How to decide how much of your film stays on the presenter
Give Vizard Agent a number. "Keep the presenter on screen for about two thirds of the film and use graphics for the rest" is a brief it can work to and you can check, where "add some B-roll" produces whatever the footage happens to support.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
State the split as a percentage and say what the graphics are for. The number sets the rhythm of the film, and the list of facts decides where the cutaways land. Say whether the narration is fixed, too, because Vizard Agent needs to know if the audio is the specification or open to trimming.
Prompt
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
The ratio is the register of the film: journalism keeps the person talking on screen, while explainers cut away to diagrams. On a financial journalism piece built to a stated presenter ratio, the graphics turned out to be nearly all of the work, and three separate things went wrong with them. In the session behind this article it:
- Inspected the footage, the narration and the presenter's framing, so captions and window graphics would stay clear, and mapped the narration to the graphics without changing any spoken material.
- Kept the original voice with no music, since the source was already full-frame 1080p, and checked safe subtitle space at full resolution.
- Found a percentage stated before the figure it referred to, and kept both statements and flagged the slip rather than silently correcting the presenter.
- Set exact cue points for every number and diagram, built one consistent graphic system, and corrected names and transcription errors in the captions.
- Re-ran two failed graphics as separate, uniquely named jobs and reset a caption preset that sized text too large.
- Checked each graphic at full resolution and the subtitles against the presenter's hands and microphone, then removed unnecessary labels and unsupported wording from the generated graphics.
When does this not work well?
Some material cannot hold a high presenter ratio. If the footage is a single locked-off take with poor light, or the narration is dense with figures, two thirds of the film on the presenter is a long time for a viewer. Very long films need the ratio varied by section, and unverified claims can't go on screen at all.
Common questions
Will it change my narration? Not unless you allow it. Vizard Agent treats the spoken track as fixed.
What if I misspoke? Vizard Agent flags it and asks rather than correcting it for you.
How do I check the ratio? Ask Vizard Agent for the measured split in the finished film.