Monday, May 14, 2007

Planning for Post

With the end of the narrative within my sights, I've been working on Frankenstein vs the Wolfman at an accelerated pace. I'm genuinely excited by the prospect of working on it again, which is something I haven't felt since I started production. The time it takes to animate and render these things is so painfully slow, it is almost like watching paint dry.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I have basically abandoned the script at this point and am generating action beats as I go. The events do line up with what was outlined on the page, so I'm keeping the recorded dialogue intact.


If I can keep up this rate of production, I could be done with the animation in about two months.

With that in mind, I've begun to start planning for post production. I am having a screening tonight with the post-production team - Andy, Mitch and Other Andy - all of whom will be contributing to the sonic landscape of the film. We'll be spotting the film for sound effect placement and trying to find out how much of the sound fx can be found in sound effects libraries and how much will have to be recorded.

Last week we recorded some ADR with Tom Zack, who plays the Frankenstein Monster, due to the fact that he's leaving us to move to Arizona soon. The recording consisted mostly of pained grunts and groans that we'll be able to lay in during the action sequences.

Once the movie is finished, I'll have my work cut out for me. I need to cut and score a trailer to show off what the film looks like in motion. I'll need to color correct the footage and fine-tune the visual end of the film, then get the multiple versions prepared. And, I'll need to get cracking on DVD menus and special features. That's one area specifically that I haven't given much attention to yet, as there really isn't a whole lot of behind the scenes footage you can provide when you're working on an animated movie on your home computer.