Lawrence Welk bubbles

[Jay]

I left this on Chucks email but he is leaving on vacation and I throught someone else would have an idea for this thing I'm doing.
I am doing a still picture slide show with lots of old photos for my 80 year old Aunt and I would like to have a Lawrence Welk (her favorite music person) DVD menu theme with the champagne bubbles floating up over maybe a background of flowers. Something like his old TV show when it first starts up with the sound of the cork popping, the music would start and then the bubbles would flow. Do you think you could get me started in the right direction?
Any help app.
Jay

[RJ Johnston]

Hi.

Don't know how realistic you want the bubbles, but here might be a start. Click "Add Text" to start a title. Press CTRL-Z to remove the text but leave the title. Draw a circle using the circle shape tool. Next you need to make the inside of the circle transparent. For that there are some styles you can pick. MyriadPro Transparent 205 is one style you can click on and apply it to the circle. It the outline is too thick, you can click on the Color Properties icon and from within that dialogbox change the stroke width.

I would create one title with a big bubble. Then duplicate the title to create other bubble "objects" that you can resize to different shapes.

Try the Roll effect on the title to make the bubble float up. Use mulitple Roll effects on the same title to make the bubbles roll up multiple times over the length of the clip. With the Roll effect, you can set it to roll up, down, left, or right. Use one Roll effect set to Up and another set to Left to have the bubble float up and to the left, for example.

I hope that gives you a starter.

[Steve Grisetti]

Sorry it took me so long to respond to your e-mail, Jay, but, as I said in my e-mail back, I'll be glad to take a pass at it. (In fact, I just got back from visiting Chuck, who mentioned your e-mail between our comings and goings.)

Just so I get a feel for the tone you're going for, I've asked that you e-mail me a 640x480 pixel image for the background. Once I have that, I'll do some bubble animations over it and see if that gets you started.

If it turns out right, we can post it in our gallery.

That sound like a deal, Jay?

[Chuck Engels]

Here is my first draft of the bubbles and a short clip of a sominex commercial.
http://www.muvipix.com/cpg/displayi ... p?pos=-787
http://www.muvipix.com/cpg/displayi ... p?pos=-786

The only problem so far is that the 30 second AVI file is over 2gb, but it looks much better than the FLV.

[RJ Johnston]

Chuck, I like your bubbles much, much better than Lawrence Welk's, although his bubbles are going every which way.

[Chuck Engels]

Thanks RJ, I have quite a bit of control over the bubbles and could make them go straight up. The bubbles on the Welk Show moved around quite a bit, lots of air moving in the studio probably had fans running. I can control the number of bubbles, movement, size and color in After Effects.

My biggest problem is saving the file in a reasonable size. The 30 second uncompressed AVI of just the bubbles with a transparent background is 1.2gb

[RJ Johnston]

So, After Effects is your secret weapon.

Any file format I save in PE where there is an alpha channel creates huge files. I don't understand.

[Steve Grisetti]

Very nice work, Chuck! Couldn't have done better myself!

[Doreen L.]

Really nice bubbles Chuck!

Robert, you never cease to amaze me with your knowledge of things you can do in PE.

[Steve Grisetti]

Okay, here's my pass at the Bubbles effect, using the background Jay requested.
Bubbles Effect

[RJ Johnston]

Wonderful, wonderful.

[Doreen L.]

Very nIce bubbles Steve (boy, does that sound weird).

Did you only use PE to do that?

[Jay]

Steve, Chuck, RJ and who ever

I am just sitting here in awe looking at these amazing pictures and I feel as if I am still in the stage of evolving from the ocean to the trees. Where do you talented people come from? Surely, not where I’m coming from. What started out draining the pool (slide show) all of a sudden I’m up to my ass (new material) in alligators. If I knew how to use it all it would be great. As you recall, I just got your book yesterday and I’m only on chapter three where it starts “This is a computer…etc..” But kidding aside, I want to thank each of you for your time, work and interest in my project. There are only about 100 pictures in the slide show and I was wondering with effects and all if everything will fit on a DVD disk with a DVD menu of 2-3 G even though I have a duel core burner on my lap top. What do you think?

Thanks Again
Jay

[Steve Grisetti]

100 pictures, 5 seconds each = 500/60 = a mere 8 1/2 minutes. Should easily fit on DVD.

And, yes, my bubble effect was created right in Premiere Elements. I just took the background you suggested and drew a white bubble with a gradient fill and no background in Photoshop Elements and saved it as a PSD file -- so that it remains transparent. From there it was just a matter of stacking 9 or 10 video tracks with those bubbles, creating a few motion path presets and applying them randomly.

You'll be able to do the same thing before you're halfway through the book, Jay. Don't lose heart. Once you master keyframing, it's all easy!

Meantime, Jay, I e-mailed you a link to a site where you can download the native AVI file of the bubbles for your project.

[Chuck Engels]

Wow, that's some great work Steve. Looks like you are getting quite a bit of material Jay