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Credits: how to make them look proffessional

M

m3gau

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 21, 2007
40
0
Hey I'm using the latest version of final cut studio including motion and final cut pro etc. I've made quite a few short films and the quality of them is quite good or so i've been told by most people. I haven't yet put them online but will let people know when i do. Any way my question:
How do you make credits look professional because it seems no matter what i do they always look different to professional films and they always seem home made. What font do you have to use or what lay out??

Thanks for help?
 
m3gau said:
Hey I'm using the latest version of final cut studio including motion and final cut pro etc. I've made quite a few short films and the quality of them is quite good or so i've been told by most people. I haven't yet put them online but will let people know when i do. Any way my question:
How do you make credits look professional because it seems no matter what i do they always look different to professional films and they always seem home made. What font do you have to use or what lay out??

Thanks for help?
Click to expand...
Are you talking about intro credits or ending, rolling credits?
 
use the font name "futura" the spelling may be wrong.

For scrolling credits go to the viewer and at the bottom right hand corner click on the film strip with the letter A in it. then select, Text-Scrolling Text. Drag that screen into your timeline.;)
 
It sounds a frame rate issue. FCP renders video at full 60 Fields per seconds (as it should with video) It also render titles at that same rate. Progressive SD video is 30FPS and film is 24FPS. I dont know if FC has an option to do that. Im only making a guess at what the issue is. A interlaced rendering is the only thing i can guess to give it that "home made" look.
 
The Boris Title generators that came bundled with FCP do a MUCH better job at titles than FCP's built-in text generators. Photoshop is also great for titling.

Other things to help make titles look more professional:

• Don't make the titles too large

• Don't fade them in or out too slowly

• Don't leave them on screen too long

All of the above are sure signs of an amateur production. Watch some TV or movies, then watch some of the amateur stuff on YouTube or other sites .... pay close attention to the titles and credits and you'll see what I mean.

-DH
 
The thing I always notice is the "tempo." Well-done credits always seem steady, almost musical. Often reinforced with a march-like opening tune, you might have noticed.

Fading in and out:
In-2-3-4-Out-2-3-4-In-2-3-4-Out-2-3-4
-or, for multiple items on the screen-
In-In-3-4-Out-Out-3-4-In-In-3-4-Out-Out-3-4

Other things, like little swirly dancing glittery fades -- those are okay, I like them, but they look terrible if you don't have the tempo thing down. There was a movie recently whose opening credits were very erratic and it was really distracting -- I can't remember what it was, though.

Hope that makes sense and isn't too naïve, since I've never done anything at all requiring credits. Feel free to bash the n00b.

And please @#$%ing proofread it, man. PLEASE.
 
Re: credits

Thanks for all the tips guys. Yea its mainly the scrolling credits at the end i have issues with. I do get people to proof read and stuff so thats ok. Thanks for all the help any other thoughts would be apreciated
 
i usually make a longer psd file with all my credits listed out. Then I pull the psd into AE and animate. Export and there ya go, there are probably easier ways to do things...however, it's the workflow that i've found...does anyone know if you could do the same thing with livetype to a certain extent?
 
If you have Final Cut Studio, why don't you use LifeType?

I haven't used it for scrolling titles, but for fading titles Lifetype ist really good for me.
 
For rolling credits, I usually make a loooong strip of all the credits in Photoshop. Then I import it as a PNG or something to Final Cut Pro, and use the Motion tab to animate the rolling.

That's certainly not the most orthodox way to do it, but it's the way that works for me, because I have more control over the typography, and can even put little non-distracting graphics in if I want to.
 
ppc_michael said:
For rolling credits, I usually make a loooong strip of all the credits in Photoshop. Then I import it as a PNG or something to Final Cut Pro, and use the Motion tab to animate the rolling.

That's certainly not the most orthodox way to do it, but it's the way that works for me, because I have more control over the typography, and can even put little non-distracting graphics in if I want to.
Click to expand...

There's an upper limit to the dimensions of a picture file FCP will accept into the timeline, right?
 
Man I was going to ask the same thing...on credits, gosh why is this so difficult....I have Final cut express HD, Livetype, AE, Photoshop cs2, any thing small that would get me in the right direction?



Bi tha wey piople get bashet hurr, eye suur hoep eye speld evrything correk
 
ppc_michael said:
There very well could be, but I haven't reached that limit. (My credits are never extremely long, I do most of the work :D)
Click to expand...

So I take it you're not into vanity credits then, where your name appears 50 times, next to every possible thing you did:

(I made lunch):
Catering: Me

(I did the laundry):
Costume Preservation: Me

etc, etc. :rolleyes:
 
So ok seriously here, am in BIG TIME need of some serius advice. I am working on credits...Im a NOOB lets get that right out of the way...Im a noob but I would love to do something nice, not noob stuff. I do know how to use live type and photoshop to some degree. Final cut express also, I have AE but have NO clue to how to use it...

Heres my dilema, I want to make two colum credits, just names by names, some spacing in between, and scroll up, this is going to be played on tv....

Please all your help is greatly appreciated...
 
Peel said:
So I take it you're not into vanity credits then, where your name appears 50 times, next to every possible thing you did:

(I made lunch):
Catering: Me

(I did the laundry):
Costume Preservation: Me

etc, etc. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Blargh! lol Nope. I usually just use "Written, produced, and directed by [ppc_michael]" or something. The rest are the silly actors. :{D
 
I genrally use iMovie to make the credits. If you set everything up right, it looks pretty good. Then just export it to a high quality QuickTime video, and import that into FCP. I do it all the time.
 
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