In the last Motion^R tutorial, we added the copyright text to the craft product trailer template that we are building in Motion. Now we will add the lower third that will display the name of the craft product.

A lower third is a term used in the video and television industry that refers to the title-safe lower third area of the screen. You might have noticed this in use during news programs or commercials. A lower third can be as simple as just text on the screen, such as the copyright text that we added in the previous tutorial. However, you can also add graphics, styling and animation.

When we discussed the design elements for our template in a previous tutorial, we mentioned that our lower third will contain the name of the product and a simple graphic background. It will slide onto the screen as the intro clip fades out at the 9:15 position on the Timeline and will fade out just before the end of the trailer (36:15 - 37:00 on the Timeline).

You might also remember that we designated two layers in the Layers pane for this lower third. The NameOfProduct layer will contain the text and the NameOfProductBG will be the drop zone for the background graphic. Because we want this lower third to be visible no matter which product image is on the screen, we are placing these two layers at the top of the DropZones group hierarchy.

As we will be using a different graphic background in this lower third for each trailer that we create with this template, using a drop zone is the best choice. Unlike the product image drop zone which will be 1920 x 1080 resolution, this drop zone will 600 x 200 pixels to accommodate the smaller graphic. Of course, we will also change the placeholder text to the name of the current product when creating a new trailer.

Let’s get started.

1. Lock both the Closing and Intro and BG layers in the Layers pane.
   
   
2. Select the Intro and BG layer. Click the Plus icon to add a new group above the Intro and BG layer. Rename this layer to Dropzones.
   
   Let’s try another way to make a drop zone. This time we will first drag an image from the File Browser to the Layers pane, as the background of our lower third. Next, we will position both the lower third's image and the text correctly on the screen. Then we can convert the image to a drop zone. You will want to use this method when the drop zone needs to match the shape of a specific image.
   
   
3. With the Dropzones group selected and the Playhead at the 9:15 position, drag the background graphic from the File Browser to this new group in the Layers pane.
   
   You will notice the image has been placed at the center of the screen and a new layer is added to the Dropzones group. The name of the new layer is the same as the name of the image.
   
   
4. Drag the new image just above the copyright text at the lower left of the screen.
   
   We want this graphic to be semi transparent. So lets reduce the opacity.
   
   
5. With the image selected, set the Opacity to 20% in the Properties tab of the Inspector.
   
   

Continue to animate the lower third.

Next →

Finished Project Trailer

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