Throughout the 1995 holiday season, Apple is currently running a television commercial called "Wake-up". The commercial depicts a boy named Tommy waking up to a computer alarm clock that he has created on his Macintosh. The commercial shows a talking head that says "Wake-up Tommy," cartoon characters, a clip of his mother coming up the stairs saying "Tommy, your oatmeal is getting cold," a gangster, a marching band playing, and finally Tommy crashing cymbals on the screen. You will need an AV-equipped Macintosh computer. The following steps can be used as a guide for making a similar alarm clock at home:

Opening Screen

• The opening screen of the clock can be created in a graphics program, such as Adobe Illustrator, PhotoShop, or ClarisWorks.

Opening Animation

• The starting visual of the alarm clock animated sequence is made of three scanned images:
  • the picture frame
  • the city scape
  • the head

• To create the animation, you need to place the images into a multimedia program. MacroMedia Director, or Apple Media Tool can be used to do this step.
• To create the sounds, you need a sound program such as Sound Edit Pro, or you can use the Sound control panel to create a new sound. Sounds can be saved as AIFF, SND resource, or QuickTime Audio files.
• Combine the sound you created with the animation.

The Animated Purple Blob and Cowboy

• The purple blob and the cowboy cartoons are sample materials recorded from a VCR and saved as QuickTime movies. You can use any material you want, just make sure you end up with two separate QuickTime movies.
• Materials recorded from television shows are copyrighted, it is illegal to redistribute material covered by a copyright.
• To edit the two QuickTime movies and add dissolves and transitions, you need a multimedia application such as Adobe Premier or Avid VideoShop.

The Mom Alert

• The "Mom Alert" sequence is also a quicktime movie. You need to use a multimedia application such as Adobe Premier or Avid VideoShop to edit the QuickTime movies and add titles.
• Tommy and his mom were recorded on a standard camcorder, and placed into a QuickTime movie. You need to use a multimedia application such as Adobe Premier or Avid VideoShop to create a QuickTime movie.
• The resulting QuickTime movies were edited together with a "push to right" transition and title overlay using a multimedia application such as Adobe Premier or Avid VideoShop.

Gangster Image

• The Gangster image was scanned and edited in the same way as the talking head. Use the same techniques you used in the first sequence.

Tommy with the Cymbals

• The last shot of Tommy with the cymbals was a QuickTime movie created using a camcorder. You need to use the same software and techniques you used previously to create a QuickTime movie.
• To record the music, follow the same procedure you used previously to record the sounds. Once the music is recorded you need to use a multimedia program such as Adobe Premier or Avid VideoShop and merge it with the cymbal video.

Putting It All Together

• Once all the sequences were made, you need to make a single continuous QuickTime movie. Once again, you need to use a multimedia program such as Adobe Premier or Avid VideoShop to do this.
• Berkeley Systems screen saver program After Dark can be used to trigger playback of the QuickTime movie file at any specified time.
• The clock PICT file can be played back and used as the actual screen saver.

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