Texts

How do you show a text message in a film? Inserts of someones phone in their hand to show texts can look tacky, boring and it is time consuming in real time and film time to do when there are other options out there. The shots of a screen are slow because we need enough time to look at the phone and read the text and we may need ridiculously big text to enable the viewer to see it.

Poor way to show text - 

On-screen texting enables the viewer to see action in the back of the shot whilst also being able to read the text, and allows us to see the characters reaction to the text in the same frame. Onscreen text can also look elegant. The BBC's Sherlock is a good example of this, the text is the same size, font and colour in each series without a text box so it doesn't look outdated. For every character the text is the same character and the text sometimes wont have the senders name so that the audience has to piece it together themselves and so are more involved with the conversation.

Good way to show text -

Link to Sherlock text scene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xNnLYbuQDo