DJ With Apple Music - Reel

Doralice is a video and graphic design studio. They asked me to animate a promotional video for Apple Music, in partnership with major DJing brands like Serato, Numark, and AlphaTheta.

The goal was to advertise playlists mixed by DJs, which could be transferred to these brands' software.

A big announcement with big responsibilities!

Very quickly, Maximilien, Soundstare's composer and sound designer, provided us with a first version of the music.

Since this was a music-based motion, we interpreted it visually to see how we could link the animations to the sound.

This also helped us come up with a concept.

Once these elements were validated and adjusted, I got started on the animatics. Some ideas were discarded, like the arrangement of the last three blocks of text coupled with three playlist groupings, which looked good structurally but took away too much dynamism.

We also took the opportunity to shorten the beginning, as the animatics showed us that the intro was too long.

There were several constraints with this production. First, it had to be produce fast, as Apple could demand changes right up to the last minute.

Second, it had to be based on Apple Music's new identity, which was very rich but whose sources weren't suitable for animation.

My objective was to create a procedural background that could be easily animated and modified.

With a few controllers for ease of use, I could generate an infinite number of combinations and link them to the sound to increase the impact of the scratches.

At the same time, Michael from Doralice created a very detailed waveform. In the storyboard, we wanted to make a transition between this waveform and the Apple Music chart with its horizontal rectangles.

So, we had to find a way to go from a flat vertical waveform to horizontal rectangles taking up the whole screen and providing depth.

I achieved this by cutting out parts of the waveform and animating them with Duik Ángela's 2D camera. With just two clicks, I had an 11-layer camera mapping and a working camera.

A few adjustments to switch the elements aligned on the same plane to a long focal length, and it was done.

Once the initial framework was created, there were a lot of adjustments. First, there was the music, which included more of the scratches I'd been playing on. Then, lots of little details were added to make the whole thing more dynamic.

And since everything was prepared in advance, the adaptations in the different formats (5 in total) were done very quickly.

It was a fast-paced, intense production that revisited After Effects classics. A lesson that proves you can still make something new with effects that are over 20 years old.

Thanks for watching!

Client: Apple Music

Date: March 2025

Creative Producer: Pedro Damasceno

Storyboard: Romain David

Animation: Adrien Boutin

Music and sound design: Maximilien Maisonneuve