The Credit Effect

     Ok, I have still not yet received the file for editing, but I won't let that stop me from taking this time to learn how to achieve this effect in Premiere Pro. So without further ado, let's get right into it.

The Tutorial

     When talking about this idea to other people who understand editing thoroughly, they typically have told me that I should use After Effects instead of Premiere. This is because After Effects has much better tracking tools that would make it easier to attach the credits to different surfaces. This sounds like it would be the play, but there are two issues with that idea. One is that I have never used After Effects in my life. Second is the way we have chosen to split editing among the group. If I saved the file and moved it over to After Effects, I'm pretty sure it would count as one video instead of all the separate clips that it would look like in Premiere. This would make it much harder for Maiya's turn to edit if the clips weren't separate.

    When I first mentioned the idea of implementing the credits into the environment, my group supported the idea. I was pretty excited that they were immediately open to that style of credits, and Maiya even went as far as to send me a tutorial on how to achieve it in Premiere Pro. That is perfect because it means I can still do it on Premiere even though it may be slightly more difficult. This leads to the actual tutorial, where I will take some notes on it to demonstrate what I have learned from it.

Tutorial:

Notes:

• Premiere is less powerful in automatic tracking tools, but there still are some options available
• Still frames are what you want if you are trying to achieve this effect on Premiere
• In the effects control tab, you can change the scale to maintain continuity with distance of the surface
• There are 3D options in the perspective folder, but you should really use the corner pin effect in the distort folder
• Once this effect is selected, you can drag the corners to distort the perspective however you want until it aligns with the target surface
• If there is camera shake, then you can use the warp stabilizer effect to smooth out the shot to make this process easier
• The warp stabilizer effect is also available in the distort folder
• If that does not work, the best course forward is to manually keyframe it (I already understand keyframes, so I won't be writing notes for this section.)
• Keyframes come with a lot of trial and error, but with enough time spent with it it can look perfect
• Another way to track is by using mask tracking
• The way it works is that if you need something in a specific area that moves throughout a scene, (in this tutorial it is a logo in a man's backpack) then properly place it where you want on the first frame of the clip and press play on the mask tracking option.
• This will autogenerate tracking to the item throughout the clip without the need for keyframes
• Mask tracking only works for 2D tracking

What Did We Learn

    After watching that tutorial, I have realized that this will be much easier than I thought. The only part that would be "difficult" is just the tedium of manual keyframing (Which I may not even need to do). I can deal with that. Now that I have learned how to do this process, I can just refer back to the notes on this blog when I finally receive the file and start editing. Things are looking up!

Here is a bonus time-lapse of Grace's actual editing on Premiere that she just sent today:

Sources:

- Justin Odisho. (2021, November 19). How to Attach Objects to Walls in Adobe Premiere Pro CC (Mask Motion Tracking Tutorial). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulhBacKrXuI