I saw a ton of great answers in the comments this week- which is awesome.  I really think the more programmers share their thought process and methods, the better our profession as a whole becomes.  Thanks for doing that.

Here’s my answer.  An effect applied only to the cells, which were randomly shuffled prior to applying.  I work in Eos, and I choose to solve this one in the Absolute Effects engine, which functions like a spreadsheet of instruction. 

There are actually 19 instructions in this effect, and all but two of them are “do nothing”.  Bkgd is short for Background, which is a doing nothing command.  The only two change commands are go down by 10% and go down by 15%.  Times are fairly long when you look at Time and Dwell.

In the lower right, under Attributes, you’ll see that I’ve assigned:

Random Group- gives Eos permission to randomly shuffle the cells even more and continuously.

Random Rate 100-125- gives Eos permission to vary the original timings randomly between 100 and 125 percent of the original timings.

Forward- is a default.  For the purposes of this effect, it’s meaningless.

The many Bkgrd commands mean there are plenty of times when the effect isn’t happening.

Grouping of Spread is one of the reasons why the Bkgd commands are so important.  The effect will be spread through the selection evenly.  If many instructions in the effect are to do nothing…the effect is very subtle.

That’s all there is to it.  Hopefully this is useful to y’all.  It’s an effect that you can barely see when you look at the subject (as opposed to the light) but it keeps the look from seeming too static and uniform.

What unusual effects have you been asked for?  Would love to hear about them!

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Mark LaPierre is a programmer in film, television and theater based out of Albuquerque.  He grew up in live entertainment and has been a designer/programmer for musicals, concert dance, live music, circus and corporate.  Mark is a proud member of IATSE, an ETC Eos trainer and an enthusiastic trainer of many other platforms and subjects.  He offers remote console coaching in 30 minute to 4 hour times as well as a full range of training in person.  If you enjoy his content, please consider commenting on his posts on the website to appease the Algorithm.