Make a Music Synchronized Light Show using Stop Motion

So basically if you like those movies on youtube with the Christmas lights synched to a song, this is the Instructable for you! This takes the concept of the computer controlled lights and makes it easier (in my opinion, as i have never done the computer controlled option), and cheaper.

Here's my final video.
Daft Lights

If you want the complete back story...
I go to Umass Amherst and my first finals week was really boring. I showed my room mate the video with the Christmas lights synched to Trans Siberian Orchestra and he was amazed. I told him it was probably done in stop motion, but then we saw a car drive by in the video, so obviously I was wrong. But I knew it would definitely be possible to conquer the feat with stop motion, so why not? I had 10 hours on my hands and nothing better to do, except maybe study for calc. So originally I as going to make a Christmas movie, but later decided Daft Punk was wayy more BA, and i got to work.

Step 1 Getting Started

Ok so you wanna do it. Here's what you'll need.

-about 10 hours
-a bunch of things that lights up, preferably colored.
-a digital camera with settings for lower resolution pictures
-a movie slide show editor (I used windows movie maker)
-a dark place
-a song you like
Optional but highly recommended...
-Someone to help
-a tripod for the camera
-a photo editor. I used Gimp, a free editor with tons of features.

The last is so you only need to take one photo of each light on, and you can edit two photos together to make them look like both lights are on. You can take a photo of each combination of lights on, but this can mean a lot of pictures. Actually its 2 to the power of the number of lights you're using. For example 8 lights leads to 256 possible combinations. So just download gimp so you can decide combinations on the fly.

Comments

[ezra zephyr]

the person that did that light video probably used a theatrical lighting board.

[electfire]

Need a video of the final result, but otherwise it was great, that is such a unique idea.

[veritas00000]

Hey! Check out the link on the first and last pages. It says "my video" or "daft lights"

[scott!]

Oh thanks for the link or I would've noticed either! you should probably embed it.

[prabbit22m]

Very nice Veritas. it seems MUCH more user friendly than mine.

[lowercase]

EXCELLENT! 5/5

[veritas00000]

Nicee thanks!

[Ashemha]

This is an awesome video. A great expansion on stop motion photography and just using what you have. Great instructable but even greater - an actual video of the finished product.

[veritas00000]

Wow thank you!