Titles in Premiere can serve many purposes. Some titles are what we usually think of as titles, as "A Recipe" is the title of the poem. At the end of the movie, we use titles to create the credits. Some digital storytellers use titles to label images; for instance, the title "1962" might be added to an image to help the audience place your story in time without your having to say, "it was 1962." That's seven syllables, a few seconds of precious voiceover time.

This is a title that is the same size as your movie; in our case 320 x 240 pixels. Most will be of this size.

Pull down FILE to NEW and over to TITLE, and up pops the Title Window.

The Title Window works like many drawing programs on a computer. On the left is a tool bar that lets you select and create texts, boxes, lines, polygons and circles. You can make borders and change colors for foreground and background, as well as make gradient colors between two colors.

Pull down the Windows menu to TITLE WINDOW OPTIONS. Note the size of your window, we are working in 320 pixels by 240 pixels, and for now choose the color picker and create a white background. Don’t bother to make the background opaque.

For our purposes we will focus on creating a simple text title. Choose the text tool and click in the middle of the window. Now write the title, “A Recipe.”

To change style, size, or justification, to center horizontally or vertically, or to adjust the shadow effect, just pull down the TITLE menu and choose the appropriate menu item. There is a separate FONT menu. Your FONT selection will be limited to the fonts on your computer.

To change text colors, click on the foreground color picker as in Photoshop.

For a shadow effect grab the “T” at the bottom of the tool bar and shift the shadow, you will see the effect in the window.

To create a gradient color for your title, choose one of each of the smaller color picker boxes and choose separate colors. Yellow and Red are good gradient colors. Notice the effect.

Sometimes you want to have your title against the background of an image. Maybe that case where you're labelling an image.

Find the image in your Sized Images folder in your project window. Double click on it, and it will pop up in a Clip Window.

If you place the mouse over that window, the pointer turns into a hand. Hold down your mouse button and drag the image onto your Title Window. The image will appear in the background of your Title Window.

This allows to you adjust the location and color of the title in the window for the desired effect. A nice color effect you can achieve is to coordinate your title color with a color in your background:

1. Click on the title so that its four square handles are visible.

2. Select the eyedropper tool in the top right corner of the toolbar.

3. Click the dropper on a pleasing color in the background. (We'll use the red in Massimo's cuffs.)

4. Voila! The title color changes to red! Repeat this process as much as you like until you find a pleasing combination.

You can remove the background image by pulling down the TITLE menu to REMOVE BACKGROUND CLIP.

When you have completed your work on the title, save your file into your Title folder. You can now import the file (Import -> File). The file will show up in your Project Window, ready for you to drag into that window's Title folder.

Later in your project you might find yourself making a last-minute title. To save time, you can drag the file into your Construction Window by clicking in the Title Window (avoid your text block!) and dragging it into the desired track.

For credits to scroll off the screen, as they do in "A Recipe," the Title Window needs to be greater than your usual project height. The Image Pan filter (which we'll show you later) can be set to start at the top of your title and move down to the bottom. That's the scrolling effect.

Earlier we had you open the TITLE WINDOW OPTIONS window. You saw that your title was 320 x 240 pixels. Make a new title, but go in and change those settings. Keep the width at 320 pixels, but change the height to, say, 600 pixels, which just so happens to be the setting for our credits. You now have plenty of room to run the titles down the screen.

There's lots of blank space left in the title underneath Massimo's name. It might look like extra, wasted space, but when we add the Image Pan filter, we'll need that empty space to scroll Massimo's name completely off the screen before the movie fades out. Create your credits now, but expect to experiment and adjust them later.

We're finally ready to place our images and sounds into the Construction Window and start making something that looks like a real movie!