Old school title tutorial (Final Cut Pro X)

You may have seen in the Stranger Things titles and in other video productions this special type of title fade, where the colour changes as the title comes in and the title has this ‘jittering’ effect.

Ideally you would be able to key the colour fade and sync it with the transition of the fade-in (so as the title fades in the colour changes). If you can’t do that then feel free to follow this quick tutorial for Final Cut Pro X.

The first step is to create two title layers, one the colour you want the fade in to be, and the other the main colour. Place the fade in colour title below the main title. (In this case the red title below the white title.) We find a greyish white works well for the main title and a red or blue fade in colour, but feel free to experiment.

Apply a cross dissolve to both titles and stagger the two transitions about half a second apart or until the effect looks right.

If you are using Final Cut Pro X you can use the built in Aged Film effect to add the jitter and if desired specks of dirt or hairs and variations in brightness and focus. Once it looks good create a compound clip by selecting all the clips, including transitions and right clicking and clicking New Compound Clip..

Now add the Aged Film effect to the newly created compound clip.

Make sure the adjust colour is set to 0 and reduce the grain unless of course they help add to the effect you are going for. Reduce the jitter to as low as possible and add any dust or hairs as desired. Focus and brightness variance can also help in getting the effect.

Good luck and thanks for viewing. Here is our finished product again for reference. We also created the Stranger Things gif with a similar method, by keying the Color Adjust parameter from -1 to 0 in the Aged Film effect. We did this instead as the white stroke behind the red stroke created an aura around the text which detracted from the effect.