OT: How do my titles look?

[Chris Poisson]

Alexander,

These critique questions are always tough, but here goes. To start with, your setting is wrong, a lake is not an ocean, which is where the book happened. Unless there’s a comedic or other reason to do this, it doesn’t work. I do like the idea of never showing the tiger, or, the camera is the tiger, but your structure for doing this needs a bit of work. Tough, tough thing to pull off.

The titles do look less than polished. The first one looks like a mistake, your pivot point is not in the center, so your roll looks fake. The other titles look better, but your center-out wipe looks weird, not even like something you can get in Live Type, which is better for all it’s shortcomings. These titles also look like 3D but not quite, if you know what I mean. There are some great 3D tutorials dealing with text right here, unfortunately I think they’re down right now.

Since you asked about looking professional, instead of experimenting with new techniques, do something tried and true, it’s much better to just bring the titles on with a fade, maybe grow a little or track or move slightly, but just a little, less is more.

The last titles suffers from a total cliche, a bad lens flare. Save those for an infomercial, very hard to do these without a cheese factor. Hope this helps…

[Marc Brewer]

I would pretty much agree with everything Mr.Poison said.

I DO like the way you try to build tension with the edits and the great music you chose.

However, the single most thing that hurts this project is the narrator.
not in the least believable and VERY amature…

Keep cutting!

Marc Brewer
MarcusVision Media

[Alexander Gao]

Thank you guys for your input. As for the amateur nature of the narration and the lake not being an ocean, I should mention that I made this for my friend’s 7th grade sister’s class, so consequently the budget was 0 dollars, pre-production was non-existent, and shooting time was about 2 hours. Can’t say that I live near the ocean either!

Thank you for the actual text critiquing though. All of the titling was done in AE. I will keep in mind all of what you said. Either tried-and-true or I had better pull it off extremely well, right? If you have any more tips, they would be much appreciated!

Thanks,
Alexander Gao
USC School of Cinematic Arts
John C. Hench D.A.D.A.

[Chris Poisson]

Alexander,

Understand the limitations, great music, I agree.

There are some great AE tuts on text in here, look at Andrew Kramer’s work, just killer stuff while pretty simple. Easy to do. Hard to beat.