How to Use the Essential Graphics Panel to Create a Motion Graphic Title in Premiere

In this lesson on How to Use the Essential Graphics Panel to Create a Motion Graphic Title in Premiere from David Bode’s FREE Ultimate Premiere Pro FAQ Course, you’re going to learn how to do some basic motion graphics and title animations, right inside Premiere.

Create Text

Create a basic lower third title by choosing the Type Tool, clicking on the video, and typing out a title. The text will default to whatever styles you used to type previous titles, but you can make changes to the style of your text in the Edit tab of the Essential Graphics panel.

Animating an Intro in Premiere Pro

Now let’s animate our intro. Go to Effect Controls > Text and select Position. Place the playhead at the beginning of the clip you’re going to animate the text on. Hold Shift and hit the right arrow eight times, and that’ll put the playhead forward about 40 frames. Then go back about one second, which is 30 frames, by holding Shift and pressing the left arrow five times. This will take you to the 10 frame point.

Now push your text off the screen. Select the keyframe to the right, and then Control-click and choose Temporal Interpolation > Ease In. Then choose the keyframe to the left, Control-click, and choose Temporal Interpolation > Ease Out. Play the animation, and the text will move onto the screen.

Creating a More Complex Animation

Now you will create a rectangular layer that hides the text and moves off the screen to reveal the text.

Go to Essential Graphics > Edit > New Layer, and add a rectangle that covers your text. You can change the colour of your rectangle in Shape > Appearance > Fill.

Put the playhead at the 10 frame point. Go to Effects Controls, and then go to Shape > Transform > Horizontal. Uncheck Uniform Scale and check Horizontal Scale. Leave the number in Horizontal Scale at 100.

Now go back to the beginning of the clip and set the Scale to 0. So right at 10 frames out, pop a position keyframe and move 30 frames, and then hold Shift and just push the rectangle right off the screen.

To finesse your keyframes, select the two end keyframes and choose Ease In, and then select the beginning two and choose Ease Out.

Twirl down Position, and drag the first handle back and pull the second handle out. Try to keep this line nice and smooth, and do the same thing for Scale. Drag the left handle to the left and the right handle to the left.

Protecting Your Animation

In Effects Control, you’ll see a small blue rectangle. If you drag this out, it will create a protected intro, and all of the keyframes you have created will be protected so that when we make this layer longer or shorter, it’ll still maintain the intro animation where it is. We can do the same on the outro.

Create an Outro

To create an outro, simply reverse this whole process.

Drop a keyframe, and then go 30 frames to the right and paste that second keyframe.

Now go 10 more frames to the right and set the scale to 0, which will basically reverse the whole animation just like that.

Repeat the process for the text position. Drop a keyframe and then go 30 frames and paste that position. Now adjust the keyframes as needed. When you’re done, create a protected outro duration. Play your intro and outro to see the effects.

When you are making graphics and you’re trying to animate them in Premiere, keep things really simple. Although you can do a lot of complex things, the more complex you make your effects built in Premiere, the more likely it is that you will encounter problems down the road.