Creating Special Effects for Clips in Motion with Drop-Shadows

Creating a Drop-Shadow for a clip in Motion adds a dazzling special effect to an already powerful feature. Adding a Drop-Shadow not only adds a special touch, but it also adds a degree of floating.

Begin by placing your background clips on Track 1A. Add your foreground clip on Track 2. This is the clip that you will resize and put in motion.

Open the Transparency control for the foreground clip and set it to Alpha Channel. This is done by highlighting the foreground clip and clicking Clip>Transparency.

Open the Motion Control for the foreground clip by clicking Clip>Motion. The first thing you will do is set the beginning and ending images’ sizes and placements.

With the arrow at the beginning of the time line, first set the percentage of zoom you want for your image at the beginning. If you want the image to start in the center, just click the Center button. To custom place it, grab the highlighted box in the image and move it to where you want the image to begin. Set the ending image the same way.

Now that the beginning and ending images are set, it is time to set the in-between points along the time line. Grab the time line with the hand and drag it to the desired location. Set the size and any other settings at each point.

When setting the motion points, if you want to delete a point, select it and hit the delete key. To remove all points, click the remove button in the Motion Settings box.

When you are finished, save the path and then save the motion settings.

Open a New Title window: New>Title.

Right click your mouse and open Window Options. Set the frame size to that of your movie, check mark “opaque,” and set black (0, 0, 0) as the background color. Save the title frame. Drag the title frame to the Construction Window and place it on Track3.

The next set can be done two ways. You can copy the foreground clip on 2, then Paste Custom>Settings>Motion Path into the black title frame on 3. You can also open the Motion Settings for the black title frame on 3 and load the Motion Path you saved for foreground clip.

Now open the Transparency control for the black title frame by right clicking the frame and settting it to Alpha Channel.

Open the Motion Settings for the black title frame and use the arrow keys to offset the path from the original at the beginning, end, and each in-between point on the timeline in the motion window.

Save your settings.

Make the black title frame active, then click Clip>Gain and set the value to 30%.

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