chapter 12
post production
Rushes are the most terrifying thing on God's earth – exciting but so raw. There are no sound effects. And you have to explain to some executive producer, ‘there will be sound here’ and you feel you have to explain your way all through the rushes. It's so painful watching it. But the joy of making something move – then you watch it on film and it's not yours anymore. You still have the muscle memory – you can remember what was going on in the world when you were shooting it and you can feel your bones aching when you see a particular scene. But you can't do anything about it – it's gone!
Barry Purves
Barry describes the moment that you sit down with an executive producer and look through the film that has just returned from the labs, without sound, with every mistake that has happened on full view to everybody. It is a more visceral experience than tape rushes, which you can see as you go along. With film, the magic comes out of the black box, and there is the tension of checking the lab report before even looking at the film rushes – where every exposure mistake, scratch or (even worse) film fogging, is identified and charted for you by the lab technician.
‘Rushes’ or ‘dailies’ is the term for an ungraded or ‘rushed’ print of your film. This is becoming a rarer process now, as your negative is usually digitized by the labs or by the post-production house in the order of assemblage you require, so that you can work on it without touching film. It is cheaper to ask the labs simply to process your negative and have it forwarded to the post-production house for digitization.
Alternatively if you are working on computer, once the animation sequences are completed, replace your animatic on the computer with each sequence and trim the shots as necessary.
timecode
Once you start putting sound and image together you need to ensure that you have timecode to match or sync sound and image together.
Until the advent of video recording, sound to film synchronization was carried out mechanically. This mainly relied on sprockets in the film and sprocketed recording tape. Relative timing adjustments could be made by slipping sprocket holes. The same sprocket holes were used to maintain synchronization. Video tape hasn't got any sprocket holes, so when video arrived an electronic equivalent was needed to take the place of mechanical methods of synchronization. This method is called timecode, and you need to set your timecode at the frame-rate selected by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) depending on which part of the world you are working in. The EBU (European Broadcasting Union) standard of 25fps is used throughout Europe, Australia and wherever the mains frequency is 50 Hz and the colour TV system is PAL or SECAM. For America this is 30fps based on the mains frequency of 60 Hz (the TV system is NTSC). The remaining rate of 24fps is required for film work and is rarely used for audio.
If you have been working with a small budget, you will have edited the film as much as possible in advance with the storyboard, and only need to edit the film in terms of a few frames cut out here and there. However, if you have had a bit more spare time and money you will have given the shots a little overlap at the start and finish, to allow the editor a bit more leeway with their cuts. This will help them achieve smoother edits, when they are cutting on a move.
But there is still the possibility that the film needs cutting more seriously...
When I first worked at Aardman I was working with Dave Sproxton a lot. And that was quite an education because he's not an animator, although he knows it all inside out, how it goes together, the performance etc. But to cut stuff with him – he's just not precious about the animation. And you learn so much from somebody like that. He'll say ‘well that doesn't work, let's lop it off!’ and you think ‘My God! My work!...’ So you have to get that out the way and then you're not so precious about all those beautiful little bits. They aren't the whole, they may help the story, but they aren't the story...
Jeff Newitt
You will then need to make up an edit decision list (EDL) where all the cuts, mixes, fades in or out relate to the timecoded numbers on the film, which is then sent to the post-production editor. The post-production editor will digitally clean up the film, wiping any rigs, correcting any set shift, correcting colour and hue, brightness and contrasts. This process can get expensive and it's important to make a decision in advance of how far you are prepared to go with post production – as any amount of correction seems possible at this stage, but always at a cost. It's far better to have avoided those situations by planning well, only using rigs when absolutely necessary and being careful throughout the process.
Colour-grading, which used to be a process where the printer at the labs would take time to match the colours scene by scene, is now done digitally more often than not in the postproduction house.
sound
When your edit is complete – it's time for the soundtrack, this is where sound design really matters.
Music, the characters’ voices, and the layers of sound enhance the mood of the film. You have to build the soundtrack up from nothing – whether it's an interior or an exterior scene, you will need all the atmosphere sounds that make up that scene.
Interiors may have less layers of sound, but it may be important to hear the atmosphere outside – birdsong, traffic, etc. An interior will have a slight echo, as the soundwaves reverberate off the walls.
Exterior sounds have no echo – unless you are in a mountain range, or a tunnel. But they do have texture: wind; leaves rustling; water; birdsong; outer space (sound?); rain; traffic (when I worked in the BBC long ago as an assistant editor, there was a tape we always used for general traffic sounds called ‘Stoke Poges’. The original recording was made standing on a roundabout in Stoke Poges – probably back in the 1960s!).
James Mather who has done sound post production for many companies including Aardman Animations explains:
Once the film is delivered, you get given a day a minute to track lay. For a 3 minute film you get 2-3 hours recording Foley and spot effects to picture. The Foleys are the most important stage – it's the bond between the sound effects, the music and the action. It's what makes the characters real. It's quite an art, because you don't necessarily want to create naturalistic sounds, you have to create a world that goes with these strange characters – so you have to look at them and think – is it a rubbery sound? Is it a wooden sound? And then come up with the effect that works.
Foley artists work to the film and create effects such as footsteps, wings flapping, knuckles cracking, pencils scribbling, sounds that need to be matched in time to an action on the film. The sound editor treats the sounds, so that they sound right for the film using different recording techniques.
There are large libraries of effects disks, quite expensive to collect, but you will be much better off creating your own sounds. There are difficult sounds to create such as sirens or particular ring tones, but generally you can find the right location for your soundtrack – factory, school, café – and record a background sound of your own.
Libraries also have copyright-free music you can use, if it is the right music that's fine, but the choice of music is very important, it can really lift a film. You have to be very careful about copyright. You cannot use a music track without the permission of its author – a complex, slow and sometimes extremely expensive procedure. Even ‘Happy Birthday to You’ is subject to copyright laws. These laws are enforceable as soon as your film is shown to a fee-paying audience. You may only think you're going to show this film within the college environment – but what about festivals, or if it does end up being broadcast? You never know. It would make more sense, if you are at college, to find out if there are any musicians who would play for you, or if you know of a music college, to approach them with a project.
The sound editor will need to mix together the layers of sound, to make the final soundtrack for the film. If you are doing the sound mix yourself, there is some very basic information to get right about mixing sound. Have the dialogue in mono, keeping the sound central (don't pan left or right on the desk). As industry standard you will need some reference tone set at —18 dB (1 kHz tone) held for 1 minute at the front of your soundtrack. If you are recording digitally remember that digital sound is far less forgiving than analogue. Never get up as far as 0dB with your sound – it will sound horrible!
Once you've finished the recording, transfer it onto a DAT (digital audio tape). It will need a one-frame ‘sync pop’ (a one-frame burst of tone at 1k) two seconds or 50 frames before the first frame of visuals, including the titles. Put another sync pop two seconds after the last frame as well. The editor should put a corresponding ‘flash (white) frame’ in exactly the same place on the picture.
And finally, you need to put on the credits. Be aware in what environment your film may be screened. Don't make the type too small either for big screen or for TV. If you want rolling credits, work on your instinct for a timing, neither too fast nor too slow. Don't let the credits end up as long as your film. There will be people who have contributed to your film, who it is very important to credit; check you have credited all funding agencies, all in-kind support and that any music is given a title and credit.