As promised, today we are adding a blogger from an animation studio who is in post production, the post will follow below. This executive has first hand knowledge of all of the ins and outs of a major animation project, from start to finish. As always please feel free to ask any questions you would like, and we will answer in a timely manner.
Whenever I am asked what I do for a living, I reply that I work in post-production for a movie studio. That response is usually followed by the question, "what does that mean?" Specifically, I work on animated movies, which opens up a whole other door in the realm of post-production. Explaining the process can be very detailed and you might not have imagined the amount of work that is done in post to finish a feature. Animated movies take three or more years to create from the beginning of story development to the time it’s in theaters. In post-production, we are still working on a movie even after it is released because of all the international versions that are released after the domestic version in the USA. Our movies are typically dubbed in well over 30 languages.
The term post-production is used to group everything under one name but typically includes many different processes such as, editing, voice over recording, sound design, music scoring, test screenings, final mix, lustre, film out and finally finishing prints for the theaters. For the purpose of this entry, I would like to explain how the voice over recording process works.
Most animated features today are much like live action movies; A-list stars are typically cast in the leading roles. Someone once asked the head of our studio why we use big celebrities which inevitable have to be paid more money when you aren’t going to see their faces on screen. The response was simply that if you can get a specific actor that is really good, you take them! Another obvious reason is that star power sells tickets. However, not every character is voiced by a big name. It really depends on what the director(s) and producer(s) are looking for.
Voice-over sessions for animation are very interesting to see because the actors don’t have other actors to feed off of or play to. Sometimes the production will provide a “reader” to work with the actor but other than that, the actor is alone in a recording booth with a handful of people staring at them from the control room. The recording session starts out with the director setting the scene. Typically the actor has met with the director prior to the recording and has a general idea of what the movie is about, but each scene is described to them on the spot at the recording session. Often times the production will supply a few clips from the movie for the actor to view and give them an idea of their character, but other than that, the actor has to do their best to imagine the scene around them. The production will sometimes dress the recording session with artwork of the characters and landscapes but for the most part it is a blank slate.
So here we are at the recording session. The actor walks up to the podium which has a stack of slides with script pages tacked to them and the director sets the scene. The actor runs through each page line by line, giving multiple takes for each line. It is not unusual for the actor to record the same lines several times. The production takes back the recordings and has their editors marry the audio to picture. Often times the production will hold internal work-in-progress screenings to get an idea of how the show is moving along. This also allows the director/producer to decide if a line needs to be removed or adjusted, or sometimes they will ask the actor to deliver the line with a different inflection. It is important to note that typically, at least at our studio, the lines are recorded prior to the movie being animated. The movie will exist only in storyboards, or simple sketches that give an idea of the flow of the film. At recording sessions tiny cameras are used to record the actors. They are aware that the camera is there but the fact that it is small prevents them from noticing the camera and wanting to act to the camera. The footage from the recordings then goes back to the studio for the animators to use as reference. The animators try to mimic the facial expressions of the actor and at times will even incorporate hand gestures or body movements from the actor as well to give the animated character a more life-like appearance. Often times the actor won’t get to see the fruits of their labor until the film is closer to being complete.
Thanks for reading. Tune in next time.
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