Monthly Archives: December 2018

I'm generally fine with the idea that when someone dies, there should be a grace period in which we focus only on the good they did in life and we overlook the bad. I'm not sure though that that applies to people whose actions were as important and life-changing as most Presidents of the United States. If you feel it should apply to Presidents…if you think we should for a while only note the many fine, principled actions of George H.W. Bush, then maybe you'd better wait a few weeks before you read this essay by David Greenberg.

From Chris Dahl…

My wife and I were watching an animated movie the other day and got into a discussion about the sequence of events in creating an animated feature. Obviously everything starts with a script, but which comes next: the voice tracks or the animation? Do the voice actors record their tracks while they are watching the preliminary animation or are they sitting in a studio reading from the script? Obviously there's lots of editing and retakes involved in both voice and animation as the work proceeds, but I was curious. I guess it's a chicken or egg question from someone who's never been exposed to this behind the scenes process.

Traditionally, you record the voices then you do the animation. There have been exceptions, most notably the cartoons produced at the Fleischer Studios such as the Betty Boop series and the early Popeyes. They would do the animation and then at the bottom of the frame, there would be a little strip that would be cropped off the image before the cartoon was released. In that strip, there would be something similar to the graphics in those "sing along to the bouncing ball" cartoons that the Fleischers also produced. It would show the words and when each syllable should be spoken.

The point of doing it that way as to have the animators unencumbered by what the actors had done. If you were interested in good lip sync though, it didn't work so well. Then they'd also allow the actors — especially Jack Mercer, who was the main voice of Popeye — to ad-lib extra lines. That was why you often heard the Sailor Man muttering little asides and his lips were not moving.

Here and there, it's been done animation-then-voices since then but not often. If the budget can afford the added expense, sometimes this will happen: The actors will record their lines, the cartoon will be animated…and then they'll bring the actors back in to watch the animation and add little grunts and sighs and other vocal sounds where it seems appropriate. Usually though, there isn't the time or money for that.

It's Furry Potter and the Goblet of Cookies. Of course it is…