Drop shadows

A movie with a drop shadow Consider this.flv movie It contains a drop shadow Let's see how it was made

Shadows require a background Since we want to have a shadow, we must have a white background Later, we will see how we can make "clips" of solid colours inside Final Cut, but... below, a 720x576 white image (made in PhotoShop) has been imported into the browser panel, along with the UCC photograph

Drop shadows Both clips in the timeline (white image on bottom layer), with wireframing turned on Playhead is at start of clip

Drop shadows Top clip has been selected

Drop shadows Top clip has been scaled down and...

Drop shadows... and rotated

Drop shadows To create a drop shadow, we must use the motion tab in the viewer panel, so... below, we have double-clicked on the top clip, in order to get it into the viewer panel

Drop shadows Below, we have clicked on the motion tab and... We can see that the check-box for drop shadows is not ticked So...

Drop shadows... so we tick the drop shadows check-box and... if we look closely, we can see a very thin shadow We want a bigger shadow, so...

Drop shadows... we expand the drop shadows field, to access its attributes, and we can see why the default shadow is so thin - it has an offset of just 2 we can also see why the shadow has its current colour - it is black with opacity of 50

Drop shadows We increase the offset to 22, which... gives us a wider shadow

Drop shadows We change the angle to 90, which... alters the position of the shadow relative to the image

Drop shadows The default shadow colour is black, but... We change the colour to red, and...

Drop shadows... we increase the opacity to 100, which... gives us the shadow shown below, but... this shadow is not convincing, so...

Drop shadows... we decrease the opacity to 25, which... gives us the shadow shown below

Drop shadows We want movement, so we insert a keyframe at the current position of the playhead (which is at the start of the sequence) Then...

Drop shadows We move the playhead to the last frame Then...

Drop shadows We rotate the last frame in the clip, to make it horizontal and...

Drop shadows We add a keyframe marker to the last frame in the clip

So far, then... We have implemented what can be seen in this movie That is, we have implemented an animation between the two frames shown below. But this is not very attractive Let's try to make the shadow "click into place", hidden behind the image, when the animation reaches the horizontal That is, let's animate the offset of the shadow

Animate drop shadow attributes Notice, below, that, while there are keyframe markers for the basic motion attributes, there is no keyframe marker for any of the drop shadow attributes This is because the "global" button for adding keyframes (on the canvas panel) does not set keyframes for drop shadow attributes

Keyframing drop shadow attributes If we want to animate the drop shadow attributes, we must set add the keyframe markers using the special keyframe marker buttons marked below

Keyframing drop shadow attributes Below, the playhead has been returned to the first frame

Keyframing drop shadow attributes We want to animate the drop shadow offset, so, below,... We are about to use the button for adding a keyframe marker

Keyframing drop shadow attributes Below, we have just added, to the first frame in the clip, a keyframe marker for the drop shadow offset Notice the green diamond, which represents the marker As a further visual cue, the button has turned green

Keyframing drop shadow attributes Below, the playhead has been moved to the last frame in the clip The drop shadow offset still has the same value as in the first frame and, at this last frame, there is, as yet, no keyframe marker for the drop shadow offset

Keyframing drop shadow attributes Below, the drop shadow offset has been set to zero, so... there is no shadow Also, note that this state of affairs has been registered as a keyframe –see the keyframe marker symbol –as a further visual cue, the keyframe button has also turned green

So... We have implemented an animation between the two frames shown below. The result can be seen in this movie

Now, for an exercise Tackle Exercise 17