Animating Poetry or Lyrics

Today you will animate a quote from Macbeth. Find a quote that is at least four lines long (shmoops is a good place to find a quote. Also Sparknotes has great quotes.)

First of all, there are a few quick keys you need to know about to make your animating life much easier.a

• Spacebar to play and stop.

• Option-[ or Option-] will cut the the layer so it starts at that time or ends at that time

• the U key will open up any layer and show the attributes that have been keyframed.

• Command-D duplicates a layer.

• I and O move you to the In point of a layer or to the Out point of a layer.

Start a new 1920x1080 composition and make it about a minute long.

Next, set your workspace to Text.

Layer > New > Text to create a new text layer and type the first line of a Macbeth quote.

Find the font you like, change the size, and center the text down in the paragraph panel.

Next, open up the Effects and Presets panel, then open Animation Presets, and find the text presets.

Find a preset that looks interesting and drag it to your text layer. Press the spacebar to view it. If you don't like it, Command-z to undo it. Find another.

Once you have one you like, press the U key to open up the animated property. Move the keyframes to make the animation go quicker or slower (closer together keyframes go quicker).

Go to the time you want your text to disappear and press Option-] to cut the layer off at that time.

If you like the effect and want to use it again for the next line, duplicate the layer with Command-D and double-click the text to change it.

If you want to do some other animation, make a new text layer and find a new animation preset.

Animate a quote from Macbeth.

Today or tomorrow: Record yourself speaking your quote in the sound room, find a good background for your quote, and put it all together in final cut pro.

Remember to Share > Export Song to Disk to make your GB file a music file.

To get to the server in the sound rooms, use Go > Connect to Server and put in afp://10.12.5.1 and then sign in.

To create a transparent background, click on output module in the render queue and set the Video Output Channels to RGB + Alpha.

If you forget, you can always set compositing Blend Mode to ADD in FCP.