Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – Movie Credits Re-Creation

I was recently asked by a friend to find a screen grab of the end credits of a movie where her significant other was listed in the set production assistants crew. However, this movie isn’t currently released on DVD so I had no way of accessing these end credits short of speaking with the production studio itself, thus my new task arose.

The Mission: recreate the Transformers 2 movie credits using the actual names that would be featured in the appropriate sections/order in a style that would look as if somebody literally took a picture as the credits rolled by. In addition, the featured name was to be highlighted in a subtle way that would pop out when printed and framed.

The Process: Initially I thought I would be able to find an appropriate font from my vast library that would pass for standard movie credits, but after popping in my Transformers 1 DVD to get a visual reference, I noticed that Michael Bay used a very unique font that would be easy to tell if a knock-off was used.  This is when I hit my first wall.

Step 1 – Identify the font: I tried taking a screen grab of the DVD credits but apple won’t allow you to use this function while DVD Player is running, so I had to use Apple nifty Dos type application Terminal to work my way around this with a simple override script. From there, I submitted a sample to http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ to have it instantly analyzed (very cool website for identifying fonts) however, they came short so I tried out http://www.identifont.com/ (another great font identifying resource) but sadly, they came up short as well. I drew the conclusion that this particular font isn’t commercially available so I had to re-create it myself.

Step 2 – Create a working custom font: After I did some research, I found that the “Bank Gothic” font was most closely related to the font used, and was actually cited by one user as what they liked to call the “Michael Bay” font. It didn’t quite match up, so I was able to underlay my screen grab of the Transformers 1 credit and type up the matching credits/ manipulate the font until I got something that overlaid perfectly. It’s a fairly simple process if the font is close enough and you know how to use the transform tool in Photoshop, and to type new sections all you have to do is duplicate the layer and the manipulated font properties will stay intact as you type.

Step 3 – Insert appropriate credit titles: From there, my next task was figuring out what sections/ names would be appropriate to insert into my new custom font typeface, which I thought would be a trivial matter using IMBD’s full cast and crew http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1055369/fullcredits#cast however, I noticed when comparing the Transformers 1 credits to it’s IMDB references, some of the names/ titles were missing or weren’t available. The task was to make it as accurate as possible, so I did a little more digging online and found the appropriate names to go in the sections I chose based off the original Transformers credits.

Step 4 – Subtle details: From there, I added a subtle black cutoff above and below the credits to give it that scrolling movie feel and I added a simple drop shadow with a “lighten” blend mode to the particular name that needed to stand out. It looks overemphasized in the digital version, but when printed in RGB the highlights are subtle yet clean.

*Side note, it goes unsaid, but it’s always best to print out samples of your digital files in the color mode your end destination printer will be set in. The reason being is sometimes the colors don’t come out the same or highlights/ shadows appear differently which can be a nightmare if you’re on a deadline or sent it to a remote location for printing and cant quickly make the change. My particular printer works in RGB and I was designing in CMYK, so I simply flattened the image and converted the color mode under the Image> Mode > RGB color setting.

Step 5 – Finishing touches: All that was left to be done was find the most current Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen logo using Google images with the “very large” image filter to get a high res logo that would look clean in my 300 dpi design space. I happen to find this particular one off of a movie poster that I cleaned up and edited out the background to isolate just the logo.

Some 8 hours later, I had the finished product below. The high-res can be seen in my “Professional Design” section by clicking the image below: