These days, typography seems to be all the craze in print, web, and video design. You see it in infographics, commercials, testimonials, and much more. One particular technique that seems to be popular among motion graphics projects is kinetic typography. This technique uses spoken word or lyrics and animates the message into an illustration. There are dozens of tutorials that show you how to pull off this technique. Tutorial author Evan Abrams shows you how to do this in After Effects below.
However, I want to show you how to do a typography based transition in Premiere using a text layer and the native compositing tools available. This transition was inspired by an Apple Motion template created by the folks at MotionVFX.
In Premiere Pro, I have two clips overlapping each other by about three seconds.
Let’s create a title layer with the name “Text Matte” in the title tool. Choose whatever font you want, but make sure it stretches out horizontally across the screen.
Duplicate the Text Matte layer twice and rename them “Text Overlay” and “Text Shadow.”
Double click the Text Overlay layer to bring up the title tool. Change the color to taste.
Double click the Text Shadow layer to bring up the title tool. Change the Fill to Ghost and enable Shadow. Change the shadow opacity to around 60-70%.
In the timeline, drag a duplicate of your incoming clip to an upper track. This will be necessary for completing the transition.
Place the text layers you created in the order as shown: Text Shadow on track 3, Text Matte on track 5 and Text Overlay on track.
Select the duplicate clip on track 4. Apply the Track Matte Key to it. Make sure the matte is Track 5 and it is compositing using Matte Alpha.
Let’s animate the Text Overlay. Change the scale to 180. Set a keyframe for position five frames from its in point with it offscreen.
Move 20 frames forward and bring the Text Overlay layer near the center of the screen.
Move the playhead two seconds forward and move the Text Overlay almost offscreen.
Go to the second position keyframe and add an opacity keyframe with a value of 100. Move 15 frames forward and change the value to zero.
Highlight the Text Overlay layer and copy it. Select the Text Matte and Shadow layers and Paste Attributes.
Select the Text Shadow layer. Highlight the opacity keyframes and move them down 25 frames. Change the duration of the opacity animation to about 20 frames.
Let’s highlight the video clip on track 5. In the Effect Controls panel, I will create a 25 frame opacity animation. It will start at 100 and end at zero.
Let’s do the same thing to our clip on track 2, only instead of animating from 100 to zero, do the reverse.
If you do all of that then you should have result similar to this.
This is a nice transition to use when you need your text to make more an impact on your project. There are many ways to push this further, and I advise you try to manipulate it. I’m the NLE Ninja with AudioMicro asking you to stay creative.