A black bar is recommended, but teal or purple can be used when appropriate. Black should be used for any videos that are tonally serious.

Closed captioning

The other main type of captioning is closed captioning. Closed captioning is not on the video itself, but instead is captioning that the viewer can turn on or off. Whether or not the video can use closed captions instead of open captions depends on the platform the video will be published on. For example, Facebook and Youtube allow users to upload caption files, which allows for closed captions. In these cases, the video creator should create an SRT file and upload that with the video.

The style of the captions should follow the guidelines mentioned above for open captions as much as possible.

Matter does not currently have premade assets for an intro and outro. Once they are created, this will be updated.

As such, we use minimal intros and outros. Most of the time, there won’t be an intro. For certain videos where it feels necessary, an intro matching the tone of the video should be created with only the bare necessities, such as a title.

The outro should be a screen with the background color being black, grey or a Matter brand color (see Brand Design). On that screen should be the Matter logo as a watermark, and the credits for who created the video. Credits should be aligned left for both the text and the text boxes. Brand fonts should be used.

On all of the video produced for Matter should be a logo bug to brand the content. The white Matter logo should be put on the bottom right corner of the screen at 70% opacity. Similar to photo watermarks, the bug can go in the bottom left corner if the images on screen are often busy in the right corner.

Similar to intros and outros, Matter doesn’t currently have premade assets for lower thirds and video credits. As such, these items should be created for each video.

Lower thirds

Lower thirds should come in from the left and be on the bottom third, as the name suggested. Use a bolded text for the name, which should be bigger and on top. The subject’s title should be non-bold and below that in a noticeable smaller size. Use the fonts “Lato” for the name and “Roboto” for the title. Behind the text should be a bar, with a background color of black, Matter’s teal or Matter’s purple. Color should be chosen based on the tone of the video and should remain the same for all lower-thirds and video credits in the video.

The background bar should slide in from the left. Once it is in place, the font should fade in. For videos with a quicker pace, the font and the bar can slide in at the same time.

Video credits

Video credits should have a similar style to lower-thirds, both in design and in animation. The biggest differences are size and location. Video credits should be substantially smaller. They should be small enough that it doesn’t pull the viewers attention away from what’s happening in the footage but can also be read and understood. Use the font Roboto for video credits.

Transitions should be used sparingly. More often than not, a hard cut is the best approach. However, transitions may help the style or pacing of a video and can be used when appropriate.

For videos that are tonally lighter and faster-paced, footage transitions should look like the slide transition (whether using a premade transition or manually using keyframes) with the footage moving to the left.

For more serious videos, a cross fade can be used. Occasionally that can mean a fade to black, or a fade dip to black. However, both of those should be used very sparingly and with much intention.

The general look and feel of Matter videos should be in-line with Matter’s branding overall. That includes using tactile textures and objects in a digital creation, using retro-tech designs and using multiple layers and incorporating background objects, for example. For more information on Matter’s branding, see Brand Design.

A few examples for inspiration include Vox’s “Explained” series on Netflix, the Netflix documentary “13th” and videos from online zines such as Unpublished Magazine and Gen-Blk Zine.