Creating stunning graphic titles with Premiere Pro and Photoshop
What I will be doing today is jazzing up this documentary of a court case which is on a 16×9 timeline which was sent to me. To level up the quality a little bit, I thought that it would be nice to keep within the 16×9 format so that it doesn’t clash with the whole initial look. The idea is whenever there is a narration of court ruling, we see this image at the top rather than just floating text.
I thought that having a folder over a desk could be kind of interesting and remind everyone of a court case. I went over a multiple of sites to get stock photos that will fit into what I have in mind. After going through the files, I found one desk I really liked.
It was a great starting point and had breathing room in the center, I placed it the way I liked on a 16×9 canvas, and imported my folder image. Did a little bit of basic color correction of the canvas so it matches the rest of the image and then added a little bit of shadow. That was the first part, once I was happy with the layout I basically started playing with the colors.
Now the color is popping too much, I have some footage from the producer, he sent me what he filmed so far and it is with an older camera so it is not as sharp as the new cameras so basically I de-saturated the colors a little bit and found that the orange and the green plant was a little bit in your face which made me de-saturate the orange and the green. Once I did this in Photoshop I was done and saved the document and then I imported it in premiere pro.
I could have used after effect but premiere pro would be as easy and save some time. I started with adding an adjustment layer over the background with some blur. I didn’t want the camera footage and the background to clash too much with the graphics so that’s why the blur is there. And then I created the title, basically, I tried to recreate the court document in the title.
The idea is anytime there is a narration of that court ruling and when the producer want to insert those graphics, it’s going to fade into that top view and blur out and then this text is going to pop out off the screen. So basically I tried to make it as true as possible to what the document is, that way it really is reminiscent of what you see on the desk. You see exactly the same thing in the middle of the screen when it pops out.
In the end, I went with the jpeg the producer sent me, they are already created. It will be easier to do than making a title every single time which would have been really time-consuming. Once I did this, I just did a few extra overlays to make sure my timing was perfect –added an extra layer to make the text pop out more even with a lot of blur. I added a white layer and played with the blend mode until I was happy and the text became legible. You have to trust your eyes. I set a few key points, did my fade-in fade-out and exported it to my client.