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Use cases

Titles and lower thirds in After Effects with AI

Titles and lower thirds in After Effects with AI: ask ChatGPT, Claude or any MCP client connected to Prism, and the name, role, chapter title or credit roll lands in your open comp as keyframed text and shape layers.

The lower third is the most templated object in After Effects: a pack of forty, one nearly right. Without the pack it is a sentence: who, what role, how it enters. Then the same style for every other name.

What you say, and what lands

You typeWhat appears in your comp
"Lower third at 4 s: 'Maya Chen', 'Marine biologist' under it, bottom left. A 4 px orange bar wipes in, the name rises behind a mask, the role fades in after. Out at 9 s, reversed."Two text layers and a bar shape layer, a mask reveal, position and opacity keyframes in and out
"Chapter title on black: 'PART TWO. THE ESTUARY', centred, tracking widens from 0 to 80 over 3 s while it fades up."A solid, one text layer, tracking animator and opacity keyframes
"Location card, top left: 'Isle of Skye, Scotland', small caps, types on letter by letter with a thin rule under it."A text layer with a write-on animator, a rule with a Trim Paths draw-on
"End credits from this list: roll bottom to top over 45 s, two columns, role left and name right."Two text layers, one per column, position keyframes with a linear ease

Test it on your own project. A Free account is enough to start: Sign up, then connect your AI and ask for this.

How to do it

1
Open the comp the title belongs in
Prism acts on the open comp: the interview cut, the chapter break, the end of the film.
2
Say who, what role, where
Name, role, corner, in and out. A hex for the bar and a font if you have them.
3
Describe the entrance and the exit
A wipe, a rise behind a mask, a fade. "Out reversed" mirrors the entrance.
4
Review it in the timeline
Retype the name, drag a keyframe, change the bar colour.
5
Reuse the style
"Same lower third for Ravi Patel, Sound recordist, at 1:12." The style is read from the comp and rebuilt.

One style, many names

You askWhat lands
"Here are the twelve interviewees and their timecodes; build a lower third for each in this comp."Twelve pairs of layers at their times, one style
"Make each one its own comp so the editor can drop them in."One comp per name, named after the person
"Change 'Marine biologist' to 'Marine ecologist' wherever it appears."Every matching text layer in the project rewritten
"Swap every title to Inter-SemiBold."Every title layer switched, project-wide

Timing to the edit

Timing comes fromYou askWhat lands
markers you placed"Put a lower third on each named marker."one title per marker, in on the marker
the interview audio"Transcribe it, and place each person's lower third the first time they speak."transcript markers, a title at each voice's first line
the music"Land each chapter title on a downbeat."beat markers on the timeline, titles snapped to them

Transcription can separate speakers but does not know their names; you say which voice is which.

What it needs

After Effects2024, 2025 or 2026, macOS or Windows
AI clientany MCP client: ChatGPT, Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and others
Plana Free account is enough for the titles; transcription and beat detection are Prism AI capabilities, paid from your balance

What it does not do

It does not ship a pack of lower thirds, read names from a script or spreadsheet file, or recognise who is on screen. You paste the list and say who speaks when.

Common questions