showing large pieces of text in a video

Hi guys,

After producing some web-commercials and smaller instructional videos, I'm currently working on my first big project (25K $). So obv. I want to deliver a professional product.
For a mental healt care institute I'm producing a training DVD for staff members to learn physical techniques (baised on aikido) to deal with agression from patients. The first part consists of about 30, 2 to 4 minute, demonstrations how to act when attacked and gain control over the patient. The second part consists of 12 scenes, where professional actors play an aggresive patient and staff members (playing 'themselves') intervene and regain physical of the patient and the situation.

Both parts have to start off with some basic information about the techniques, like body posture etc. The text is roughly one US letter (using the right term here? I'm european...)
My idea is to have a voice-over narrate the text, with bulletpoints and sometimes whole sentences appear as text on screen. An other option might be to show the whole text (while being narrated).
In both options I would like the text to be visually accompanied by stills or preferably even parts of the videos.

Do you guys have any advice to mix these two (text and image) together in a professional and attractive way? Important here is that the visual (image/video) part can't be to distracting. It's important that the viewer absorpes the information!

Maybe you can point to some plug-in effects (payed ones, no problem) or give me some tips on a nice-looking, proffesional and informative way to present text pieces in a DVD.
Or maybe some examples of text representation in video/dvd.

I'm editing in FCPx and have some minor skills in Photoshop but for the quality-level I want to produce those skills aren't good enough.

Thanks!
Rudolf

I think it will all just depend on how much text there really is.

I always feel like the less text that someone has to comprehend on a screen the better. A video is all about show don't tell. But if the text is required, then maybe go the old silent film direction and have slates of text between the actual video???

It seems like there is a lot of action that will be happening in the video, so having text on the screen at the same time would make the viewer have to choose between reading and watching action, and they'll always pick action.

Since it's instructional, I think breaking it up with simple slates in between will be the most effective way to communicate the message. When they are reading they can focus on processing information that way, when they are watching the video they can process the information in a more visual way.

This kind of video is all about simplicity and really getting the message across. Obviously you don't want it to look like those crappy Sensodyne ads that are just awful.



Seriously, what kind of ad is that? Are they intentionally going crappy like that to try and convince the viewer that it's not an ad?

jimiHx wrote: …  I'm producing a training DVD … 

keep in mind: DVD is 720x480 pixel res. Max.
Theoretically!

Most DVDplayers are connected analogue ...

so ... 'text' smaller than 30-40pts is REALLY hard to read on a screen.
This no 'Retina' quality
______________

Is Video the right media for reading?
I say: No!
It's audio, spoken language for example. it's moving images.
All, a book can NOT offer. Which is good for reading.
So, if you do Video, use its advantages.
Not its disadvantages ............

Try to illustrate with a+v, what's 'only' written in the text.-

my 5€ cents ....