Unless your purpose is to be annoying, it should be a lot less than 1/3.
Like the bottom 15-20% for starters.

Heaven-forbid that I should be annoying anyone here. I just thought that there might be some sort of industry standard. I realize that the existing 'bugs' , 'crawls' and lower thirds sometimes overwhelm the viewing audience. Sorry to be a bother.

Bob

The industry standard seems to be "As big as we can get away with."

I sure Musicvid wasn't saying that YOU are annoying, he just said unless you wanted to annoy your audience, you're lower-third should take up less than 1/3 of the screen.

Actually "lower-third" merely refers to its position somewhere in the lower third of the screen as opposed to the middle or top third. I've never known there to be a "rule" for the size for lower-thirds. You should use your own creative judgement, you'll know what feels right.

You should use your own creative judgement, you'll know what feels right.

Very well put John.
I use lower thirds periodically and the size as well as everything else that's a part of it is determined by what it's going to be over top of.
The Movietools site has some free lower thirds for you to play with if you're interested.

edit: kkolbo has, IMO, a good example of a lower third in the Chroma Keying on V10a w/ Sony or Something better? thread.

Mike

Hehe Bob,
My sentence should have read, "Unless your purpose is to annoy your viewing audience, it should be a lot less than 1/3."

It was a hidden commentary on what sports broadcasters do, not you. You are not annoying me at all.

Thank you all for your advice. My mistake is that I thought broadcast TV would have had 'standards'. I guess that is evident in their volumn control over commercials. I apologize to 'musicvid' for misreading his comment. I found it surprising since he is very patient with us amateurs.

Thanks again.
Bob

Absolutely no apology necessary, Bob. Forum posts and emails can be misread because they are usually brief. And I can see where mine could be easily read in a different way. On the contrary, I have always enjoyed reading your posts.

"very patient with us amateurs"
The thing I try to remind myself is that we all started at the same place with this stuff. None of us was born knowing any of it.

Probably slightly off-topic, but here in Australia, many of the free-to-air commercial networks now roll the credits to shows in the lower third - while running a promo for the next show in the upper two thirds.

The end result is that the credits are so small that even with a mega-screen TV it is impossible to read them. It is just one, of many, reasons why I have drifted away from these networks and watch the Government-owned network or the quasi Government-owned network. At least they seem to be applying some standards.

So, as advised by others, be very selective with lower thirds and try not to annoy your audience.

Cheers

Russ.