… for Visual Effects

Tip #345: Add Perspective

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Perspective makes your text stand-out.

If your NLE does not support adjusting text in 3D space, there’s an easy way to create the effect of text receding into the distance.

In Final Cut, its called Distort. In Premiere, you can use either Basic 3D or the Corner Pin effect. Older NLEs will probably only support corner pinning.

What corner pinning does is allow you to move each corner of a text or video clip and stretch it so that which is closest to the “camera” is wide, while that which falls into the distance is narrow.

3D rotation allows you to rotate a clip along its X (horizontal), Y (vertical) or Z (depth) axis. 3D is easier to use, but corner pinning provides far more bizarre effects, like a clip getting extruded through a bottle.

There’s no “magic number” on where to set values, use what looks good to your eyes. This screen shot, for instance, was created in Premiere using Corner Pin, the Stencil font and a bit of tweaking.

EXTRA CREDIT

You can animate this effect using keyframes.