Last week we launched So Fetch Talks #1. I have limited self taught experience when it comes to working with video. That being said, I wanted to show you how I was able to put together a semi professional show intro that took a few hours and 5$.

First thing I did was go to Fiverr. I haven’t had much luck using the site in the past but I figured I’d give it a shot. They have a whole section dedicated to making video intro’s. I looked through a few and booked this gig.

Here is the result I received after spending 5$.

While I didn’t love it, I thought it was mostly “good enough.” We are just starting and we don’t need to be perfect. I hated the music so I thought I’d try and record something a little less generic. I pulled out my guitar and amp and recorded a quick little lick. I added a bunch of hiss and compression so that it sounded extra gritty. Most show intro’s are so polished and perfect I thought it might add contrast. After I added the music to the video, I had this.

I sent it to a couple friends; they all had nice things to say, minus the gritty guitars. Gritty guitars were apparently ahead of their time. The intro seemed long to me (17 seconds). Time to get it to the basics, the stuff that mattered.

I opened up iMovie and asked myself “Who needs to see the name of a show for more than about 3 seconds?” So I cut out the frame from my Fiverr campaign that had the information I needed and I stretched the video to 3 seconds.

Now for music. I wanted to have something fade into my show so I figured about 10 seconds would work. Previous experience told me not to use gritty guitars. I’ve been listening to the Interstellar soundtrack a lot while I work recently. Space seems cool, my podcast should be cool too. Viola! Inspiration. In case you haven’t heard the soundtrack I included a musical treat for you below.

I fired up GarageBand and opened up the musical typing feature. It allows you to play piano using just your keyboard. I played a bass note “C” and added a strings effect. Nothing to it. After that I took a few arpeggio notes from the “C” scale and held them down. Stuck it on my video and got this.

I sent that to a friend, and I can’t remember the exact phrase he used, but it was something to the effect of “it sounds grim and sinister.” So I said “Ah, it’s missing the hope notes!”

Back to GarageBand. I quickly added the fifth note of the “C” scale with a simple little rhythm. All via my apple keyboard. Jumping from the first note of a scale to a fifth is not a new concept (Star Wars, Superman and a ton of other all time greats use that jump). Changed the effects around a little bit. My GarageBand project looked like this.