Hey everyone, welcome back to another HitFilm tutorial.
This week we welcome for the first time to our channel RED ALERT.
He's a well known community member and today he's going to be showing you how to create
a cool, pop-up text message effect in HitFilm Express.
Let's get started.
Let’s talk about texting in film.
Cell phones, Telephones, Phone booths, they’ve all been really popular in film, for obvious
reasons.
A phone call can be ominous, threatening, scary, comedic and a whole…batch of emotions….because
we always hear the other side of the phone call.
Texting on the other hand…well…it’s kind of boring.
And that’s why it’s never been popular in movies; that is until the last few years,
of course.
Texting, or rather the “Texting effect” has exploded in movies and TV within the last
few years.
So what changed?
Well, it stands to reason that phone calls are so popular because we can hear what is
happening; therefore we can see what’s happening.
To make texting as effective, people must have reasoned with themselves and thought,
why not throw those texts onto the screen in a big, bold fashion, rather than show it
on a tiny pixelated mobile cell phone screen?
It makes sense, I know.
My name is Uwais from Red Alert, and today I’m going to be showing you how to create
modern, sleek, stylish and glossy, Pop-up Text messages, using Hitfilm Express.
Without further ado, let’s get going!
Ok, here we are in Hitfilm Express, and as you can see, I have my footage all ready to
go, in the media panel.
So, let’s start with building out the text message.
I’m first going to go over the simple and elegant looking text message, as seen in shows
like Sherlock, and then, after that, we’ll jump into that modern candy button looking
messages, as seen in, well, everything else.
Right, let’s begin by clicking the plus icon at the top here and then select new composition.
Make sure the settings are the same as your footage and then hit ok.
Let’s drag our footage into the timeline.
Then, let’s head up and select the text tool.
I’ll draw a relatively small box, in the shape of a rectangle.
Let’s click inside the box, and then type out the name of the person this text is coming
from.
After that, let’s hit the space bar, and then type out two forward slashes.
Press the space bar once again and then type out the time you want this message to be received
at.
This is a very common style used in various films and TV shows, but feel free to play
around with this and create your own design.
The possibilities are endless.
We can then go ahead and type out the main message.
So let’s press enter, and then we’ll just type out; “This message looks stylish…right?”
Yep, that looks good!
Ok, let’s select that text and then scale it up until we’re happy with it.
I’m going to leave it here, at this size, so it’s not bigger than the phone, but not
too small at the same time.
We can then select the first line of text, and scale it down, so that it’s at least
half the size of our main message.
Righto, time for the fun part; A big part of why this effect looks so good
is because it fits directly in the scene.
And part of that is matching it’s perspective, to the phone’s.
So how do we do that?
Well, fret not my friends, I’m going to show you.
First, we’ll click this box, with the check pattern on our text layer, and switch it to
a 3D layer.
This will automatically create a new camera, which we’re happy with.
Let’s open our text layer’s controls panel, and then, hop down to the Y rotation controls.
Here, we can play with this setting until we twist that text to match the angle of the
phone.
Here looks good for me.
To be more precise, I’ll place the text right above the phone and zoom in.
Upon further examination, it appears the Z rotation needs some tweaking as well, so let’s
do that.
We can also play with the position cotrols, to have it sitting in the correct place in
Z space.
And now we have it matching the phone’s perspective.
This will be different for you and your shot, and my numbers won’t be the same as yours,
but follow the same steps and it’ll all be good to go.
After that, we can finalize its position by placing it just above the phone, along one
of the sides.
Finally, to transition it in, let’s head to the point where we want our text message
to appear.
Mine is when the phone lights up.
At this point, set the opacity of the text layer to 0, and turn on key-framing for it.
We can then head forward about 10 frames, and turn it back up to 100%.
This has the text fading in nicely.
One more addition to that, select the key-frames we just made and convert them to smooth key-frames.
This provides a smoother and nice looking animation.
After all of that, this shot looks done, and it kind of is, except for…let’s call it
a final touch, to pull it all together.
And that is to blend the depth of field.
Now, this is a stylized extra, but it can look really cool, and it does a lot for the
final effect.
To do this, let’s right click on our text layer, and make it a composite shot.
In that new composite shot, click the plus icon, and create a new grade layer.
Then, head over to the effects panel, search for the blur effect, and then drop it onto
that grade layer.
For the settings, set the amount to 2, and the iterations to 1.
We don’t want this blur to take up the whole text though, so, to restrict this blur to
the middle of the text, let’s choose the ellipse mask tool, and then draw a small mask
over the middle of the text, on the grade layer.
We can then expand the mask settings to change some stuff up.
Set the expansion to 35, as well as the feather to 135.
Let’s jump back to our main comp and there we have it, a finished, stylish text message,
blended into the shot nicely.
Moving on, let’s get to work on the next method.
Now this one is a bit more stylized, not complicated, but there are a few more steps required to
make it work.
The first thing we’ll do is create a brand new composition, with the same settings as
our footage, just like before.
I’ll then drag in my clip.
As you can see, this was shot with the purpose of adding in a text bubble afterwards, so
there’s enough space for it over here, and it’s framed properly.
It’s always important to plan out your shots to suit the VFX you’ll be adding in later,
before you actually hit record.
