Advertising legals in the United States is just like our Healthcare. Inefficient, inconsistent, expensive, and puts a bunch of milk in someone’s fridge. Might as well be you and your fridge. And your kind of milk.
“Most importantly, this should not be an issue that takes up your time or stresses you out. You’re not a lawyer, nor standards and practices. You make a recommendation based on past experience.” - @ytf
In order to type legals you have to decide. Are you a pioneer or a settler? We’d all love to think we are pioneers. We all know that they end up face down in a river with an arrow in their back while the settlers enjoy their cornbread and bacon sandwiches sitting in their rocking chairs sipping on moonshine.
References
Unless you’ve already shipped something for this combination of agency and brand, ask for a reference to match. Can’t get one? YouTube it. Seriously. 98% of us work on brands that advertise all the darn time. Go to their channel, find a reference, screen grab it, bring it into Flame, resize it to HD, and use that as a guide. Anything in the last few months should be fine.
Still can’t find one? Look for their competitor’s ads and start there. Back in the day I used to cut political ads and the best way to get your opponent’s attack ads off the air was to have Aunt Jenny call the network and complain the legal wasn’t big enough. They’d shelve the ad for a few hours and give you the head start you needed to fling some poo.
Still can’t find one? Yikes. Welcome to Legal Town. Population: You. Here’s what should keep the sheriff from knockin on your door.
Size
First, don’t believe anybody when they say they want it 22 scan lines. Scan lines died with that lead-filled CRT that’s now someones fish tank. 22 scan lines used to be a legitimate thing cuz thats the smallest that NTSC cameras used to be able to actually resolve in the old Linotype and luma key video days. Today we got pixels. And that 22? That may or may not refer to pixels…AT NTSC RESOLUTION. Back in the day we made legals that were 22 scan lines high in a 720x486 frame. That became a bit of a standard and therefore a legal consumed 22/486 of the height of the frame, or, 4.5% of the height of the frame. So, in 1920x1080, 4.5% of the height of the frame is 1080*(22/486)=48.9, or, 49 pixels heigh. Therefore, a 49 pixel high legal in 1920x180 will down convert via center extraction to a 22 pixels heigh in NTSC.
So…
NTSC / HD
22 = 49
20 = 45
18 = 40
Here’s the rub. A lot of artists hear 22 scan lines, don’t think anything of it, type it up, send it, no consumer ever gets pissy, nobody gets sued, nobody’s car gets keyed and now its considered kosher for that particular combination of agency and brand. Sigh.
Duration
Historically, nobody ever got fired for sticking to this:
3 seconds for the first line + 1 second per addtl line.
1 line = 3 seconds
2 lines = 4 seconds
3 lines = 5 seconds
However, we are trending hard toward a “see and say” style. Meaning, the legal may only need to be visible for scenes in which it is relevant. Working on a car ad? A legal qualifying a particular car feature may only need to be on the scene in which it’s being demontstrated, not necessarily the reverse angle reaction shot of mom using her brainwaves to close the boot, so that legal may or may not need to dangle on to it’s neighboring shots. Different brands do it differently. Neither are wrong, but only one is correct for that brand.
Location
Nobody ever got fired for keeping all legals and supers within 1920x1080 4x3 Title Safe. Because some networks still only receive a single deliverable for HD and NTSC, someone somewhere may take your beautiful 1920x1080 rectangle and chop off the sides, make it more of a square and mush it down to 720x486.
But! 1920x1080 4x3 Action Safe is a legitimate standard introduced a decade ago and is widely accepted …until some no-talent bozo who doesn’t know a croustade from a crostini bounces your spot and makes you look bad and your client misses the air date and you never work in this business again.
Some advertisers skip the 4x3 entirely and go for 1920x1080 16x9 Title Safe or Action Safe. This typically gets temporarily flagged during QC at the major distribution houses, but can be overridden with permission from your client.
Keeping things neat and tidy and as close to 4x3 title safe means much less art direction for 1x1, 4x5, and everybody’s favorite, 9x16 deliverables. “That’s a good thing” - Martha Stewart
Legibility
Condense that stuff. Scale it on the X as much as you want, as long as it’s legible. Most of the time you could squash it 65-85% and nobody would ever know. Typically though the Art Directors want it closer to normal, until it gets forced onto 2 lines and crosses the product. Oh, and be a good Lame Artist and don’t ever condense or use the Scale button in the Flame Text module! Shame on you if you do! It looks horsey and you should only be typing in the Text module. Output a matte and comp it downstream in Action and use modern filtering algorithms like EWA when non-proportionally scaling. Don’t worry, there’s a Logik Topik for that too…
Transparency
I have 2 rules.
- Never ship a legal that is 0% transparent*.
- Never ship a legal that is 0% opaque**.
Anywhere in the middle that is legible should be fine.
*I always confuse transparent with opaque.
**I always confuse opaque with transparent.
Typeface
98% of the time its Helvetica Condensed Light. The rest its probably Myriad Pro, SF, or a custom font for that brand.
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