In today’s video,
we’re going to learn how to recreate
the flickering neon title,
used in the opening credits of Riverdale.
Hey guys, whats up.
Welcome back to my channel
for another Final Cut Pro tutorial.
Before we get started, just a quick reminder,
if you enjoy these tutorial videos,
make sure you hit the subscribe button below,
it means a lot to me.
With that out of the way,
lets jump down into our timeline,
and take a look at the effect we’re going to learn today.
First thing we need to do
is add a basic title to our timeline,
enter our text,
and ripple trim the length.
Next, in the inspector,
from the style drop down menu,
select 2D styles,
and neon.
Now, you can select any font
you like for this effect,
but if you want the same one
used in Riverdale
it’s called Graduate.
If you don’t have this font,
I’ll leave a link in the description
where you can download it.
Next, adjust the size and color of your font,
to make it look the way you like it.
First thing we’ll do is keyframe the scale of our title,
to make it slowly increase in size.
Set your playhead at the start of the title clip,
hit the transform button,
and add a keyframe
by clicking the keyframe button in the top left corner.
Next, move your playhead to the end of the title clip,
and use the scale slider in the video inspector
to adjust the size of your title.
Next, we need to split up the letters in our title,
as they appear on screen.
Hold down the option key,
and drag up on your title clip to make a copy.
Repeat this until you have eight copies of your title clip.
What I like to do next is rename each clip
to match the letters of the title,
just to make it a little less confusing.
Right click on each clip, and select rename clip.
What I’ll do is rename the clips in order
the letters appear on screen.
If two letters appear at the same time,
I’ll use both for the name of the clip.
Once thats done,
ripple trim the start of each clip
to make the top clip shorter than the one below it.
This will be helpful in the next step.
Select your bottom clip,
and from the effects browser,
apply the draw mask.
Add control points to isolate your first letter.
Repeat this for all your title clips,
isolating different letters for each one.
If you need to isolate more than one letter in a single clip,
just add more control points.
Keep going until all your title clips
have a mask applied to them.
Next, lets go back to our bottom clip,
select it and open the video inspector.
To make our letters quickly flicker in and out,
we’ll use the opacity slider.
So, with the playhead on the first frame,
bring the opacity down to around 30 percent,
and add a keyframe.
Next, move the playhead ahead a couple frames,
and bring the opacity down to about 10 percent.
Move ahead one more frame,
and bring the slider up to 75 percent.
Move the playhead a couple more frames,
and drop opacity down to 50 percent.
Move ahead one more frame,
and bring the opacity all the way up.
Next, select the second clip,
set your playhead where you want the
second letter to start flickering in,
and ripple trim the start of the clip to the playhead.
Repeat the same steps we did in the bottom clip,
and move up to the next one.
Try out different opacity combinations,
for a more unique look.
Keep going until your full title is revealed.
Once done, select all your title clips,
and press Option G to combine them
into a single compound clip,
to make it easier to work with.
And last,
lets add a lit of a camera zoom to our background clip.
Select the clip,
and with the playhead at the start,
hit the transform button and add a keyframe.
Move your playhead to the end of the clip,
and in the inspector,
bring the scale slider up to about 150 percent.
Now, lets let our clip render out
and take a look at the finished product.
So yeah, a cool custom intro title,
just like the one used in Riverdale.
If want to learn more about keyframing
and masking in Final Cut Pro,
check out the playlist I’ve put together,
just over on the right hand side.
But before you click on it,
make sure to hit the like button,
and subscribe to my channel.
New Final Cut Pro tutorials released weekly.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.