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[Willard M]

I have just completed a movie for my grandson's 18th birthday using an idea I think worthy of passing along.

The introduction is made like a 1920's silent movie. I started out with a black panel. I am using 4x3 ratio. To those wishing can use the 16-9 ratio. I sized my panel at 6x4.5. I then found a curlycue frame in MS Clipart which I changed to solid white with a transparent background in .png format to use as an overlay. I used an overlay in case I had to resize in the movie to allow for the TV safe zone. I then created all of the white text I wanted to use in each of the individual frames in .png format with transparent backgrounds and also applied them as overlays to their respective panels.

I then created a cast of characters in my movie in white text on a black strip in .tif layered format (.tif so I could make changes to the cast later if I needed to.)  I was able to scroll this black strip up from the bottom of the black panel without it showing anything but the white  text. This strip needs to be sized just wide enough to show the names so as to scroll up the center of the panel without blocking out the sides

My introduction has a total of 4 of these frames in the begining and 2 at the end.

I was also able to find a silent movie piano clip in MS Clipart Sounds that was perfect except that I had to join in in Sound Editor so I would have enough length.

By adjusting audio fade in and fade out and adjusting duration and transition times (I used dissolve), and the variety of overlay choices the effect can be just like the opening of an old Buster Keaton movie.