Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Its the Little things - POLISH -

Hey Guys,HERES whats been going on- Shel has been finishing the Foley and I believe as of last night she is finished......She has been dealing with the 3 main tracks of AUDIO- Dialog - V.O. - Music.

One of the things that jumped out to me in the last generation burn of our DVD was the VO Quality......we had a SUPER HIGH QUALITY score.....we had a Pretty high quality film...and we had totally SUB PAR dialog quality. This was very obvious to me and It was absolutly necessary to bring up the quality to match the others.
In my reading online about people - BIZ people- who watch short films.....the first thing they do is put your production quality into classes . The easiest way to drop in status is CRAPPY VO. -or CRAPPY lighting - or CRAPPY MUSIC - THIS is with out even seeing the animation quality or story. I didnt want this to hurt our chances for success in the festival circuits with somthing we could fix. Im sure a great story could TRUMP almost all of these other shortcomeings but I dont wana risk it.
....We actually recorded 90% of our dialog at professional studios but there were some pikups that were recorded on home devices....I - not being a sound guy didnt know how to make them match.... so....My first step was to re record the low quality VO in a nice studio.

Luckily ....at my Workplace we have acess to a recording studio and a friendly soundguy to help. ......We re recorded the offending sounds and hired him for a general mixing of the VO. We now have Quality VO....that matches as good as is possible.

This makes me very happy!! QUALITY

onto other things.....I am done with all of the 2d cleanup and coloring....it looks very nice and brings up the quality all over again. We also took out some of the 2d elements and replaced them with small props which add that much more home made quality. Shel made a Sculpy heart - 1rst place ribbon - and a question mark that keep things that much more human....POLISH...
We also are submitting to 10 more festivals this week....which will bring us up to about 18 or so.....thats A BUNCH.....We should here back by dec. if we are accepted?? FINGER CROSSED.This is super exciteing!!! and I hope to share with you guys the entire experiance....I know Ron Cole over at http://wobblytripod.blogspot.com/.....is now a veteran with his film and in fact won {BEST animated short in the New York Film Festival}CONGRATS MAN!!!
....... I cant wait to even feel the thrill of an acceptance.....let alone an award..... We will hear before Dec if we are accepted and my normally very patient self is painfully short on that virtue at the moment.

I did a small showing to some of my animators at work......and they seemed to Genuinely like it. I got some notes and am trying to implement them into the next BURN we create. I when watching it am starting to believe I have somthing pretty cool here {This has been along time comeing}
I can also tell you that this post production on a film takes way longer than I was ready for.....but it really is worth it for the FINAL Product. Its going to be forever right.....so I should make it as good as we possibly can.

Jriggity

9 comments:

JPierro said...

Yes, I'm sure you are right about getting demerits for stuff like that, and a good way for your critiquing audience to get distracted from your story. Polish.. wax on...... wax off. then step back and watch it shine. Time to go vote.

Anonymous said...

I agree, some visuals can be off a bit and forgiven or not noticed, but bad audio won’t be tolerated. You are wise in your wisdom... I am learning a lot from the chronicles of your journey... We will say we knew them when…

Ryan McCulloch said...

Congrats on wrapping up man, what an adventure!

Alonso said...

exciting to have it out there. Polish always get a little tedious, you just want to be done but there's little tweaks to do, and you know you have to do it, you have to make it as great as possible.

What I'm curious about is your thoughts on the project now. A postmortem: What worked well, what didn't work out, what would you do again, what would you change?

keep on rocking
-Alonso

jriggity said...

Thanks guys!

Alonso - I will definately do a post mortem on the film.

I know if I were to be starting a film....I would eat that kind of info right up.

jriggity

Emily said...

Looks like it's going great! The audio tweaking sounds like a really good idea - same as others here, I've been told that you can experiment with video quality, but poor audio quality won't be tolerated by audiences - but by the standard of work we've seen so far I know it'll be above par!

Anonymous said...

Justin, you're a born winner. I think your film could win an Oscar. The quality of animation and personality and LIFE of the puppets interacting with their very believable environment is breathtaking, to say the least.

Enjoy any success you can get- you sweated and lost sleep for this :)

Anonymous said...

In the words of Homer Simpson...

Mmmm, Polish...aaarghh... ;)

jriggity said...

Don-

ha! I really wish I was in that category{and i appreciate your confidence}.... .....I just have to many short comeings in this film to reach that level of POWERFULLNESS....

...but belive me ...

Im going to be reaching for it at every attempt...and getting better with each excersize.

I will enjoy the afterdays of this film and I am sure Ill look back with FAT pride someday to my first Stop mo film.

Nofby - HA!!!

jriggity