Hello, the internet!
I’m Axel from HitFilm, and today we are going to do this.
This title effect was used recently in Kong: Skull Island, and in Guardians of the Galaxy,
Vol. 2.
It has a great style to it, but its actually very simple to recreate.
It doesn’t require any special tools or effects, so it is possible in any version
of HitFilm.
You can download the video file I used if you want to follow along, and let’s get
started.
In Kong, the style of their titles was matched to the film title, using a stylized paint-stroke
font in deep red, paired with a simple white sans-serif font.
An important aspect of any inter-titles used in your projects, though, is to design them
to suit the context in which they are being used.
The clip I filmed for this example is the Old Dungeness Schoolhouse in the town where
I live, so I selected fonts to complement that location.
If any of you are fans of Dungeness crab, the bay just a couple hundred yards behind
this schoolhouse is where they originate.
Anyway, there are several popular techniques for embedding titles into the scene, this
is one of the simplest.
The title itself isn’t animated, or repositioned, it just sits in the center of the frame.
Then it is revealed and hidden again using masks which correspond to elements within
the video.
So let’s start by creating the title, then we will move on to techniques for the masks.
Create a new Text layer, at the exact width of your composite shot, and 400 pixels high.
By using the exact width of your comp, the text is automatically centered in the frame.
Then, add your text and center it in the text box.
I’m using two lines of text, one for the general location, using a font called Londinia
at a size of 190, and another for the specific site where the scene takes place; Lato at
a size of 110, in white, but naturally the process works perfectly regardless of how
much detail you include, what fonts you choose, or what colors you decide to make them.
You could be quite vague, or very, very specific in your location; the contents of your title
is completely independent of the technique.
So, with our title created, we can move on to the masking.
But, it is worth mentioning that the scene you use for this works best if it meets certain
criteria, and often it is advisable to keep them in mind when filming, to ensure you get
a scene that is suitable.
Specifically, you want a fairly open view to serve as an establishing shot for your
location, and two foreground elements that cross the frame.
In our case, we have the building, and the character.
If they aren’t in the foreground, then these elements need to be quite large to fully obscure
the title, or else you title needs to be tiny.
The movement can be created by the camera moving, so they enter or leave the frame,
as in the example of the schoolhouse here, or the object itself can be moving, as in
the case of our character.
The direction of movement is entirely up to personal preference or the requirements of
the scene itself, and does not affect the technique.
The two elements can move in the same direction or in opposite directions, as ours do here.
Planning.
Its important.
Onward to the masking!
Make sure you are in the compositing workspace, so we have plenty of room in the interface
for creating our masks.
There are a bunch of ways that masking this could be handled in HitFilm.
The built-in masking tools make it quite simple to animate the masks we need.
But even there, we could add the masks to the title itself, to remove the areas that
overlap the building and the character, or we could add a copy of the background above
the title, and add masks to hide everything but the building and the character, so that
these actually sit over the top of the text.
Each of these options is useful for different situations.
For this case, masking the text layer is going to be the simplest setup, and will work splendidly.
But in some cases, if you are adding effects to the text, or if the object you need to
mask is comprised of multiple layers, then using a copy of the background might be a
better option.
Another option for the masking is to use Mocha HitFilm to rotoscope the objects you need
to mask.
This can greatly speed up animating the mask, but for this tutorial we are sticking with
the free options.
If you have mocha HitFilm, you can learn more about rotoscoping masks in mocha from our
tutorial on that subject.
Let’s mask the building first, since it is the first object to occlude the text in
our shot.
Scrub the playhead until the title is completely backed by the building.
For me, that is around 6:20, but depending on the contents and size of your title, the
exact frame could differ.
Trim the start of the text layer to that frame, as it doesn’t need to exist before that.
Then, select the Freehand Mask tool, and begin drawing a shape along the edge of the building,
and extend it out all the way around the text.
We don’t need to bother following the entire edge, the mask just needs to be tall enough
to easily hide the text layer.
Click the first point again to close the shape, then enable keyframing for the Path.
In some cases keyframing the Position would be better, but the shift in the orientation
of the camera means Path will work better here.
Scrub forward until the text is completely past the building.
Reposition and reshape the mask now, so it is once again aligned with the building.
The text is not visible, because it is now outside the mask, so invert the mask so you
can see where exactly the text is, and ensure the mask extends above and below it.
Then, we just need to move through the frames in between, and realign the mask as needed.
Work through by splitting the distance between keyframes each time, and create as many keyframes
as you need.
This doesn’t actually take that long, but I have sped it up for the purposes of this
tutorial.
Once you have the mask nicely aligned, enable motion blur for the text layer, and it will
feather nicely onto the edge of the building as the motion of the mask is detected.
And technically, the mask is completely out of our way for the remainder of the timeline,
so you can leave it right where it is, but if you prefer, you could also advance another
frame past our last keyframe, and drag the mask entirely out of frame, and our first
mask is done.
Advance the playhead to the frame just before the character overlaps the text now, somewhere
around 12:00.
Our process will be the same for this mask too.
Use the freehand mask, and draw a shape onto the Text layer, following the edge of the
character.
Make sure the mask shape extends above and below the text, then extend it back a bit.
The back doesn’t need to follow the edge of the character, nor reach the edge of the
frame.
It just needs to be outside of the text.
Then we can enable keyframing for the Path, advance the playhead until the front edge
of the character is past the text, and move the points in the front edge to re-align them
with the character.
Then, check the frames in between again, and adjust the points to maintain proper alignment.
Again, even though this goes pretty quickly, I’ve sped it up for the tutorial.
Once this is animated, you’ll notice that the mask doesn’t actually have any effect
on the text yet, so we need to set this second mask to Subtract, so the area inside of this
mask is removed from the layer.
Then to tidy things up, we can move this mask out of frame until it is needed.
Again, this isn’t necessary, but I like to have it out of sight when I don’t need
it.
Then, let’s rename the two masks, so you know which one is which.
And once the text is completely obscured again, we can trim the remaining frames off of the
text layer.
And that’s all there is to it!
Our end result is this.
The technique is simple, its fast, and its versatile, as you can adapt the design to
fit whatever production you are working on, and create the masks to fit any objects in
your scene.
So thanks for watching, and I hope you find it useful.
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