Mimicking BTTF Logo

[greymalkin]

I'm working on a slideshow for a friend of mine who is about to get married. He's a big BTTF (Back to the Future) fan so I wanted to make the intro have a BTTF theme. I realize it's impossible to make it look exactly the same, and I'm pretty happy with how it looks so far, but there's one peice that is missing:

When the actual BTTF logo comes across the screen theres a sort of "sheen" or glare that travels down the letters on the outside as they come together (I guess you'd have to look at the actual intro of the movie to know what I'm talking about). I'd like to emulate that if at all possible.

Now I know my logo and the actual logo aren't the same, so the effect can't be the same as the edges of the letters appear to be sort of chrome in the actual movie..but I hope you are understanding the effect I'm after.

Here's my rough draft so far made in photoshop/premiere 2.0:


http://dlvonde.x10hosting.com/media/IntroDemo.wmv

all I can think to do right now is isolate the blue outline of the letters and see If I can create multiple images with a "flare" at different points, then try to arrange the sequence on the timeline to see if I can get something that looks natural. That will of course be pretty tedious so I thought I'd ask if there's a better way.

thanks for your time!

[zoobie]

yes...I think I know what effect you're after...the letters glow in a direction or somesuch...most consumer editors have this effect setup for you...although most have pet names...try a free demo of one of the major ones and maybe get it that way

[greymalkin]

I've got a little clip of the actual logo I can link up when I get home tonight. I've got Premiere to work with and the logo is a .psd file broken into 3 different layers

Background Layer - Solid Black
Layer 1 - Keith (all else transparent)
Layer 2 - --> Wise (all else transparent)

On layers 1 & 2 I used the blending options to make the outer glow/bevel/gradient effect and used Free transform to "pinch" it on the right side.

[greymalkin]

ok here's the actual intro video. Again..I know there's no way I'm going to mimick it perfectly..the logo itself already looks a bit different on my version and the going from dark to light would also be a little tricky..the main thing I'm wanting is the "sheen" if you will that goes across the logo..the top one as it is coming to the center of the screen and the bottom just after it reaches 100 percent opacity


http://dlvonde.x10hosting.com/media/bttfLogo.mpg

I messed around with some lighting settings today and got something pretty close to what I was hoping for..I just might go with it.

thanks again!

[greymalkin]

I know you're all dying to see what my final intro looks like..

it isn't perfect but is acceptable to me and I think they will like it

http://dlvonde.x10hosting.com/media/Intro720p.wmv

There is about 8 seconds of black video before it starts.

the projector I'm showing it on is a XGA DLP projector so I wanted to make sure and have the source video be at least at the native resolution or a little higher so I have the intro at 720p and the slideshow at 1024x768. To make this run seamlessly I created a playlist in media player classic then created a .bat file to open the playlist file in fullscreen mode.

[redwudz]

Looks very nice.

[noemi7]

http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/search/68794468/115340.html

[lordsmurf]

Yep, looks good.

[greymalkin]

thanks everyone. I can't wait to see their reaction at the reception .

[greymalkin]

well I'm embarrassed to admit it but I'm having a terrible time trying to get this intro to play smoothly as anything bu a .WMV file.

I created the project in premiere as a 1080p project (48khz audio) and when I render to a 720p .wmv file it looks wonderful. However, when I try to render it to an XGA MPEG2 file (the projector is XGA and the slideshow is also XGA MPEG2) the audio is off and the logo stutters badly when sweeping in from the left.

I'm trying to render the file with the same specs as the slideshow so I can stitch them together and stream copy to a single .mpg file.

I used photoshop/premiere to make the intro logo and proshow to make the slideshow and I'm currently using media player classic with a playlist and .bat file to make them play together in fullscreen mode, but theres a little 'blip' on the screen when it transitions from the intro to the slideshow and I'd rather it just be a smooth transition. I can drag the .wmv file into pro-show but then the audio gets off and it re-encodes, causing it look softer.

I'm editing the file on my scratch drive and rendering to my C: drive (both the .wmv and mpg file). I'm not sure if the issue is taking a 16:9 project and trying to render it to a 4:3 file? I'll keep tinkering with it but thought I'd throw it out there to see if theres any info I'm missing.

My goal is to have both files be 1024x768 - 8000kbps MPEG2

[greymalkin]

well I ended up starting a new project with a 4:3 aspect ratio (XGA resolution) and then resized my psd files so the scale would be correct. I was able to copy everything from one project to the next so I was able to retain all the effects and timing in premiere. Then I added the existing XGA MPEG slideshow to the timeline and BAM! Got the video I wanted. I ended up playing an XGA wmv file for the actual slideshow, then rendered a DVD compliant mpeg2 file to give to the videographer so they could add it to their wedding video.

I wasn't thrilled about having to re-encode but with the slideshow I could see no real difference between the source MPG and the re-rendered .wmv file. For the DVD compliant file I had the advantage of starting with a higher res source so the DVD copy looks great.

[redwudz]

It's a good thing you started out early with this project. The process will be easier next time, although you may never need to do this again.

But, good luck with 'version 2'.