I would key out the white in the generated text media like you did, Randy, but then I would create a graphic in Photoshop, twice the frame height or so, top white, bottom red (and I would make the red/white border a little wavy, as if it were a liquid). Then place that on a timeline below the generated media, stretch it to fit, and use pan/crop and keyframes to scroll it up behind the text. I think that would be easier to control than a wipe (but I haven't tried the wipe method, which does sound a lot simpler. I do like the wavy top to the blood, though).

Just have the text appear in red from black bubbling up rather than white to red this way you can create antisi….pation
If the white text appears first then you have already made your statement the transition to red is just a transition

1 Have your text in white top layer, multiply mask, parent

2nd layer use noise text standard turbulence red and dark red, animate bubble up, make it messy and ad liner wipe in front of that
Add fx bump to that so it looks 3d and change the channel to hard light

3 if you use bump in parent use the face of your fave politician for a bump map

you can get a 3d blood flow feel

This can be done with two tracks:

On the top track:

(1) Place your white text with transparent background
(2) Change the Compositing Mode to Multiply (Mask)

On the track below that:

(1) Create a Generated Media Gradient using the preset Soft-Red Backdrop
(2) Add an additional point in the middle to give you more control over the red/white switch point. (maybe darken the red too)
(3) Add keyframes to move the red point from the bottom to the top over time
(4) Make this track a Child of the track above (very important!)

You should now see text that slowly fills up with red. Now... if you really want to make this look great, get a video of liquid filling up the screen and make the liquid red and substitute it for the generated media on the second track. This should look great. Alternately you could add more points to the gradient to make the red and white more distinct so that you can control the point at which is switches from white to red. You could even keyframe the sway of the gradient to give it some liquid motion.

~jr

Bob's crazy idea to make it look more real.
Get something like one of those ant farms. Pour a viscous red liquid into it, glycerine and red dye works well. Video this and composite as per above. With a bit of careful lighting you might get the letters to look like they're made of a transparent material and the liquid is really filling them.

Better still would be to shoot this several times and use each take for different letters, that'd not give the game away so much. Maybe you could even use a bump map to add a bit of edge to the glass so the letters looked solid.

Bob.

Wow a lot of ways to do it eh??
Thanks very much everyone, I needed to go ahead and turn in this opening montage yesterday (which had the blood politics title on the front) and he was very happy with it. This is very fortunate because the documentary is supposed to be (or at least seem) unbiased...blood filling letters in my opinion would have been very inappropriate.
That said, I apologise for you guys taking the time to come to my rescue unnecessarily and I appreciate it very much!!!
Maybe I'll save this thread for Halloween.
Thanks again,
Randy

So How did you do it. With just white lettering on black background?

So How did you do it. With just white lettering on black background?
Well it's still pretty chessy (and biased in my opinion): I used track motion on the generated text (with a font named "creepy" )to bring it in slowly from the top and keyed the text color from white to red. The good thing is that he was blown away by the montage it led into so he said leave it just like it is ...hopefully he won't come back when the new where's off and say "hey, where's my blood filling text??!!!"

> Wow a lot of ways to do it eh??

It just goes to show you... "There is more than one way to blood out of Vegas!" ;-)

While you didn't use it for this job, hopefully you have learned that you never have to Chroma Key white. Just set the track Composite Mode to Multiple (Mask) and anything white will immediately become transparent.

~jr

Well that's a little too easy JR : )
I just tried it and put a solid color below and used track motion on that track and my text magically filled up with blood...still cheesy as hell mind you...but if he comes back wanting it, I have it.
Thanks very much everyone, you're still the best forum on the planet!!!
Randy

you're still the best forum on the planet!!!

Pray tell? And which Planet is that?

Grazie

Well Grazie, I was talking about Earth ....but then I'm not sure about you my friend : )

hopefully you have learned that you never have to Chroma Key white. Multiply mask

Good one! JR Never mentally processed it like that before

A humble little attempt ...

http://www.chienworks.com/media/bloodfill.wmv

Not bad, not bad at all.
The liquid though looks more like red cordial than blood.
Maybe slowing it down or else compress it vertically would reduce the wave height and make the liquid seem more viscous. Also having each row of the text filled individually would enhance the effect. Offset each rows filling at random should fool the eye into thinking it's seeing different things happening in each row of text.
Might be just my opinion but these kinds of effects needn't be cheesy if they look realistic, assuming they're not totally out of context.

Bob.