Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

This is one of my favorite videos because I learned a lot from this process. They wanted me to do an animation of the lollipop on the cover shattering, and ending up broken like the cover. Now, I have some effects in my library, but that was a tall order. I fooled around with After Effects shatter effect, and sone other things, but it all looked fake and cartoony.

This book is about a child, but one who has an evil side. Think “Child’s Play” the creepy black-and-white movie from the 60s. So it can’t really have a goofy vibe.

I had a picture of the lollipop from the cover intact, and I had the shot where it was shattered, now how do I get from A to B? I took a step back and said, “what would make this eerie and scary?”. The music! I knew that music was always helpful, but this time the audio was driving the train.

I found a real weird track with slightly distorted strings, with a little girl humming strangely behind it, and it starts to put you off from the beginning. You’re looking at this perfect lollipop and this weird track with the child is playing.

I have the lollipop starting small ands have the camera move forward towards it to enlarge it slowly, the track has a great build in it, which really adds the tension. It finally reaches a climax and ends abruptly, just as the sound of a crunch interrupts it. I can tell you the sound effect is of an actual lollipop being crunched. The picture just changes on the sound, no transition, just one frame nice, next frame shattered-very abrupt.

After the crunch, the music descends into echo-like tunnel sound, still very uneasy, and I added the giggle of a little girl, on top of it, to make it extra uncomfortable. The lollipop quickly descends back to its original size and fades into the cover art.

This video showed me with the right audio, you don’t have to rely on the visuals. You’re creating an emotional reaction, and that’s the best way to get to someone.