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Editor / Designer: Andrew Mehta
Use of Project (TV, Film, Corporate): DVD Video
Boris Product and Version: Boris FX 6.1, Boris Graffiti 1.02, Media100i 7.5
Other Products Used: Photoshop 5.5
Introduction: Creating Starburst Titles.
I needed a theme to link all the pieces of a videogames DVD together into one seamless programme.I decided upon a starburst theme,carried across three title effects:
1) A spinning starburst, to introduce a new section - i.e. Xbox 360, PC, PlayStation, etc...
2) A lower third, to introduce a game title, or a person for interview.
3) An elaborate introductory sequence.
I created a composition clip in Media100, from which I launched Boris FX.
Here I created two starbursts by tilting two rectangles into the centre of the screen, so that they looked like triangles. I then exported this as a PICT file to Photoshop, made it high res, and then imported it back so as to manipulate it as a pair of triangles. I duplicated the track, and rotated the second track to 90 degrees, so I had a cross like pattern. I grouped this cross into a 3D container, so I could manipulate it as one whole item. I duplicated this 3D container, and rotated the copy at 45 degrees...so that I now had two crosses on screen, creating eight starbursts. I placed a 3D sphere in the middle, using a gradient for the face track, to give it shading.
I then set keyframes for rotation at the beginning and end of the Boris timeline, to dictate how the starbursts would spin around the sphere.
Since the flat rotation looked a bit boring, I then placed everything in another 3D container, and set the tumble and spin values at 45 degrees, so everything was slanted slightly. This made the starbursts get fatter and thinner as they rotated around the sphere.
I then left Boris FX, and created a title clip above my composition clip, using Boris Graffiti. This allowed me to add 3D text on top of the 3D sphere. (If I had Boris Red, I could have done both from within the same programme). I used keyframes governing position settings to allow the 3D text to move during the course of the starbursts' rotation. I also applied subtle tumble, spin, and rotation settings to the text, to give the impression that it was slowly orbiting around the sphere as it moved. I then rendered the composition clip, exported it, and re-imported it as a normal video clip for further manipulation.
Now imported as a solid video clip, I used transition effects to integrate it with my video footage. I used Media100's Pinwheel Effect to introduce the starburst, setting 8 wedges to complement the 8 starbursts.
I then used a combination of Boris FX 6.1's default transition, and Quicktime Effects' Solar Flare, to transition out of the starburst and into my lower third. But how did I create my lower third?
For my lower third, I wanted to continue the theme by still having the 3D text and sphere on screen, but now more discreetly in the lower left corner. I chose to reduce the number of starbursts to four (one cross pattern), and instead of having all of them rotating one way, I ungrouped them, and had two rotate clockwise, and two rotate counter-clockwise. I adjusted the transparency of the starbursts, so you could see one pass under the other, and also applied soft crop to the edges of the imported starburst images, so that they faded out towards the ends. For the white colour schemes of Nintendo Wii I also used a subtle drop shadow. Then I created more rectangles, and skewed them to funny angles, using tumble, spin and rotate, to create the background for my lower third, which in this case would be a pseudo border at the bottom and left edges of the screen. The background was video footage, but scaled down to a size that best fitted the border I had created. Once again, since I didn't have Boris Red, I had to nip into Graffiti to apply the text. As well as 3D text however, I also used plain 2D text for the lower third, rotated to an angle to match the borders.
Then it was a matter of rendering it all and exporting it, so as to re-import it as a tangible clip.
To usher in the lower third, I used Boris FX's preset transition (a 3d image swap), which could be applied straight from the Media100 timeline. However, in order to get a white background instead of the default black, I used Media100's colourFX to reverse the colours of my clips first, then implemented the transition, and then put the colours of the clips back to normal after, using an imported version of the transition with colours reversed, to obtain my effect with a white background - which would gel better with my next trick - a solar flare! It was Quicktime Effects' Solar Flare that I applied next... so as to shine the image out to white during the transition. The flare was diagonal, so that the light would end up near the 3D sphere in the corner of the lower third, as if that sphere was a little Sun, which was a nice touch. =)
Once rendered, exported and imported as a normal clip, I used a regular fade transition to fade from the clip I had before the solar flare, to this new solar flare clip. That meant the solar flare effect faded in and out, instead of jumping in and out abruptly.
To transition out from the lower third, I took a second copy of the original video footage I had running in the background, and laid it on top of the effect, using Boris FX to set keyframes to gradually scale it out from the small image framed within the border, back to a full screen image.
For the animated intro, I started off by going back to my original starburst. I wanted to build it up slowly on-screen.
I started with the sphere - by adjusting the scale and position settings, I could make it zoom into the screen, and then bounce a bit before settling.
I then went onto the starbursts - I made them appear to grow out in turn from the centre of the sphere, again, by scaling them.
I then left Boris FX to return to Media100 to create another Quicktime solar flare - this time coming in from the edges, and settling as a bright white light in the middle of the sphere.
Again, I used a copy of the previous render to fade in and out from this effect.
I then went into Boris Graffiti to lay 3D text over the top of the solar flare - having two halves of the text come from opposite sides of the screen, and settle in the middle - just like the flare was doing. The result gave a cushion of light beneath the 3D text as it moved into place.
I added a whooshing sound effect into the Media100 timeline, timed to coincide with these Boris animations.
I then wanted the starburst to spin away, revealing the footage.
I managed to achieve this by setting keyframes within Boris FX, that altered the position of all objects over the course of the timeline, and dictated when the white background should give way for the video footage.
The position of the 3D text was also manipulated in Boris Graffiti, to give the impression it was moving in tandem with the sphere.
Next, I created the impression of the image being wiped off the screen by the starbursts, by placing the last video shot in one of the white gaps between the starburst, and rotating it off the screen (in sync with the spinning of the starbursts, as they spun back into view).
To introduce the gamers featured on the DVD, I wanted to use a similar border to the lower thirds, but animated. The idea was for the bottom border to come up to meet the side border, and the side border come down, to make a new bottom border, on the opposite side. Kind of like scissors opening and closing, whilst rotating.
I created this animation in Boris FX, using keyframes to govern the borders' positions.
But before implementing it, I used Boris Graffiti to write everyone's names in white boxes on the video footage below, so that the video footage already had the names in place before I began.
To get from the original starburst, to this new scissor-like animation, I spun the star-burst around super fast, using the rotation parameters in Boris FX, and set trails to 3, which gave a motion-blur type of effect. Then I scaled the sphere till the whole screen was red. I then made a new composition clip to cut to, in which the sphere was shrunk down again, to a new size and position in the lower left corner, revealing as it did so, the new scissor-animated red borders. This was all done using keyframes to set different properties at different points in the Boris timeline.
To transition back to the starburst, I simply cut to a starburst animation that had the sphere in the same place as the last scissor animation, and used keyframes to move it back to the centre of the screen, at first with its starbursts spinning fast and leaving trails, but then slowing enough to return to the original animation.Again, the 3D text was added afterwards, using Boris Graffiti.
Again, the 3D text was added afterwards, using Boris Graffiti.
Because I could save templates in Boris FX, it was very easy to take my starburst animation, and lower third effect, and save them in a variety of different colour schemes for different game formats. As such, I was able to re-use the same effect throughout the DVD, but colour coded to different videogame systems, and with different text in place.
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