You know the famous 20th Century Fox fanfare opening?

Here’s how to make your own for free (though this will take your computer a few hours to render). It makes for an impressive, personalized 20-second opening sequence for your personal video productions.

Create the Video

1. Download and install Blender, a free open-source 3D content creation suite.

2. You should be prompted to install the current version of Python. Python needs to be installed in order to render your video properly. In case Python doesn’t get installed as part of the Blender install process, here’s the download link.

3. Get Matt Hoecker’s custom Blender file and open it.

Now change the “20th Century Fox” text to your custom text. There are 4 text objects (“20″ and “th” are separate text objects) to customize.

For each text object:

    a. Right-click on the text object you’re changing, then press the Tab key once to go into “edit mode”.

    b. Press the Delete key to delete any text then type your own.

    c. Press the Tab key to exit “edit mode” for that text object.

    d. If your text is too long or too short for its “platform,” in the right-hand Blender window, left-click on the red handle and drag it to the left (to shrink the text) or to the right (to enlarge the text).

Repeat the above steps to customize any text as needed. Once you’re finished, make sure you’ve totally exited “edit mode” (by pressing Tab). You can confirm this by looking at the right-hand Blender winder to ensure none of the text is “pushed back” to the rear–all text should be visible.

Blender Format tab

Blender Format Tab

On Blender’s Format tab:

    a. Confirm the Game Framing settings are set to the values in the image above: SizeX = 1280 and SizeY = 960. This is the movie file dimensions in pixels.

    b. On the “Jpeg” dropdown (see image above), click the arrow and choose AVI Jpeg.

Finally, click the big ANIM button and give Blender several hours to create your video. It will render each of the 600 frames to create the .AVI file. The Blender command prompt window will show you its progress as it lists each frame, counting from 1 to 600. You’ll find the final product at C:\render.

Get the Fanfare Sound

There are few ways to obtain the MP3 for the fanfare sound. Youtube is a good source. Use a site like VidtoMP3 to get the MP3 audio file from a Youtube clip like this.

Make sure there’s no “dead air” at the end of the sound file, which can happen, depending on which Youtube clip you use. For example, your MP3 file might be 60 seconds long, with 20 seconds of “fanfare” and then 40 seconds with no sound. If this is the case, you can use the web application MP3Cut to edit out the unneeded part of your fanfare file.
Putting it all together

You’ve done all of the hard work. The last part is to combine the video and audio. Any video editor will do, including Windows Live Movie Maker. If Movie Maker’s .WMV video format isn’t suitable for you, check out a 30-day try-before-you-buy version of Ulead DVD MovieFactory 6.

Start a new video project, add your Blender-generated movie, and your fanfare MP3 file as the soundtrack audio. You may need to slightly adjust the starting point of the soundtrack audio to make sure it syncs up with the video. Once you’ve previewed your video/audio combination, export your video.

That’s all there is to it. It takes about an hour of hands-on work, and 12 (or more) hours for Blender to render your custom movie. Add your custom fanfare opening to your own production, and prepare to impress (or amuse) your friends.

P.S. The trackback link to Jeff and Erin’s EPIC Wedding Trailer (which has a nifty custom 20th Century Fox opening) is broken. It’s so well-done, we just *had* to link to it again: