Supers
Like Hermione casting Wingardium Leviosa on your words so they hover precisely in the viewer's field of vision.
Supers — short for "superimpositions" or "superimposed text" — is the broadcast and film industry collective term for any text element that is overlaid (superimposed) on top of video footage. Lower thirds identifying speakers are supers. Title cards naming locations or times are supers. Chapter headings dividing a long video into sections are supers. Captions and subtitles are supers. Graphic callouts labeling product features in a demo video are supers. The term encompasses all text and graphic elements that appear on top of the footage, layered over the image rather than replacing it, visible to the viewer as an informational addition to the visual content.
The word "supers" comes from the technical reality of how text overlays are created: they are superimposed on the video signal, placed on top of the image at a compositing stage in either production (via a character generator in live broadcast) or post-production (via graphics tracks in an NLE timeline). In live broadcast — news, sports, live events — a character generator (CG) operator types and displays supers in real time, overlaying lower thirds, scores, and graphic elements onto the live video feed as the broadcast proceeds. In post-production video, supers are created in the editing timeline as Motion Graphics elements, static text clips, or pre-rendered graphic files placed on tracks above the video footage.
For B2B video teams, "supers" is the production-vocabulary shorthand for all the text work that needs to happen in post-production. When a client reviews a rough cut and asks for "supers added throughout," they mean: add the necessary lower thirds, title cards, chapter headings, and callout graphics. When a producer lists "supers" as a line item in a production budget, it covers the design and animation time required to create all on-screen text elements for the project. Understanding supers as a collective term avoids the confusion that arises when trying to distinguish between the many specific sub-types of on-screen text — "lower thirds" (speaker identification), "title safe" (area where supers must stay to be visible on all screens), and "title cards" (full-frame text) are all supers.
Related terms
- Lower Third— The name badge appearing when Gandalf enters Rivendell: 'Gandalf the Grey | Wizard, Fellowship of the Ring.'
- Title Card— 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.' Full-screen text. That's the entire first-act setup.
- Graphics (On-Screen)— Hermione's S.P.E.W. posters — well-intentioned text floating on screen that absolutely refuses to leave.
- Burned-In Captions— Like Elvish carved into Mithril — permanent, and cannot be undone.
- Overlay— The LCARS display layered over Picard's viewscreen — information on top of image, for those who need both.