Anyway, let’s get to work on that text bubble we were talking about!
Let’s click the plus icon down here to create a new plane, for this one, I’ll make it
blue, but the color is ultimately up to you.
Select the rectangular mask tool, and draw a nicely sized box, in the space next to your
actor, or phone.
Let’s then duplicate that plane, and delete the mask from the duplicate.
We can turn it off for now.
I’ll select the freehand mask tool, and what we want to do essentially, with our duplicate
plane selected, is draw a triangle in the corner of the first box that faces the direction
of the phone.
Kinda like this.
With that done, let’s turn that plane back on and then select both those planes, and
make it into a composite shot.
Let’s head back to our previous message’s comp, and copy the text layer.
We can then move to our newly made comp, and paste it in there.
It’s ok if it turns back to a 2d layer, since we won’t need any of the position
info that we created in the first example.
Move that new text over our bubble, roughly into place and then, with the text tool selected,
let’s scale up our main message, until it fills up the bubble nicely.
We can also adjust the size of the first line, to make it fit.
Again, we want to make it smaller than the main message.
Ok, time to animate!
Let’s select the rectangle mask tool, as well as our text layer, and then, draw a long
rectangle to the left of our first line of text.
It’s important to make this mask only as wide as the first line, so that it doesn’t
affect the second one.
With that done, let’s move to the start of the comp, and then advance 5 frames.
We’ll use these frames later on for animating the entire bubble so don't worry about that
right now.
At frame 5, let’s expand the mask properties, and turn on key-framing for the mask position.
So here’s how this works.
Every 1 frame, we’re going to advance the mask by one letter.
Like this.
Then we’ll head forward another frame, and move the mask to the right again, until it
exposes the next letter.
Then we’ll repeat that again, and again, until we get to the end of the first word.
At the end of the first word, we’ll advance 2 frames, one for the space of course, and
then move the mask over the next letter.
And from there, it’s just a repetition of those steps.
Move 1 frame forward, and move the mask to reveal a new letter.
When the word is over, skip 2 frames, and then reveal the next letter.
Do this for the whole line.
When we reach the end of the first line, let’s draw another mask, exactly the same as before,
but this time for our second line of text.
We’ll then turn on key-framing for the new masks position, and move forward 2 frames.
Then, advance the mask to reveal a single letter.
This is the basic principle, and we want to do this for all our sentences, so I’ll continue
to do that for the rest of my message.
Ok, all done.
A final touch for the text, let’s reveal those key-frames, then select all of them,
and click this icon over here, to turn those key-frames from linear, to constant.
This just means that they appear without any animation, exactly how texts do on a normal
phone.
Do this for all your different mask’s key-frames.
Looking good.
Before we hop back to our main comp, let’s do one more final touch with the bubble.
That is to turn both our plane’s opacity down to 65%.
Just expand the controls, and lower the opacity down, as simple as that.
Back in the footage comp, we’ll now see our text message all done.
But, it doesn’t animate in, it just appears.
So let’s fix that, remember those 5 frames we left in the other comp, well, it’s time
to use them!
Let’s move our text bubble layer along the timeline, until we want it to start.
Once there, let’s expand the controls for our text bubble, and move the anchor point,
so that it’s placed on the tip.
Turn on key-framing for the scale, and set it to 0%
Advance those 5 frames and then boost it back up to 100.
Remember to turn on motion blur and there we have it guys, a finished text message.
Right, before we wrap this up, there is one more thing I want to cover.
Tracking.
While this looks good, a neat little thing you can do, is to have this message tracked
to the phone.
This works in 2 different cases, the first is what we showed at the start of the tutorial,
where we have the message attached to the phone as we pan across it, this works with
most camera movements.
And the second case is to have it tracked to the phones subtle motions, like when someone
is just typing.
This provides another layer of detail, since the bubble will adopt any of the phone subtle
movements and as a result, will be even more convincing!
Anyway, both of those cases use exactly the same methods, but, for now, we’ll be doing
the latter example.
To get started, let’s click the plus icon once again, and create a new point layer.
This will be used later on to store the tracking data we create.
Speaking of tracking data, with our footage layer selected, move to the control panel,
and click on the plus icon next to tracker.
This will open up a new window with our footage in it, as well as a handy tracking box.
Grab inside of the red square and position the tracking box over a contrast heavy part
of your phone.
I’m going to use the black logo at the back of the phone.
Resize the 2 boxes to fit, and then hit track forward.
If you need to adjust it along the way, just do so and then go frame by frame using the
tracking controls, until you get your track, back on track….wow that was a bad joke.
Right, my track has completed, so, in the tracking window, let’s select our point
layer and then hit apply.
We now have all that data stored in the point.
Let’s switch back to the viewer tab; And all that’s left to do is to parent our
text bubble to our point layer.
That’s done easily enough by clicking this box on our text bubble layer, and then simply
selecting the point layer.
And voila!
We now have our text bubble animating in, as well as sticking to all the phone’s subtle
movements!
It’s cool I know.
Remember, exactly the same steps apply if you want to use this in a shot that’s panning
past the phone, or using any similar camera movements.
Anyway, that's my time.
I hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial and I hope that you learnt something valuable
along the way!
So, go make some text bubbles and I’ll see you around!
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