Avid Blogs - "Editor Judith Allen Illustrates the Difference Between Cutting Animation and Live Action Films"

April 6, 2016 Judith

Excerpt:

In live action filming, every action on set is accompanied by the corresponding sound. Often these are replaced or enhanced, but the sound is there and used within the rhythm of the cut whether consciously or unconsciously. In animation, every single sound needs to be purposefully placed – and often created from scratch by a foley team. It’s often a delicate balance between knowing which temp sound effects are best to place during the animatic to help tell the story and do the best cut, and which ones should be saved until after animation so as not to restrict the animators.

At the moment I tend to make my sound choices based on how the characters need to respond to them in their headspaces more than how the final sound should be, because I know that the sound’s going to be completely replaced once we have the final picture, and because it will help the animation before that.

Jury Duty (RTS Student Awards edition)

July 18, 2015 Judith

I recently had the opportunity to be on an awards jury, for the Royal Television Society's student awards. I had some experience of the awards themselves, having had films from my studies at the NFTS nominated the 2009 awards in the drama, animation, and entertainment categories of the postgraduate section.

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.

Editing Animation (The Final Stages)

February 6, 2014 Judith

Part 1: Editing an Animatic

Part 2: Editing Animation

If you've read the previous parts of this series, this is the part which has the least 'editing' involved - and also the stage where most of the raw materials for the action are together and now fully staged and animated - basically the part where for drama, the editor would start.

However, because we don't have multiple readings from multiple angles and very little in the way of handles, the creative job's basically over. However, there's still work to be done - and elements to be added which will affect the optimal cut point of any two shots.