Defying the laws of physics

I got back from vacation last week and got an email from my producer. The geologists had finally gotten some comments together on the final animation. (I had one week to build it; it took them three weeks to watch it and write up their thoughts.)

They want major changes to four scenes, but the glaciation is the funniest. Currently, it shows a single pulse of glaciers advancing and retreating. There are only six seconds alloted, so it looks like a wave crashing on a beach, more than glaciers - 2.5 seconds in, pause a second, 2.5 seconds out. But what can I do?

The comments, of course, complained that A) the glaciers move too fast and B) that I need to show two pulses of glaciers rather than one.

And I am allowed to expand the section to ten seconds. That translates to five seconds per pulse which, as the mathematically-minded among you have already figured out, is actually less time than I had before.

My task now is to make the glaciers look slower, in less time.

Right.

Uh-huh.