-
Incorporating Audio into a AE Project
This is kind of a “what comes first” question.
I have been animating in AE for a while and have never quite gotten a process down for when/how exactly to incorporate audio into a project. At times I have animated to audio and also animated to nothing and applied audio later. Seems like there must be some kind of procedure that some of you use. I find having audio first drives the animation favorably, but then you are limited to the track if you want to change it. Animating without audio I find is worse because applying audio to an existing piece can result in lot’s of work trying to adjust you animation to audio.
I am not very familiar with audio apps, but need to become more so. So I figured I would post it here to see if anyone can offer some advice as to how to work with audio and After Effects in a more simulatneous fashion.Here’s my take on how it would go.
After you have storyboards and script, pick some music which you can then create an animatic to. Once the client signs of on music and animatic then you are on your way. What seems ideal would be to have music of a specific BPM that could be replaced at a later date with a similar version from a bank of soundtracks, or even better to have a sound designer who could use the “scratch track” as a template to create customized audio to.
Any input is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading. I would love to see an article on “Audio in Production” in Creative Cow mag.
Thx,
r
I’m only half the thing I say I am, the other half are me.
-
2 Replies
-
I think it would depend on what you are working on. If it is something that is very music driven, then the music can be very important and can even automate features of your animation.
However, if it is just sound fx or a backing track, I often just add those in after the fact in the video editing application.
Audio in after effects is very clumsy. I avoid it unless I am doing something that relies on the audio for timing or an effect.
-
Thanks for your feedback guys. I guess for me, it’s just that everthing I see that is really effective and set to music is always animated in such a way that the “hero moments” if you will, are timed with the music. Also I find that the bpm can really drive animating. So Dave, how do you animate with out music and then put audio on it and deal with out of sync moments? I can see how this would work if you block out your timeline ahead of the animation and then are, yourself, a composer or have one at your disposal. But I can’t believe you just go for it with no sense of regular timing do you?
thx,
r
I’m only half the thing I say I am, the other half are me.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up