One of my favorite things to do is to work on personal projects whenever possible. These types of self-initiated projects might seem like a waste of time when you could be working on other projects that might make you money but they can actually lead to new opportunities and a way to develop new skills. For this reason, I decided to put together a short opening credit scene for a fictional TV show I call Truth in Smoke. In this quick article, I wanted to talk about my thought process and breakdown how I created this so if you wanted to make something like this on your own, you have a great starting point.
The Idea
So, for this opening credit scene, I have loosely based it off of a show that I am currently watching called Truth Be Told. I love the way this show handles the clips from the show, the text, the pacing, and the music so I wanted my project to have that same feeling. If you haven’t seen the show, you can view the opening credit scene below.
The Content
Now that I have the idea for the show, I had to gather up the clips and the song. This was probably the most time-consuming part as it required looking around on multiple stock video sites to find clips that give off the same mood and feeling for what I was trying to accomplish. I certainly could have filmed these clips myself, but I wanted to use only stock clips to show that you have many resources at your disposal to make great content!
Most of the video clips actually came from a stock video subscription service I have through StoryBlocks. I have used this service for many years and they have a great selection of high-quality clips. I also found clips via Pexels Stock Video. This is one of the best free stock video sites and a few of the clips for this project were found on this site.
For the music, I looked through the site SoundStripe. This is a subscription services site as well and it has a huge selection of music to choose from. If you wanted to so the cheaper route, you can also checkout the YouTube Music Library that is free for every YouTube Creator. The selection is honestly hit-or miss when it comes to the quality but for those looking for something free, this is a great option.
The Editing
With the editing process it was fairly simple. In the beginning, I wanted to show an overall city shot first to establish where this fictional show can take place. From there, I used a majority of b-roll/abstract shots that don’t show too much of the scene but still convey where the show takes place. It is alway good to use these types of close-up scenes to generate interest in the parts of the show that are important to the story.
I knew I wanted to end the opening credit scene with the man running through the fog/smoke. This was one of my favorite stock clips I found and knew it would be a great “opening ended” scene. Also due to its dark nature, I was able to easily overlay the title of the show as well.
Once I had my clips in order, it was a matter of timing these scenes for cut with the beat of the music. This isn’t a necessary step but I have found it looks a bit more intentional if you have a song that has a distinctive beat. Next, it was time to color grade. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do too much as I intentionally found clips that had a similar color grade to them but I did add a simple LUT to the film using an adjustment layer. The LUT I used was the Joker LUT from the CineMimic 3D LUT Collection. This is one of my favorite LUTs as it is color graded to “mimic” the style from the 2019 Joker movie. It was hints of warm orange and green tones that really add that dark and eerie feel I was going for.
The last edit I made to each of the clips that display the cast and crew was to add a simple Focus effect that blurs our all of the clip except for the area where the text is displayed. This is totally a creative choice but I feel it adds a bit of mystery and really allows the text to stand out.
The Final Project
So there you go! Creating something like this is super easy and a great way to tryout some of the creative ideas you have. It is also an easy way to add projects to your portfolio if you are wanting to get into the video production scene. Have some fun with it and go create something of your own! I would love to see it!
