Construction of Red Moon Pictures Production Titles

The First thing I did when opening a new document in Photoshop was made
black background and then make a new layer and use the selection tool to
draw a circle. In that Circle I then fill it with a pale golden yellow colour.

Next I then made a new layer, control clicked the thumbnail of the yellow
circle layer and then filled it gray. With it filled gray I then selected Filter,
Render, Difference Clouds.

Then I made that layer’s blending mode as ‘Soft Light’ which adds that
difference clouds texture to the yellow circle underneath. I then merged those
layers and brought up the lightness to make it paler.
Next I then selected an airbrush 50% flow, and added a texture to that brush
being the clouds texture and with a grey colour on my palette I start to add
some texture to the yellow circle.

I then spherized the circle by selecting the object with control click on the
layer thumbnail and then I went to Filter, Distort, Spherize and then set the
spherize dialog box to 100% and clicked okay.
Next I then added an outer glow and an inner glow of a pale yellow hue. I gave
it a bit of size and some spread, but nothing too over the top to make the
moon seem as realistic as possible.
After this I then made a selection with the circle select tool and pulled it over a
large proportion of the moon I had made after copying and pasting the moon
onto another layer. I then deleted the selection I had made to leave me with a
crescent. This crescent is the crescent I’ll use to make a transition form the
normal moon to the blood red moon when imported into After Effects.

To make the moon seem blood red I then went to Image, Adjustments, Hue/Saturation and in the
window I changed the hue until the moon was dark red. Then used the burn tool to make the red
deeper around the edges of the moon crescent. I then made another selection to capture the inner
curve of the circle and then used Gaussian blur to make it seem like its falling into shadow like you
see in an ordinary crescent moon.
With the layer of the ordinary moon and then the layer of the red moon
crescent these files could then be imported into After Effects as separate
layers so that they could be animated. The next thing I did was open After
Effects and made a new composition with a normal 2:3 dimension.
I Imported the PSD layer of the ordinary moon onto the composition and
made a layer behind the moon that was dark blue (almost black).

The first thing I did then was add key frames for Transformation in Position
and Scale for the moon layer by opening the submenu under the moon layer
and clicking on the stop watches for each of these attributes to tell After
Effects that I want to add keyframes at these points. At 0 second I had all of
the setting as shown below.

And then at 2 seconds I made then as shown below:

As you can see the scale of the object get bigger at 2 seconds by around 6
pixels width and height to give the impression that the moon is getting closer.
The opacity of the layer also changes from 40% to 100% by 2 seconds in, as if
it is fading in from the background.

Additionally, I also added a Gaussian Blur effect to the layer, which reduces to
0% effect by the 2 second mark to make it seem like the moon is moving into
focus rather than simply getting closer. I did this by adding Gaussian Blur and
at the 0 second mark clicked the stopwatch for a key frame where the blur is
around 50 pixels in radius.

With these key frames in place it appears that the moon moves into focus by
reducing the blur as the timeline progresses from one key frame to the other.
The next step involved adding another layer to the composition, being the Red
Crescent Moon. I added it the composition and placed this layer above the
other one but reduced it opacity to 0%. I then added a keyframe to the 2
second mark but kept the opacity at 0%. Moving forward around half a second
then made the opacity 100% so that the red moon appears on top of the
normal moon.
However, I want the moon to disappear in replacement for the red moon, and
so as it reach the 2 and a half seconds point , I add a key frame for the opacity
of the normal moon layer and then reduce the opacity to 0%, so that as the
red moon fades in, the normal moon fades out.

The next thing I did was move forward in the time line to around 6 seconds
and added a key frame for the Z rotation of the Red Moon layer. On the Z
Rotation sub menu I then reduced the rotation to around -15 degrees, but kept
it 0 degrees on the key frame around 3 seconds into the composition. This
way, throughout that 3 second period the red moon appear to rotate after
fading into vision, into a more upright position, leaving space for the text that
will come.

Next I found a picture of clouds at night and placed it behind the layers but in
front of the dark blue. I then reduced the opacity from 100% to 30% for the 0
second point.
I then made it so that when it got to the 2 and half second point the blue-ish
clouds at night texture behind the moons reduced to 0%, by adding a key
frame of 40% opacity at 2 seconds in and a key frame of 0% opacity at 2.5
second in, to match the transition from normal moon to red moon.

Next I added a Layer of a blue solid which filled the composition and then took
the opacity down to around 25%.. I then added the effect Fractal Noise to
make it seem like there’s fog or clouds surrounding the moon.
Under fractal noise, I made a key frame from the 0 seconds point to the 3
seconds point for the setting Evolution and Off-set turbulence. By changing
the value in Offset Turbulence the effect image moves from one side of the
screen to the other, giving the effect of motion, whist changing the value of
Evolution changes the difference clouds effect in the fractal noise so that the
clouds appear to be transforming and shifting, giving them a lot more life.
I then added more effects to the blue tint layer to make the clouds more
realistic. With Hue and Saturation at the 2 second point I key framed a blue
tint on the hue of the effect while at the 2 and a half second point I key
framed a red hue so that the hue shift from blue to red as the red moon
comes into shot, giving the impression that the appearance of the moon gives
a red glow to the atmosphere.
Next I then added the effect Gaussian blur without any key frames just to
make the clouds blend more, and then I added the effect Turbulent Displace
so that the clouds appear to bulge as the video progresses I did this by adding
a key frame at 0 second for the evolution and then making another key frame
at 3 seconds where the evolution was changed to +116 degrees to change the
shape of the clouds as time moves forward between the two key frames.
After that I then made another layer by copying the clouds layer to increase
the depth of the effect, but made the opacity reduce to 0% by the time it
reached 1 second and made the scale much bigger at 0 seconds, to give the
impression that the camera was zooming through many clouds.

Next I then added the text Red Moon Pictures in two separate layers. I added a
Red Glow with the following values below in order to make the text seem more
menacing. The font typeface for the text was ‘Felix Titling’. I also clicked the
stopwatch for Glow Threshold, Glow Radius and Glow Intensity so that the
glowing effect flickered over time when I added key frames.

To animate the text I added a text animation preset called ‘Blur’ where by
changing the settings of the Offset values and the percentage of blur at either
ends of my desired key frames I manage to give the effect that the text is
blurring into shot from one end to the other. I also had to set the shape to
‘Ramp Down’ so that the fade happens in time with the movement, and the
Ease High and Ease Low settings control what end the focus movement occurs
at.

By applying the settings as shown above I managed to get the effect of a blur
shifting from one end of the screen to the other.

Lastly I added a Lens Flare which I made pan across the screen in time which
the effects on the text to make it seem like the lens flare brought the text into
focus. I did this by firstl creating a nerw black solid the size of the composition
and then adding the effect ‘Lens Flare’. In order to make everything visible
underneath the lens flare and not just a black solid I had to make the layer
blending mode ‘Add’.
 Then I moved the flare centre from one end of the screen at the start of the
text animation to the other end by shifting the timeline to the point where the
animation ends. By lining this up perfectly I created the illusion that the lens
flare moves across the screen to make the text appear. I also changed the
opacity of the lens flare from 0% to 110% at the middle of the movement until
it reached the end at 0% brightness again by adding keyframes.

By getting all of these values just right my animation was complete and the
entire video was now finished to satisfaction.