After Effects Workflow at The New York Times

Posted by: Zach Wise    Tags:  , , ,     Posted date:  October 26, 2009  |  11 Comments


NYTimes After Effects Demo Reel 2009 from Zach Wise on Vimeo.

The use of motiongraphics/animation is still pretty new at The New York Times. We’re still figuring things out, but I thought it might be useful for some people to see what our work flow is like.

Have a Conversation:

Our work flow generally starts with a conversation. The conversation addresses the following questions.

  • Do we need motiongraphics?
  • Is the concept we’re trying to communicate visually complex?
  • Can we tell or illustrate this part of the story just as well with video or photography?
  • Do we have time to do it?

Storyboard:

If we’ve determined that we need motiongraphics for the story we have another conversation with a script in front of us. We firm up the script based on the following points.

  • Which section or sections need motiongraphics.
  • Revise the narration to work with animation

We then do a very rough storyboard and place the bits of narration under the visual coverage. In the example at the right, we determined that it would be best to cut back and forth from the video interview with Charles Duhigg to the motiongraphic. You can see frames in the storyboard marked as “Charles” for when we cut back to his video interview. Charles gave us a very “animated” story and we wanted to make sure the viewer experienced it, and we also wanted to make sure the viewer understood it.

The storyboards are meant to be a guide for when we actually start putting the piece together in After Effects. The boards are generally very rough looking and remind me of shorthand notes.

Here’s a link to our storyboard template: StoryBoard.pdf

Storyboard for Private Equity

Storyboard from Flipped: How Private Equity Dealmakers Can Win While Their Companies Lose .

Audio Track:

After we’ve firmed up the narration script, we will either quickly record a scratch narration track or piece together a final narration track. It is essential to have this before starting an After Effects project because we need to know what our timing and pace needs to be for the animation.

We’ve had to come up with some interesting solutions for working with audio in After Effects though. It’s hard to do real time playback of audio in After Effects which makes it hard to hit the marks to have animation and narration weave together seamlessly. Our solution was to add a “beep track”.

Our “beep” track solution works like this:

  • In Soundtrack Pro, we add a sine noise element on key points in the script narration that we know something is supposed to happen with the animation. It acts kinda like a key frame, or an actor hitting their mark.
  • We import the audio file into After Effects and we can now visualize our marks to hit. It also helps if you underline the corresponding points in a printed version of the script to refer back to.

Here’s a link to the sound we use: Sine.aif

Soundtrack Pro Beep Track Screenshot

“Beep” track example in Soundtrack Pro Large version..

Soundtrack Pro Beep Track Screenshot

“Beep” track example in After Effects Large version..

Rough Draft:

Depending on the project, it can take a long time to render in After Effects. Generally we output a “rough draft” version of the piece near completion to drop into Final Cut Pro, so we can see how it looks in context with the rest of the story. Once we make the final tweaks we output a full resolution final version to replace the draft in Final Cut Pro.

Example:

Here’s an example of the rendered final output from After Effects with the “beep” track for Flipped: How Private Equity Dealmakers Can Win While Their Companies Lose .

Here’s how the final piece looked.

This is basically our workflow. It’s not great, but it’s not bad either.

Got some tips, or questions? Let me know in the comments.

About the author
Zach Wise is an award-winning former Senior Multimedia Producer for The New York Times and Associate Professor at Northwestern University.



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  • http://smashcut.tv/?page_id=2 Michael Pick

    Nice to see NYT bringing mograph into the mix! Thanks for sharing your workflow.

    The part with the beep track/taking a trip into STP seems to add an extra step though. In case you overlooked it, scrubbing through your audio file in the AE timeline with command & held mouse click makes it fairly simple to hit your marks (arguably more so than realtime as you can speed up or slow down the audio with your mouse or jog-wheel). You can add markers to these points on the timeline with the asterisk key as you go.

    If that doesn’t feel real-time enough, there’s always the numpad period key to play audio in realtime, and you can hit the asterisk key during this audio playback to add markers to your timeline. It doesn’t render the visuals at the same time, but given that you’re seeking to add markers to your timeline for syncing visuals added after the fact, I guess that wouldn’t matter? You can then move your markers a tad if your key tapping was a little off the mark. Hit “LL” and you can also see the audio waveform right there in the timeline, if that helps to judge things.

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  • http://zachwise.com/ Zach Wise

    Thanks for the tip! I had no idea, I’ll give it a try on our next project.

  • http://aescripts.com Lloyd

    You can also automate it by using my new script for After Effects: AudioToMarkers http://aescripts.com/audiotomarkers/

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  • http://www.aeny.org jim

    You could also come to AENY and learn more about After Effects and some inspirational work from others .
    Next meeting is Oct 29th in NYC.

    Check the site .

    wwwe.aeny.org

  • JT

    You can type text with the marker names and it comes up on the layer in the timeline very useful.

  • Terence Oliver

    Zach,

    You guys are on the right track. A big “YES” to motion graphics. The potential for storytelling, graphic presentation, entertainment and so much more is astounding.

    I just hit my year anniversary of using the program. It can’t be rushed; I’m Just about to finish my first quarter of teaching it as a college course. Word of caution: If folks could not illustrate before AE, they won’t be able to afterward. It’s not a “magic bullet”.

    Creativity, imagination and strong visual skills are a must. Plus, it so much deeper (and wider) than Photoshop, Illustrator or any of the other programs people are used to. A solid commitment has to be made by individuals to struggle through many of the early frustrations encountered while leaning.

    Bravo! New York TImes, you are helping to lead the way.

  • Monica

    I love seeing what the New York Times is doing with motion graphics. I too am a teacher, and am passing this along to my students. Maybe now they’ll believe me that a storyboard isn’t a waste of time!

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