Earlier in this pathway you built static titles. This lesson covers animating them, and building reusable Motion Graphics Templates (MOGRTs) so a consistent visual style doesn't need to be rebuilt on every project.
Keyframing Fundamentals
Any property in Effect Controls with a stopwatch icon can be keyframed — Position, Scale, Rotation, Opacity, and effect-specific parameters. The workflow:
- Move the playhead to where the animation should start
- Click the stopwatch next to the property to enable keyframing and set the first keyframe
- Move the playhead forward
- Change the property's value — Premiere automatically creates a second keyframe
Premiere interpolates every frame between two keyframes automatically. By default, this interpolation is linear (constant speed), which often looks mechanical — real motion accelerates and decelerates.
Easing Keyframes
Right-click a keyframe and choose "Easy Ease" (or "Easy Ease In" / "Easy Ease Out") to apply smooth acceleration and deceleration, matching how objects move in the physical world. For finer control, open the Graph Editor (the icon at the bottom of Effect Controls) to manually shape the velocity curve between keyframes — dragging the curve steeper accelerates motion faster, flattening it slows the transition into or out of the keyframe.
As a default habit: ease every keyframe involving Position or Scale. Leave Opacity keyframes linear more often — fades generally read fine without easing, since brightness change is less perceptually sensitive to velocity than motion is.
Building an Animated Lower Third
Combine what you know:
- Build the static lower third (name/title text plus a background shape) as covered earlier
- Select all its layers, and keyframe Position so they start off-screen (or Opacity at 0%) and animate to their resting position over 15-20 frames
- Ease the keyframes for natural motion
- Add a second, matching animation at the point the lower third exits — animating out is just as important as animating in; don't let it just hard-cut away
Exporting as a Motion Graphics Template (MOGRT)
Once a graphic (a lower third, an intro title, a call-to-action) is built and animated the way you want, save it for reuse:
- Select all its layers in the timeline or Essential Graphics panel
- Right-click > "Export as Motion Graphics Template"
- Choose to save locally or to Creative Cloud Libraries (Creative Cloud sync makes it available across projects and machines)
When exporting, mark which properties should stay editable — text content, color, and font are common choices — using the "Response Design – Position" and parameter-linking options in Essential Graphics before export. This lets you (or someone editing after you) drop the template onto a new clip and simply retype the name, without touching keyframes or animation at all.
Using a MOGRT
Drag a saved MOGRT from the Essential Graphics panel's Browse tab (or from a Creative Cloud Library) directly onto the timeline like any other clip. Select it, and the Edit tab exposes only the parameters you marked as editable during export — a fast, foolproof way to reuse a polished graphic across many videos without any risk of accidentally breaking the animation underneath.
Simple Animated Shapes
Beyond text, the Pen tool and Shape tools in the Program Monitor's graphic editing mode let you draw basic shapes (rectangles, circles, lines) directly as graphic layers, which can be keyframed the same way as text — useful for animated underlines beneath text, simple progress bars, or background accent shapes that move with the content they support.
Keeping Motion Consistent
Across a single video (and ideally across a channel or brand), reuse the same easing style, timing, and entrance/exit direction for similar elements — every lower third animating in the same way, every call-to-action using the same timing. Inconsistent motion style between graphics reads as unpolished even when each individual animation is well-built.