Sound in launch films

Same 12-second film, five soundtracks. Click through them below. They sound nothing alike, and yet every one does two things: its structure sits on what the picture is doing, and something drops out just before the name appears.

A launch film flips everything from the first four lessons. In the product, sound is opt-in, rare and quiet. In a short film that introduces the product, sound is the emotional layer, and silence is a material you place on purpose.

Five registers

A sound register is the overall kind of soundtrack. Measurements across dozens of launch films found five that read as crafted. Choose from the picture, not from taste.

Linear's agent film shows that last idea well: typing sits just over the pad, pressing Enter is louder, and Send is loudest of all. The level follows the consequence.

Take something away before the reveal

Most crafted films go quiet for a moment right before the name. 23 of 28 films from one studio did it; so did 14 of 18 acclaimed launches. The gap is short, usually 0.1 to 0.9 seconds, often just the low end pulled out, and it ends exactly on the reveal frame.

The picture does the same thing at the same moment: a beat of stillness. Silence plus stillness is what makes the name land.

Placing a music track

A track is placed by the picture's structure, not laid under it from second zero.

• Put the drop on the reveal. The drop (where the beat and bass come in hard) lands on the brand or title. Move the track, not the picture: trim the file's start so its drop plays on the reveal frame.
• Break down under reading. When the viewer has to read (typing, a headline, a diagram), the beat thins or the bass leaves.
• Lock only what you choose. Pick one layer to sync, act changes or the beat grid, and land it on the beat. Or lock nothing. A cut a few frames off a strong beat reads as a miss.
• Edit on bars, stay in key. Shorten a track by cutting whole bars from the middle. Anything tonal you add on top, a chime or a boom, sits in the track's key.
• Under a voice, the voice is the clock. Time scenes to the spoken words, leave a short silence before key lines, and keep the music 10 to 13 dB below.

Loudness, stated on purpose

There is one fixed number: −1 dBTP true peak, so nothing distorts on any device. Overall loudness is a choice per register. Acclaimed films sit around −18 LUFS in the middle; short beat-cut sizzles run hotter, around −13; long, calm product walkthroughs go much quieter. Write the target next to the register. And listen once on phone speakers before you ship.

Can you use that recording?

A recording in a launch film is used commercially, edited (trimming and syncing counts) and published where platforms scan audio. Its licence has to allow all three.

• Yes: CC0; CC BY with a full credit (title, author, link, licence, "edited"); Mixkit's and Pixabay's free licences.
• No: anything NC (non-commercial), ND (no edits), SA (your film would inherit the licence), "royalty free" with no licence text, and any case where two sources disagree.
• Read the item's own page. On Freesound, licences are per sound, not per person. Aggregator sites are not authoritative. Save the licence text, link, author and date next to the file.
• Watch for Content ID. Some composers register their CC BY tracks, so a correct use can still get an automatic claim. Credit in the description and dispute citing the licence.

Sounds you rendered in code are yours.

Giving your agent ears

An agent cannot hear what it makes, so it should never describe how audio sounds without a measurement behind it. Leon Lin's earshot is that measurement: a local tool that describes a file, finds and trims the right take, lays out a film's sound on a timeline, and renders effects from code. Let it do the listening; keep the decisions (register, placement, loudness) with the rules above. Where earshot's defaults differ, such as letting sound lead by a frame or a −14 LUFS target, the measured rules here win.

Plan the sound for this launch film before rendering any audio. Lock picture first.
1. Pick a register from the picture: A dry reveal, B one-key bed + clicks, C beat track, D voice-led, E product camera + foley. Write its loudness target next to it; true peak is always -1 dBTP.
2. Mark the reveal frame. Take something away 0.1-0.9 s before it (the low end or the whole mix) and end the gap on the reveal, with a beat of visual stillness.
3. If there is a track: trim its head so the drop lands on the reveal, break the beat down under anything the viewer reads, lock one layer to the beat or none.
4. List every recording with its licence read from the item's own page (CC0 or CC BY only; no NC, ND or SA), URL, author and date.
Show me the plan as a table of times before mixing.