Animatics, as seen above in the Sirens sequence from Sinbad, serve as moving storyboards. All Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas images TM & © 2003 DreamWorks LLC.

In an era when live-action movies contain more digitally created elements than ever before, computer previsualization is increasingly common. Intricate effects are worked out in advance in CG animation, so that when a director arrives on set, a “rough draft” of a shot is available as a reference. Now it seems the influence is working both ways, as more animated movies are being swayed stylistically by the conventions of live-action filmmaking. One sign of this trend can be seen in the computer previsualizations that comprise the “moving storyboards” for modern animated features. Nowhere is this more evident than in the previs being done at two sister studios — DreamWorks Feature Animation in Glendale, California, and Pacific Data Images in Redwood City, California.

Dreamworks’ Damon O’Beirne says previs has introduced live-action terminology, such as coverage and dolly shots, to the animation industry. TM & © 2000 DreamWorks LLC. Photo: Kelvin Jones.

DreamWorks’ layout supervisor Damon O’Beirne says, “We’ve slowly introduced previsualization, and it’s definitely making our cinematic approach more sophisticated and, in a way, more like live-action. We now talk more like photographers — about F-stops and focal lengths. That’s becoming our vernacular.” O’Beirne, who supervised the layout of DreamWorks’ traditionally-animated Sinbad and is now working on the studio’s 3D/CG feature Over The Hedge, thinks there are differences to be reconciled. “When animation invented itself, it invented its own terminology. Panning, in traditional animation, is more like a dolly or a tracking shot in live-action. So I’m trying and get our people thinking more in live-action terms.”

Creating Coverage
“We’ve started to take on new conventions,” notes O’Beirne. One of the things we did on Sinbad, which we’re continuing to explore, is the idea of shooting coverage. The big difference between live-action and animation is that we storyboard and storyboard until we’ve got every scene exactly worked out. It’s locked down compared to live-action, where they shoot 20 takes of the same scene and then use cross-cutting to come up with something unique. That’s the pure genius of filmmaking. And we’ve never really been able to do that in animation until now. Using previsualization - which we call animatics — we’re now getting to the point where we’ll shoot what’s indicated in the storyboard, but then we’ll give the editor an intercut or a couple of different angles. By giving editors the opportunity to cross-cut, they can create something with a real live-action feel to it. That’s what previsualization has brought to our process. It’s a much more creative interaction with editorial. Our editor will ask, ‘Can I have a cut in on that?’ Or we’ll show the director two versions of the same shot, and instead of picking one, he’ll say, ‘Send them both to editorial.’