- Hi, I'm Chris Meyer of Crish Design.Although my wife Trish and Iare probably better known for our visual work,we both originally came from the music industry.And we really feel that that understanding of soundand music has given us a distinct advantage,when it came time to edit video, animate 3D objects,or otherwise key frame a motion graphics animation.Therefore, in this course I want to share with yousome of those techniques so you can improvethe impact of your visuals as well.Now, when sound and visuals aren't synchronized,at best one may dilute the effort of the other one.
At worst, one might even distract from the other one,making the viewer listen to somethingwhen something more important is going onon screen at this moment.However, when you do tie together sound and visuals,the result truly is greater than the sum of the parts.You have something that really draws your viewer in,makes him receive your message better,and makes them even want to see that pieceover again because they had such a good time watching it.And things tied together so well.In this particular course,I'm gonna be using a combination of tutorials,where I step through specific exercises,as well as case studies,where I show you some finished work,and give you some of the ideasthat we were thinking of when we created these pieces.
![After After](http://i.imgur.com/lpzgZtI.png)
This includes timing transitions, making staccato cuts, matching the frame rate to the tempo, wiggling in time, expressing animations to sound, motion sketching to music, and more. Although these tricks will be demonstrated inside Adobe After Effects, the techniques themselves are applicable to virtually any editing or animation package. I've been using after effects cs6 to make intros in my youtube template. They always render without sound. I've been exporting them as avi files. I'm currently making one in an mpeg4 format (assuming that is another name for mp4) since my other intros all have sound and they're mp4 files.
![Effects Effects](http://digisns.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/mts-to-ae.png)
And what tricks and techniqueswe were trying to use to tie togetherthe visuals and the audio.In the first chapter, I'll cover the basicsof sound, how to read an audio wave formand understand what those squiggles really mean.We'll then use that knowledgeto spot important hit points in music or dialogue.This includes how to leave useful notesfor yourself inside your project.Which will make it easierto identify potential edit randomization points later.I'll also dive into how to translatebetween the video world of frames per secondand the musical world of beats per minute,including a table of magic temposthat work best for soundtracks.
And how to create yourself a temporary click trackto animate to while you're waiting on the final music.In the second chapter,I'll focus on cutting video to music.This includes spotting important points in the soundtrack,making an initial first edit based on those pointsand refining your edits to line up eventsinside each video clip to events inside the music.We'll then perform transitions between those clipsalso in time with the music.I'll talk about how to make staccato cutsbased on subdivisions of a musical beat.And I'll walk you through a couple of case studiesthat put these principles to work,particularly spending time on how you might cuttext to music to make sure that the viewerhas time to read everythingyou're trying to get across to them.
In the third chapter,I'll move onto animating graphics and effects to music.I'll start with an example of addingtext over already cut video,including animating the text onand then using effects to wipe it back off.Again, all in sympathy with the music.I'll show how to alter the frame ratesof sequences, so that frames played back in timewith the beats and also how to tie special effectslike wiggles to match through the rhythm of the music.I'll walk through another case studythat uses several of these techniques.And then I'll show you how to time remap footageto better align events within it,again to match your soundtrack.
In the fourth chapter,I'll demonstrate some advanced tricksto have sound actually drive your animation.Including how to make music, or dialogue,directly bulge a speaker cone,or make the lips flap on a mannequin.And I'll end with a quick demoof how to use motion sketch to hand animatean object while listening to a sound track.Although I will be using Adobe After Effectsfor the examples in this course,the concepts are actually somewhat universal.You can certainly apply themto whatever nonlinear you're editing,3D animation, or motion graphics packageyou happen to be using.
So, I think it's worth your watchingeven if you're not specifically an After Effects user.If you do happen to use After Effectsand you have access to the exercise files,the next movie I'll be talking aboutwhat are included in those files.And also at the very end talking a bitabout music licensing,everyone should really watch that section.Regardless, I really think at the end of this courseyou're gonna have a much better ideaof how to create visuals that have a lot more impactwhen played back with music, dialog, or other sound.So with that, let's dive in and let's have some fun.