[Michael Szalapski]

They said, “I am currently working with static shots of people moving.”
so, from the sound of it we’re wanting to zoom in to faces in a wide shot.
This sounds like a job for the CSI “Enhance” command!
As far as how to zoom in to faces you could place a null where a person’s face is, parent the footage to the null and scale the null. But geez; it’s not going to look good.

– The Great Szalam
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[Michael Szalapski]

If you duplicate your lens flare layer and use it as a Luma Matte for the picture layer does that do what you want?

– The Great Szalam
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No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

No. Don’t use youR text layer as the shatter map. Duplicate your text layer, add a stroke to it in the text options, precompose it and use the precomp as the shatter map.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Whatever you tried to attach hasn’t come through, but I can guess what’s happening. You need to make sure your custom shatter map is a little larger than your letters.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Gosh dang it; I’m an idiot. You could also track the funny colored particle from a top view to get your z data. (moron!) THEN change it back to normal.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

I’m off work now and I’m at home now so I can see the Vimeo stuff. And I see where mine is not what you wanted. When you said organic I was thinking natural, flowing, etc. Not just sorta wiggling a bit. You said straight would be okay and straight and organic do not go together in my mind, but now I understand what you’re after.

I’m guessing you want to be able to fly the camera around the comp? If not, you could fake it with Generate>Beam for a line with perspective and use some distortion effect it to get the bending. You wouldn’t have to do any motion tracking for the text because Beam’s start and end points are specified in the effect. (Of course, if you’re not careful, your distortion effect could move it…)

If you must have the camera moving around it all, you could create the lines with Trapcode’s Particular (move the emitter over the path you want the line to go and with 0 velocity, wind and gravity) and use the turbulence field to give the line organic movement.
If you don’t want to have to matchmove the text to follow the line’s end by hand, you could always keyframe the particle color at the very last particle(s) to be a wildly different color from the rest. Track that dot of color (from a front on view) to get your x and y data for the text, then all you have to do is make sure the z is correct. (Don’t forget to change your particle’s color back.)

Of course, you could also get a proper 3d program…

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Wait, how are you applying the texture to the text? In that tutorial you linked to, the texture is applied in the Shatter effect and will not move independently of the letters.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

I don’t have access to Vimeo behind the government firewall/blocker thingy where I’m working, so unfortunately, I can’t see your examples. However, I can link you to some tutorials that might point you in the right direction. This one, this one, this one, and this one.
Have fun.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Why not animate the camera instead of the letters?

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

You mentioned that even though it was the same tape it was used in different cameras in different places around the world. You can record different pixel aspect ratios on the same tape, perhaps they’re not all quite as identical as they appear.

Just a guess.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.