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Research Guides@Tufts

Multimedia Production Guide

for the Digital Design Studio at Tisch Library

Creating Credits for Video Essays

Best Practices for Creating Credits in Video Essays

Scrolling credits are not ideal for most video essay projects, especially when using an academic citation style. A better option is to use series of 4-second static slides at the end of the video to attribute the sources used.

Sources from Your Bibliography

You should group your sources by category, with a separate slide for each category: “Research Sources,” “Image/Video Sources,” and “Audio Sources.”

As for individual citations, please follow the style’s syntax as directed by your instructor (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) and/or as outlined in the Citing Sources Guide.


in iMovie ‘11:

  • From the Text tool, select the “Upper” text style and drag to the end of your timeline. When you release, you will be prompted to select a background. (When in doubt, a black background with white text is a classic look.) This will create a 4-second text slide to the end of your iMovie project.
  • Copy-and-paste a portion from your bibliography into the preview window. After doing so select the “Show Fonts” button to select/change the text color (to white if using a black background). Then, change the font to Arial (a screen-optimized font) and resize the text size to 10-point size.
  • You may need to repeat these steps and create a series of 4-second slides if you have a lengthy list of credits.


in Final Cut Pro X:

  • From the Text tool, select the “Upper” text style and drag to the end of your timeline. This will create a 4-second text slide by default. Unless you add a colored background, Final Cut will also default to having a black background.
  • Copy-and-paste a portion from your bibliography into the Text Input Window within the Inspector panel. You will also need to change the text’s “Face” color (to white if using a black background), change the font to Arial (a screen-optimized font) and resize the text size to 10-point size.
  • Finally, you’ll need to resize text box itself (in the Preview panel) to fill out the entire area of the screen.
  • You may need to repeat these steps and create a series of 4-second slides if you have a lengthy list of credits.

Production Credits

Production Credits

Although production credits will fit nicely on its own slide following the bibliographic sources, there is a bit more freedom with how you stylize the production credits. At a minimum, you should still include these components:

Individual Credits. If you are working as a group, you should include each individual and their respective role in the production. If it was a single-person project, the convention is to list a person’s name only once, even with multiple titles (e.g.,  “Written and Produced by [your name]”).

Purpose. A short statement such as, “This video was produced for [course name] at [institution’s name] in [semester, year]” will suffice.

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