Adding titles may not be the most exciting of your post-production process, but that's not to say that you shouldn't spend some time taking your titles to the next level. Anyone who's ever wandered over to the fantastic blog Art of the Title knows that titling can not only play an integral role in defining the aesthetic and themes of your film, but that the titles themselves can be a standalone piece of art. Of course, some of the astounding title sequences on that blog take months, even years, to create. However, with a few clicks and two minutes of time, you can take your titles from bland to visually stimulating. Here's a quick tutorial from GeniusDV which shows you how to put video inside of your titles in Premiere Pro CC.
There are numerous ways to use the Adobe suite of tools to create eye-catching titles, and the most recent update of the software saw some of the titling features, once only available in After Effects, integrated directly inside of Premiere Pro. However, none of these new tools are necessary for creating the simple effect of having a layer of video playing behind (or inside of) your text. That's exactly what this tutorial shows you how to do in the most simple and effective way imaginable:
Of course, the example in this tutorial is a little bit over the top. (Although, who doesn't love skate videos shot with a fisheye lens and titles full of fire?) However, this effect can be used to create some eye-catching titles in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. For example, the title below took me about two minutes, give or take 30 seconds.
There are some oddities when filling your titles this way. Primarily, if you want to manipulate the "Motion" effect of the video or photo layer that you're putting inside of your text -- that is, if you want to manipulate and keyframe the size, position, or rotation -- you're going to have to do all of those manipulations in a new sequence, and then nest that sequence in your original timeline. Additionally, this technique makes it impossible to keyframe any of the properties within the text layer, because the "Set Matte" effect pulls information from the static text frame, and not the final output. With that said, there could very well be a work-around for that problem, so if anybody has one, leave it down in the comments.
All in all, this is an incredibly simple technique that you can use in a pinch when you don't want to go into After Effects for your titling. Of course, there is so much more that you can do in AE, but for a simple "Video inside of Titles" effect, this technique works admirably.
What do you guys think of this technique? Do you have any tips for how to spice up your titles directly inside of Premiere? Let us know down in the comments!
Link: Adobe Premiere Video Tutorial: Video in Text -- Premiumbeat
