Let’s breakdown two very different title looks, we’ll start with the handwriting
look, and then the blockbuster look.
So when it comes to titles and text, I think a little bit of effort goes a long way. So
rather than just searching for a handwritten font, let’s do this naturally.
First we’ll need a white surface like a piece of paper or a whiteboard.
We can use a pencil for shading, scribble with a pen, or use a thicker marker.
Then we’ll find some even lighting, and take a photo, making sure that the text fills
most of frame, and that it's in focus. In our editing software, we can then use a
negative filter to invert the colours, And then tidy it up with some color correction,
until we have a completely black background. Then, we can mask out our text, and position
it within the frame. The final step is to change the blend mode
to “Screen” which will make that black background completely transparent, so we can
overlay it onto any image. Now this effect is only limited by what you
can draw, so let's try expanding on it, like making the classic “wiggle effect” where
you take a second picture after carefully re-drawing each letter.
If we quickly switch between the two pictures, it can give us an even more homemade kind
of style. We can do some animations, like here where
we re-write each letter slightly smaller each time, taking a new picture, so now we have
a series of images that make the text disappear or appear in a much more believable way than
a traditional shrink effect.
So that’s a fairly minimal, organic kind of title, but what if we wanted something
a bit louder? Action films often use big 3D titles for maximum
impact, so I tried Blender - some free 3D graphics software.
Now this isn’t an extensive tutorial for Blender, but here are the ideas behind a 3D
title like this. We start with our text, and extrude it so
it has depth, then we add bevelled edges which will be really important for reflecting light
later on. Next we duplicate our text and scale it up,
so we have a double edge at the front. Then let’s make a second copy, and scale
it down, for the front face of the text. With a quick render you can see the general
shape, so let’s add our textures. We’ll start with a glossy shader, so everything
is essentially chrome. Now lighting really is the key here, let’s
block all of the reflections from that front face with a simple black plane.
Then to catch those edges, we can bring in a light, and position it kind of above, just
high enough that it doesn't on the front face. After adding a second light at the bottom,
we have this, which looks okay. Finally, we have the option to change the
texture of that front layer to a diffuse shader, which we can now use a color of our choice.
Now this is only the beginning, we haven't even done any animation yet.. 3D title sequences
take a lot of time. But is that really necessary?
While it’s true that spending a bit of time on our titles can make them more unique, no
amount of time, effort or skill can guarantee us good results.
In fact, simplicity is often more effective than complexity.
So here are three title styles you can put together in any software, using free fonts,
in probably less than 60 seconds: We could go for the design classic - Helvetica
Bold, in lowercase with tight spacing. Or a more minimalistic blockbuster look, with
extra bold, sans serif text, nice and small, after spacing out the letters slightly.
Or we could try serif text on a striking red background.
So what we can we take from all of this? Well, a little bit of effort can go a long way,
but we don’t have to spend ages on our titles. At the end of the day it’s hardly a very
important part of filmmaking, just one tiny tiny piece of the puzzle that makes up our
films. My name’s Simon Cade, this has been DSLRguide,
and i’ll see you next week.