A lower third is a small plate with a name, a role or a title line that sits in the bottom third of the frame, which is where the name comes from. It identifies who is speaking or what is on screen without taking the shot away from them.
What it looks like
Picture an interview frame. Soon after the speaker starts talking, a plate slides in from the left edge: a name on the first line, a role under it in a lighter weight. It holds while the viewer reads it, then leaves the way it came.
In Studio's motion vocabulary this is an entry and an exit of the same element, such as slide-in and slide-out, with the reading time in between. They are designed together: in Studio, an exit takes exactly the same parameters as its entry (direction, duration in frames, delay, stagger and easing), so the pair is one decision rather than two.
When to use it, and when not to
A lower third earns its place whenever the viewer needs to know who or what they are looking at:
- Interviews and talking heads. The speaker's name and role the first time they appear.
- A demo with a presenter. Who is walking through the product.
- A topic or chapter label over footage or a screen recording.
It is the wrong device when the words are the whole message: that is kinetic typography, not a label on top of something else. It also doesn't belong on a frame that is already complete: Studio's review checklist traces an unclear subject to competing contrast, size and motion, and a lower third should support the focal element, not compete with it.
A few rules keep it readable:
- Let it read before it leaves. Studio's timing rules start a reading window only when movement and anything covering the text have stopped, not when the plate starts to move. A name that slides out before it has been read is the "result disappears before it reads" failure from the review checklist.
- Stagger the lines, gently. The name can land a moment before the role. That offset is a stagger; keep it small enough that both lines read as one plate.
- Pick curves by gesture. An arriving plate settles, and a leaving one gathers speed out of frame. Studio's starting curves for those are in easing.
- Mind vertical video. In a 9:16 video for TikTok, Reels or Shorts, the platform covers the bottom of the frame with the description and account name, and the right edge with its buttons. remocn's caption positioning guide gives the numbers it uses for captions there: 540px off the bottom of a 1080×1920 frame, with 160px of padding on each side. A lower third has to clear the same interface, so in vertical video it sits higher than its name suggests.
- Share the band with captions on purpose. The same guide puts landscape captions in the bottom third too, 108px off the bottom edge of a 1920×1080 frame. If a video has both, decide which one owns that space at each moment.
How to ask for it in Remocn Studio
A lower third with name and role, slides in from the left, holds 3 seconds, leaves the same way.
Give the exact name and role text and the moment it should appear ("when the speaker starts talking").
Once the plate looks right, ask the agent to save it as a component. The agent can give a saved component a role, and a lower third is an entry. Saved components lead their role's group in the Components view, and when you reference one in a message, its role travels with it. A motion brand kit walks through building a lower third alongside the logo sting, intro and outro.
Ready-made components
remocn has no ready-made lower third component. Ask Studio to build one from your brand and save it as described above. These pages help with the parts around it:
- Caption positioning: where text sits in landscape and vertical frames, with safe-zone numbers.
- Your brand: hand your colors and fonts to the agent once, so a plate you build comes out looking like yours.
Related terms
A lower third's arrival is shaped by easing, and its two lines are often offset with a stagger. It usually travels with a logo sting in a brand kit, and its place in vertical video depends on safe zones. The animated logo reveal recipe walks through making the sting.