Writing on screen

Let us explore and work on the potentialities of the text-image relationship in cinema. Present since the silent era with intertitles, the written word has diversified with digital technology, facilitating the integration of texts and graphic overlays in contemporary film productions.

Cinema, far beyond just images

Cinema has never been composed solely of images and sounds, as images can convey more than just visuals; they can convey movement, paintings, humans, dance, theater, anything one desires, including the written word. Moreover, one can also write on images.

Silent cinema (from 1895 to 1927) heavily used the written word, particularly “intertitles,” to convey important dialogues of the characters. In contemporary cinema, certain films feature chapters written on screen, whether in serious films like Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon or in humorous ones like Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, among many others.

Digital technology and the shift toward the written word

For the past fifteen years, cinema has transitioned to digital for both shooting and post-production. Before this shift, working with film made image manipulation very complex and expensive. Since cinema has gone digital, it has become extremely easy to write text on screen and integrate what are known as graphic overlays. For example, texts being typed, drawings overlaid on the image, images within images, and other similar elements have become much more common than before.

Filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard made extensive use of on-screen text, particularly in his series Histoires du cinéma, which was entirely edited in video. At the time, in the 1980s, video allowed for the easy addition of titles, as many as desired, without additional cost. In cinema, each addition was a technical operation that had to be done in a lab. Even a simple dissolve came with a significant cost, whereas in video, with the tools available at the time, it was entirely possible to add titles, dissolves, page-turn effects, etc.

Social media videos, such as those on TikTok, make extensive use of on-screen text and the relationship between text and image. Even the figure of the YouTuber, who tells the viewer where to click on the screen to subscribe to the channel, uses writing that exists outside the screen!

I believe it is extremely enriching to explore, experiment, and play with on-screen text. The areas of exploration are still very untapped—let’s have fun with it, starting even from the screenplay stage.