Star Wars title sequence

Question

Star Wars title sequence

Hello all-
I'm trying to do something fun for a friend's 40th birthday party, and want to replicate the opening title sequence from Star Wars (you know, the tilted letters floating up and into space). I did this years ago in After Effects, but not sure if anyone has tried and succeeded in replicating it in Motion. I'm sure that I could figure out a "passable" replication, but was just wondering if anyone had all of the right ingredients in their head (Font, font size, font attributes, color, etc.). If anyone has done it, please let me know. I did a search on "Star Wars" in the folder before posting this and did not find an active topic. If I figure out a good way to do it, I will respond to my own post in case anyone is interested. PS - I'm still on Motion 1.0.

Thanks-
Dave

Posted on Nov 4, 2005 7:42 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 4, 2005 9:02 AM in response to David Desrocher

There used to be an entire thread discussing how to do this, but it has dropped off the end. The way I did it is in this project. It is a Motion 2 project, but I think if you open it in Motion 1, it'll just tell you you're missing the 3D filter. You'll have to substitute corner pinning for the 3D perspective.

Or, I'm told the latest iMovie has a titling effect known as Far Far Away that is very easy to use...

Patrick

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Answer 2

Nov 4, 2005 9:11 AM in response to Patrick Sheffield

Thanks Patrick for the response - especially this early West Coast time. Will give it a shot.

Dave

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Answer 3

Mark Jones

Level 4

3,070 points

Nov 4, 2005 9:13 AM in response to David Desrocher

Doesn't iMovie 4 or 5 do that effect, Steve Jobs showed it off at a conference one time.

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Answer 4

Nov 7, 2005 10:33 AM in response to Mark Jones

I took a look at the title effect in iMovie. I am proficient in FCPHD but this was the first time I had ever even opened iMovie, and though I easily found the effect, I had trouble manipulating it to be the length I wanted, etc. Mostly because of my ignorance with iMovie.

Patrick's attachment helped me think of a solution that worked well for me. I created a title scroll in FCPHD. Chose my font and color. Updated it to be the lenght I liked. I then exported as Quicktime movie. I opened up QT movie in Motion (I have Motion 1, by the way). I used Corner Pinning to manipulate the QT movie of the title scroll - to give it that 3-D effect of the Star Wars title animation. I used a key filter to eliminate the black background from the QT movie. I then saved the Motion file and opened it up in FCP which I overlayed over a starfield background.

It worked great and looked sensational, even when exported ultimately to DVD. Took a little longer than the stock animation from iMovie probably would have taken if I knew what I was doing in iMovie, but now I have a template so if I ever want to do it again it will be easy.

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Answer 5

Nov 7, 2005 11:00 AM in response to David Desrocher

David, thank you for closing the thread with a complete explanation. This will be of great help to those who follow -- and we get a Star Wars title inquiry at least weekly.

bogiesan

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Answer 6

Jan 18, 2006 5:29 PM in response to David Desrocher

David,

Thank you for the info! You are right, Motion does a very good job! Now if I could only get a good looking title scroll in FCP? I know it is asked all the time but do you have a special recipe for this? I am suffering from the usual scrolling problem of the words, while scrolling, fluctuating as if shifting B/T the scan lines...very ugly looking. I am using the "Scrolling Text" generator.

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Answer 7

Jan 18, 2006 6:37 PM in response to David Desrocher

I am giving Motion a shot with its internal text generator now....

Figure I will export my finished scrolling text without any 3D applications using the lossless Animation codec...and then import back into Motion and apply Star Wars 3D effect.

I would also like to key out the black background (to add a new one later in FCP). Do I need to export in a special manner after applying the "Color Key" filter? Is the transparency "kept" when exportinig or will it render all the background back to black?

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Answer 8

Jan 18, 2006 9:54 PM in response to zurmeees190

Use Millions+ for the colors and you'll get an alpha channel when you use the Animation codec (+ is alpha channel) - this'll maintain your transparency.

Patrick

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Answer 9

Jan 19, 2006 7:41 PM in response to Patrick Sheffield

Thanks Patrick, I was unaware of that. I ended up keying out the black in FCP and it worked great. The text generated in Motion was by far superior to the text scroll in FCP...it is super clean with absolutely no artifacting/jaggedness.

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