22 - The Post Synchronisation

At this step, we can work on the supporting actors and the extras. For example in the crowd scenes, we ask for many different actors to come and record different noise of rats and bears crowds.  

That's already at this moment that I had the occasion to work with children in order to record young bear and young mice.  

21 - The Sound Design

Bertrand's work will give sound to everything we can see in the film, the steps, the sound of the clothes, the objects moving... In order to do so, he uses a bunch of objects that will create the appropriate sounds

To record the sounds, Bertrand is in front of a screen with the film on it and he creates the sounds depending on the actions he sees. If he sees a character walking on the screen, he synchronises his steps depending on the animation

For the steps, he is watching the way of walking for each characters, their rythm, their shoes they're using etc... For example for the old rat woman, Bertrand used old shoes

For the little mice, he was patting on the ground with latex gloves

Sometimes Bertrand combines different objects together to make a sound. So, to make fire sounds he used straw broom, he made crackling noise by touching it.  

Then he shook a cloth

And finally he blew on the mic so he could have a rumble noise

And that's how he obtained the noise of a fire

Sometimes some sounds are made by 2 very different objects used together. Surprisingly they can create really unexpected sounds.  

Usually, the last recording day is used to make breaking noises. Usually it the happiest day of the sound design session.  

You should have a look to a scene of the film with only the sound design. You will be able to consider what is the amount of work in the sound design. After these sounds are made, we still need to add atmosphere sounds and sounds Bertrand couldn't make with objects. The final step is the mixing part where the sounds are placed in space.  

20 - The Editing II

19 - The Editing I

The editing lasted 3 weeks approximatly. For Ernest and Célestine, the editor was working on the film, cutting scene, removing them, replacing them... I was coming regularly to see her propositions so we could talk about ir. The editing is a moment when the director has to rethink things other, which is not always easy

The kind of arguments happens sometimes. The director can use 2 different kind of weapon to struggle against the editor

Pity...

And Blackmailing

 

18 - The Compositing

 

If you want tosee the difference before after compositing here are some examples. Slide the mouse on the picture i you want to see

17 - Making the animation

At this step, we will take the scene where Ernest is waking up, a scene that you could see at the storyboard step. As a reminder, here is the scene as it was in the Layout

At first, I explain the Lead animator what I want for this scene

He is then giving those informations to the animator who will work on the scene

I sometimes pass so I can give more informations on the scene

The animator will make a rough version of his or her scene, rough version that will gives us an idea of what the scene will look like.

Patrick can see the scene in work in progress and give corrections if necessary

Finally we have the cleaned animation, ready to be colored

This is how the color team will start working. Greg was the lead colorist

They start coloring each moving characters and objects. You will notice that the lines of the drawings are not closed so the volume of the characters is not always defined. The lead colorist has to complete this volume

The colors will complete the volume

After the shadows will be added

So here is the final result at this step

This is how we worked on animation. We were lucky to make all those thing in only one studio in Paris. Our biggest advantage was to work among the animators so we could work precisely on the acting of the characters. Even if I was not really clear all the time...