[John Cuevas]

Glad you figured it out, I can stop working my way through that tutorial now. 🙂

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Instead of using directional blur(or as much), on the fractal noise, open up transform property, uncheck “Uniform Scaling” and just crank up the scale height. Also you can adjust the brightness/contrast with fractal noise, that might help too.

I made an example project to that I think is what you are trying to achieve.
6867_fractalnoisecs5.5.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Check out this free preset Amortype 2.0. It will pretty much do exactly what you want, just drop it on the text and adjust a few of sliders and you are done. Watch the tutorial though, there’s a bit to it.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

If you animation is going from (-20,20) to (0,0). Then you wouldn’t need to keyframe it, you could set the initial parameter then use the offset(or start/end) and it will move from the first position to the default(0,0).

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

To animate individual characters you need to use the range selector.

Here are some great tutorials on using the Text Animators and Selectors at the bottom of the list.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Dan reads and posts in the Expressions Forum all the time, you might want to post over there…

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Glad I was able to help.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Another method would be to use a shape layer to create your dots. Use a shape layer to create your path, and turn off fill. Open up stroke and press the “+” key by dashes to add a split in your stroke. Finally adjust your “Stroke Width”, “Gap” and “Color” and you should be there.

Then with the add fly out, add a “Trim Paths” effect and you can build on your dots. By playing with the offset under the Dashes, you can even have the dots move.

Here’s a quick example project: 6859_dotscs5.5.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

For the building you will probably need to isolate it by masking and then apply color correction effects to change the building red. Another approach would be to take a solid, and a red fill effect to it, place it over the isolated building layer and experiment with different transfer modes and colors.

For the head, once you get it in place, try using the screen or overlay transfer mode, that will help blend it in.

If you can take a screen grab of the building and post it, it might help people come up with alternative methods of color correction.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

For countdowns I would use expressions, they work a lot better. First create a new composition that is 3 hours long. Press “Cntl_alt+shif+T” to make a new text layer, twirl open the “Source Text” and “alt + click” the stop watch then copy/paste this expression(courtesy of Dan Ebberts) to count from 6 hours to 3 hours and 1 second.

rate = -1;
clockStart = 21600;

function padZero(n){
if (n < 10) return "0" + n else return "" + n
}

clockTime = Math.max(clockStart + rate*(time - inPoint),0);

t = Math.ceil(clockTime);
hr = Math.floor(t/3600);
min = Math.floor((t%3600)/60);
sec = Math.floor(t%60);
padZero(hr) + ":" + padZero(min) + ":" + padZero(sec)

This expression will get you from 3 hours to 1 second.

rate = -1;
clockStart = 10800;

function padZero(n){
if (n < 10) return "0" + n else return "" + n
}

clockTime = Math.max(clockStart + rate*(time - inPoint),0);

t = Math.ceil(clockTime);
hr = Math.floor(t/3600);
min = Math.floor((t%3600)/60);
sec = Math.floor(t%60);
padZero(hr) + ":" + padZero(min) + ":" + padZero(sec)

You might have to make up a still image with a time 00:00:00.

You should be able to take both .aep projects and dynamically link them into premiere, put them in the same timeline and stitch them together. Just in case you are confused, here’s a project with both countdowns. 6855_countdown.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.