Music is an all too frequently overlooked facet of multimedia production. In this ongoing series of tutorials to improve your multimedia, I'll explain 10 techniques that the MediaStorm team utilizes when working with music. First, though, a few definitions commonly used to describe musical attributes. Tempo: the speed of a musical composition, how fast or slow it's played. Timbre: the voice or sound of an instrument. A stringed instrument has a different timbre than a piano or a saxophone. Pitch: the frequency of a sound. Bass notes have a low pitch; the upper octaves of a piano produce a higher pitch. Rhythm: the variation in length between sounds and accents. Rhythm is often tapped onto a surface. 1. Decide whether to use music. If the music you've chosen is not exceptional, don't use it. Viewers need only a single small reason to stop watching your work; poor music is a big one.…

Often, as multimedia producers, we are given work to edit that others have created. Some things simply cannot be changed, like an out-of-focus photograph. But there are some things we can do right now to improve the work no matter how challenging the original assets may be. (Note: This list is not meant to be dogmatic. I've broken all these rules. They're offered as a suggested starting point.) 1. Don't use dissolves between images. As a general principal, these are unnecessary. 2. Avoid excessive pans and other Ken Burns-style effects. Animation on stills is effective only when done sparingly. These techniques should be a surprise like an exclamation point in literature. And as Elmore Leonard teaches, "You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose." So let's just say two still animation effects for every 10 minutes of your project. See Finding the Way Home for an…