An Animation Editorial Workflow

September 2, 2015 Judith

I put this together pretty quickly for the internal project wiki at work as a basic overview of what goes in and out of my remit as editor on a 52 x 11 min animated series, where within the process sequence reviews typically happen, and where things come from/ go to.

It's not as entirely linear as this in practice (locks happen before all of the animation is done, for example - so that any extensions can be accommodated), a lot of things end up happening as simultaneously, and I'm typically working on anywhere between 5-26 episodes at a time... but this is the basic system.

I'm sharing it here because I get asked a lot where the editing happens in animation ("surely the work's all done by the time you arrive on the scene?"). Answer: everywhere. I haven't even included the script changes and pickups/ ADR here. They basically get added throughout, ideally less frequently as time goes on - the further we are in an episode; the more people are affected if something needs to be changed.

Notes on syncing and slating from an editor

November 17, 2014 Judith

The film slate. It's one of the big symbols of film-making. But... there's a point to it. And that point is understood to a greater or lesser degree throughout the industry.

But for an editor, it can be essential communication. We're usually not on set (we're editing the previous day's shots), and the less time we need to spend figuring information out, the more time we can spend being creative.

Here are some notes based on some past difficulties I've encountered when syncing video and audio. A lot of it isn't necessarily intuitive if you haven't spent any time ingesting dailies, so I thought I'd get some general thoughts written down. They essentially form my wishlist of what I'd like to see when I get a new set of dailies.

Other editors may disagree with some points or prefer other solutions, but this is what I am happiest with. Regional variations may apply; almost certainly in terminology.

Postchat: Animation and the Post Process

March 2, 2014 Judith

Postchat is a weekly discussion on issues surrounding post-production amongst the Twitter community of which I am a part.

This week I was asked to be featured during a discussion on animation editing. I've summarised the proceedings before and tried to link questions and answers together - although at the time a lot of conversations were occurring in parallel, with diversions - and I went back a few times to questions asked earlier. For a full transcript, see this Storify.

Q Pootle 5 - UK broadcast from next week

July 27, 2013 Judith

A bit of self-promotion here: the series I've been editing for the last year... almost to the day, Q Pootle 5, is beginning transmission on Monday 29th July.

It's on the UK channel CBeebies (various worldwide deals are in place, so hopefully not too long before it reaches other territories), at 8.15am weekdays. Further information on the CBeebies website (click the image to go there and view the opening titles and a short clip).

Q Pootle 5 - on CBeebies from 29th July 2013

It's all very exciting. And quite a few of my friends both in and outside of the industry have children in the exact target age range - so I'm looking forward to getting feedback from them.

Production continues apace - I'm currently on the 45th episode animatic, with another 7 to go after that - and then the workload starts to decrease. We just delivered episodes 23-26 this week, marking the half-way point... which means that on Monday I was responding to requests from people at various stages of animatic, layout, blocking, animation, amends, lighting, and compositing for 23 different episodes. At the rate of one episode per week, there are still 26 weeks to go until the series is complete - at which point there will be 520 minutes of animation across 52 episodes, not including titles and credits.

Animation: it takes a long time.