Steve's Tips
Creating "Typewriter" Titles
Just because the program offers you the option of creating crawling or rolling titles, doesn’t mean you’re limited to those effects with your on-screen text. Premiere Elements 2’s ability to apply keyframing and effects to your titles means that, with a little inspiration, you can make your titles do all kinds of little dances.
For example, here’s simple way to have your text pop on-screen one letter at a time, as if being typed.
As always, there’s more than one way to create this effect. But this is probably the simplest and most effective method.
My apologies in advance if some of the jargon gets a bit thick at times. Sometimes even simple sticks have very complicated explanations. But click on the thumbnails to see full-sized illustrations of the steps. They should make most of the methodology pretty clear.
To begin, create a title clip. Open the Title workspace, Cancel past the templates, name your title ("Typewriter", for instance) and click on the Monitor to create a simple title using a very typewriter-y font, like Courier. Return to the Edit workspace and then drag the title from the Media panel onto your Timeline.
Set up a motion path
With the title clip selected on the Timeline, click on the title in the Monitor and drag it to what will be its final position on-screen. Once you’re happy with the position of the title, set the CTI in the Properties panel Timeline to about halfway into the clip and press the Animation Toggle for Motion to start a keyframing session for a motion path. A set of keyframe points will appear in a column at the CTI position.
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Now move the CTI to the beginning of the clip and drag the title in the Monitor panel to the right (or change the X and Y setting numbers to be more accurate) so that the first letter of your title is just about at the position in the Monitor where the last letter of the title will eventually land. Make sense? We’re trying to create a motion path so that the text slides to the left as if being typed, as demonstrated in the illustration to the right. A Position keyframe will automatically be created.
Keyframe the Crop effect
Now drag the Crop effect from the Effects and Transitions panel onto the title on the Timeline, click on the triangle to the left of the Crop listing in the Properties panel to reveal the side settings for the effect. With the CTI at the beginning of the title clip, click and roll across the numbers of the Right Side Crop settings until the crop just barely hides your title. Click on the Animation Toggle adjacent the Crop listing in the Properties panel and a column of keyframes will be added under the Crop effect settings. Now move the Properties Timeline CTI to directly over the keyframe point you created for the final position of your Motion path for the title. Click and drag again across the Right Side Crop settings, this time to reveal the letters in our title, just until all the text appears on-screen. A new keyframe will automatically be created at this position for the Right Crop property.
If you play back the clip at this point, it should look as though the title were moving left from behind a transparency mask.
Creating the typing "stutter" effect
Because typewriters add letters in a stuttery, jerky motion, a few more keyframes will need to be added to improve our effect. Drag the CTI back to the beginning of the title clip and then, moving the CTI in small increments, manually add a Motion keyframe point (click on the Add Keyframe button) every time a new letter is completely revealed from behind our transparency mask. Right-click on each of these keyframe points and select Temporal Interpolation/Hold, as shown in the illustration to the left.
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Now go to the Crop effect listing in the Properties panel, reset the CTI to the beginning of the clip and similarly add a keyframe next to Right Side Crop every time a letter is completely revealed. Right-click on each of these keyframe points and select Hold.
What we’ve done is to replace the smooth, linear motion of these effects with a series of holds, the result being that, when you play the Timeline back, you’ll now see each letter "pop" in rather than being gradually revealed.
Google a typing sound effect and the illusion is complete! Click here to see my result.
By using keyframes, you can add all sorts of animation to your titles. With a little imagination, you can create titles that spin or fly in or even roll in through three-dimensional space.
May 2006
About Steve
Steve Grisetti earned a master's degree in writing for television and film from Ohio University. He has instructed college-level courses in television and video production, and has taught adult education classes on Photoshop and principles of design.
Steve spent nearly 10 years in the Los Angeles-based entertainment industry, working on the sets and in the production offices of several large television and film companies. Currently, he is employed as a graphic designer in the Marketing & Communications Department of a Milwaukee-based investment firm.
He also serves as host on Adobe's official Premiere Elements Support Forum and is author, with Chuck Engels, of "Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 In a Snap," from Sams Publishing, Pearson Education.
