Mysterious Title .MOGRT Tips

In this post, I’m going to give some instructions for how to use my “Mysterious Title” motion graphics template.

Motion graphics templates, or .mogrts, are an easy way to get complicated pre-set up effects in Adobe Premiere. A creator puts together a .mogrt in After Effects, and then exports a .mogrt, which can then be imported into Premiere, and the attributes of the effect tweaked as the editor needs. For example, you could have a title card where you can change the text, the colors, the timing, etc. Whatever the creator has put into the .mogrt to make it flexible. A .mogrt can be quite complex, but there’s no way to add instructions to it. Below, I’m going to give some tips on my recent “Mysterious Title” template.

With this template, you can have two lines of glowing text, where the letters will come together to form the title and then you can have border lines appear if you desire. On top of that you can have the “camera” move, zoomed in to certain areas.

To get the look in the first clip in the preview video above (the green letters), first I imported the .mogrt into Premiere, using the Essential Graphics window. I created a “color matte” clip and put that on the timeline. I then dragged the .mogrt to the timeline. The .mogrt comes in at a length of 30 seconds, but I shortened it to 14 seconds, by dragging the end in the timeline.

Next, I used the controls in the Essential Graphics window to get the look I wanted. Let me detail each of these by section so what they do is clear. One important thing to keep in mind is that any timing controls are relative to the entire .mogrt clip, not the time in Premiere. For example, in the above image, if you dragged the .mogrt to the right so it started at 10 seconds, and if you set one of the time based attributes to “0”, that will be the start of the .mogrt, not “0” on the Premiere timeline. This is VERY important, because if you shorten the .mogrt clip by dragging the left side of the clip to the right, “0” still “exists” in the section you cut. This makes sense, but can cause confusion.

TEXT

Top Line Text: Should be self explanatory.
Scale Up Start/End Letters: This will size up and down the first and last letters of the top line to enable you to create the look of a popular tv show. 100 will make them the size of the rest of the line.
First Letter X Tweak: Slide the first letter left and right to get the look you want. An “A” for example, will need to slide right.
Last Letter X Tweak: Same thing.
Bottom Line Text: The words for the bottom line.
Bottom Line X Tweak: Slide the bottom line left or right to get the right look.
Bottom Text Scale: Resize the bottom line if you have a lot of words or just to get a certain look.

TEXT ANIMATION CONTROLS

Letters Fly In Time: From zero, how many seconds until the letters are in their final and aligned position.
Fly In Distance Multiplier: The letters can start farther and more spread out, if you adjust this.
Fly In Randomizer: This will change the random seed that affects where the letters start from. Except for the first and last letters. They come in from their respective sides.
Flicker Amplitude At Start: Have the flickering effect be more or less pronounced at zero on the .mogrt timeline.
Flicker Amplitude At Chosen Time: The flicker amount will animate from the start value to this value.
Flicker Chosen End Time: From the start, the flicker will amount to the chosen value at this time. These attributes are useful for making the effect work with the zooming of the “camera”.

FADE IN/OUT CONTROLS

Fade In Start Time: The time (within the .mogrt’s timeline) to start the fade in. This is useful for layering multiple .mogrts in Premiere. (See below)
Fade In Duration: How long the fade in takes.
Fade Out End Time: The time (within the .mogrt’s timeline) to end the fade out. This is useful for layering multiple .mogrts in Premiere. (See below)
Fade Out Duration: You guessed it.

LOOK

Letter Color: The color of … well, you know.
Glow Color: The color of the glow surrounding the letters.
Extra Glow: I found this useful when layering multiple .mogrts in Premiere in the Linear Dodge (add) mode. (See below) It expands and makes the glow more opaque and brighter.
Highlight Randomizer: There is a noise based highlight that moves across the letters. You can change the noise with this.
Opacity of Grain: Shows the “film grain” for a retro look at the opacity chosen. Grain is not affected by the fade in/out up above. It is on top of that. As if the fade in/out was incorporated into the “film” of the title sequence, so the grain continues.
Opacity of Retro: Adds a vintage tv effect with some blur and horizontal lines.
Show Top Bar: Shows the border bar that expands across the top line of text. The expansion will finish at the “Fly In Time” from above. Resizes as text is changed. Cool, huh?
Show Middle Bars: Shows a bar on either side of the lower word that expands at the end of the animation.
Middle Bars Y Tweak: Move the middle bars up and down to get the look you desire.
Show Bottom Bar: You guessed it.
Bottom Bar Y Tweak: Depending on other factors, this can be used to move the bottom bar up and down for a certain look

CAMERA MOVE

Camera Move Start Time: The time within the .mogrt timeline for the “camera” to start moving.
Camera Move End Time: The move end time. The camera moves on with a linear curve because it worked better with the fade in/out. FYI.
Camera X Start Value: The beginning X position of the move. “0” is the center for all of these. So, “960” would put the center of the title at the left side of the HD sized screen because the “camera” moves 960 pixels to the right.
Camera X End Value: The end X.
Camera Y Start Value: You guessed it. “540” puts the center at the bottom.
Camera Y End Value: Nice weather we’re having, eh?
Camera Zoom Start Value: The “zoom” occurs after the XY move. So, if you move the “camera” to 960,0, the zoom is centered on 960,0 .

That’s it. So how I would work this to make something that looks like my preview video would be to drag one .mogrt instance to the timeline. I would leave it at the full length, or clip the end to your desired length, keeping that number in mind. Then adjust all your attributes as needed up above to get the look you want, except for camera move. Go to the Effect Controls window and change the blend mode of the .mogrt to Linear Dodge (Add). With this mode, as the different layers fade in and out, where they overlap will get a nice glow effect.

Now, copy and paste that .mogrt instance and put it right above itself. Leave them both the length of your desired output. Now use the fade in/out controls to create overlapping clips. So, the top one might fade in at 0 and out at 10, with a fade duration of 2 seconds. The bottom one gets set to fade in at 7 and out at 14 with a duration of 1 on the start and 4 on the end for extra spookiness.

Now you may not see any difference until you adjust the “camera” on both. So, have the camera move on the top clip start and end at the same time as the fade, and then zoom that in to concentrate on an interesting letter, setting the zoom start and end values close to each other. Then, on the bottom clip, set the camera start and end to 7 and 14 respectively, and have it zoom from 500 or so to 100, and it will fade out nicely as it moves away.

If you layer 4-5 of these over a longer time period at various zooms on various parts of the title with overlapping fade ins and outs, you’ll get a really nice eerie title clip. I suggest leaving them all the same length, like in the image above, so you remember that “0” is at the leftmost end of all the clips. If you start shortening the clips by dragging the right side, you might forget that.

Hope this helped you to get the look you want for your title clip, and thanks for purchasing this .mogrt!