Animation escalation

I've mentioned before how sound can add depth and heft to an animation. And I just realized that sometimes the animation then needs to respond to the sound. When they work together, it gets so tasty...

I'll show you the example that showed me, after the news:

What’s going on?

• No big news. Just settling in to the slightly sticky embrace of December.

Like a phoenix from the ashes, but the ashes are cloud storage

So I animated, recorded, edited, and mixed a six-minute video, Your Key Fob and You. It was a fun little thing, starting as a training video for an everyday object, and then spinning out of control into a threat to all reality. A concept right in my wheelhouse. I had it 90% edited and mastered, almost ready to go.

But then I lost it. All of it. I switched editing platforms and the old platform didn't gracefully export the timeline and asset library. I couldn't get the project back on either platform.

Oh, I still have the parts. The Keynote deck with the animations, the voiceover audio, the graphic elements. But the edited and mixed version, which took hours and hours of work, is gone.

Bad news? Good news?

Good, actually. Because as I gathered all the pieces together to restart the edit/master process on the new platform, it made me take a second look at a pivotal sound effect for the piece. The "key" sound effect, you might say, if you were the kind of monster who uses puns.

The video is titled Your Key Fob and You. And what's the sound effect for a remote entry key fob? Why, it's a beep, of course. Here's the original beep from that lost version, shown here on a new test animation:

I used that tone throughout, and processed it to get bigger, darker, and scarier starting around the halfway point of the video. All the scary variants were still based on this simple little beep.

One giant beep for mankind

But as I prepared to reassemble the video, I wondered if that simple beep was a missed opportunity. What if the beep itself was weird right from the start? It would a good surprise, and add additional humor when the narrator doesn't comment on it. I love unreliable narrators who willfully ignore the madness around them.

I needed to find this new sound. So I got to do one of my favorite activities, and listened to dozens of versions of "bwah." (That's what the podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz calls this type of sound effect. Here's one of the earliest and most famous uses of the bwah.)

I wanted something heavy, big, aggressive, but still distantly related to the "beep" family tree. I finally found a sweet little tone. You can hear it in the sample below.

Sound, no fury

I love this new bwah. It is so over-the-top and out of place. It immediately says "you are in a different space here." And I enjoy the joke that for the next couple of minutes, the narrator behaves as if this is all perfectly normal.

So mission accomplished, right?

Well, watch that video again. The animation starts the "bwah," but it doesn't react to the "bwah." The visuals just sit there. There's no life, no relationship between the audio and video. The graphics need to do something.

I tried every Keynote animation trick I knew to move the visuals around, but nothing was jagged enough. So I had to look farther afield. Could my video editing software do it? Was there a plug-in I could buy? Any online services that could process the clip for me?

I finally found a motion graphics tool that works with my video editing software. Is it simple to use? H*ck, no! I've got a massive learning curve ahead of me. But I was able to get it to do this:

There! That's what I wanted! Now the SFX and visuals are talking to each other, inhabiting the same (weird) reality.

Unintended consequences

Making anything – paintings, woodworking, novels, houses – is always a tension between dream/reality, design/compromise, comfort/growth, yay/boo. And this whole experience with the life, death, and rebirth of Your Key Fob and You is a perfect example. Here's the yay/boo progression:

• Boo – I lost all the work of creating the first version of the video...
• Yay – which encouraged me come up with a better central sound effect...
• Boo – but the visuals needed an upgrade to support the new audio...
• Yay – so I found a new set of software to create the visual effects needed...
• Boo – which has complicated my video production workflow even farther...
• Yay – and has opened up literally dozens of new effects I can use in future videos

I first started making videos with a purposely restricted set of assets and deliberately underpowered software. And now I'm taking my first stiff-kneed toddler steps into using grown-up editing tools. It's fun, and it's scary. As many of the very best things in life are.

Fun facts to know and share

Trippy Extreme Close-Ups of Everyday Objects

It is difficult to categorize the kinds of videos that Posy makes — they are part science demo and part visual art. His latest v

kottke.org

Deus in machina: Swiss church installs AI-powered Jesus

Peter’s chapel in Lucerne swaps out its priest to set up a computer and cables in confessional booth

The GuardianAshifa Kassam

Ever wanted to drink mayonnaise? Chilled ‘drinkable mayo’ launched in Japan

Convenience store describes it as ‘the chilled drink mayo fanatics have long been waiting for’

The IndependentShahana Yasmin

How the “two-day rule” can make your daily work-life much easier

We all want to establish good habits and break the bad ones. Here’s the hack you might just need to help you do so.

Big ThinkJonny Thomson

The Booj — Twenty Thousand Hertz - The stories behind the world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds.

Movie trailers have undergone a huge evolution. They’ve gone from those cheesy voice-of-God narrators in the ’80s and ’90s, to solemn but somehow even cheesier trailers that utilize the same few epic sound effects, over and over. Professor James Deaville delivers the history of trailers, and Youtu

Twenty Thousand Hertz - The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds.Info Pocketknife

Over to you

I realize that this whole issue is just me getting excited over 10 seconds or so of video. And a good "bwah." And I think that's pretty my goal for this newsletter.

I'm not here to change the world. I do not want to "generate content." I'm here to share things that I've found, felt, or been smacked up side of the head with. Things I find interesting. Things I'm enthusiastic about. And especially things that I hope will make your day a little...brighter maybe. Maybe even fun.

I've said it before: stress + rest = growth, and the whole stress thing handled for us. We've all got plenty of stress. So it's OK to rest occasionally, whether that's active outdoorsy recreation or something more sofa-bound and quiet.

Like reading about a guy getting all enthused over a visual effect called "Earthquake."

Until we talk again, I remain,

Your pal,

Jamie

P.S. There's a section above I titled "Unintended Consequences." In what video game is that a important phrase? Let me know in the comments and we can both nerd-giggle!