 |
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
||
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
Chapter 5: The Great Footage Fallacy
Here is something that few animators seem to think about, but which has bugged me for years: Are we animating foot-long strips of film, or are we animating increments of time? If we are all into globalization, let’s work in a global standard. I would like to foment an animation revolution in the dimension of time!
Footage. We were all weaned on it. Every American filmmaker, certainly every American animator, is trained to think in terms of feet of film. How many feet of film an animator can turn out per week is often his measure of productivity and measure of pay.
When I first arrived in Prague, with the initial purpose of developing co-production with my New York studio, I ran into an immediate snag. Czech animators measure their output in meters! One meter of film equals 3.2808 feet. But what the hell does that really mean? I saw the promise of endless complications and calculations in the process of co-production. I began to realize that the whole idea of measuring animation in terms of the length of a strip of film was meaningless and madness, and I wondered why we in America had never realized this before?
Look. Movie film goes through a theater projector at the rate of 24 frames per second. So how many frames of film are there in a foot? 16! 16 frames equals two-thirds of a second! No one watching a movie is at all aware of feet of film whizzing by. If one is interested in the length of a movie, or the length of a scene, and wants to measure it, they will use a stopwatch. They will measure, minutes, seconds, and increments thereof. As I constantly point out in lecturing about filmmaking, we have a medium that exists in the dimension of time. Footage is especially nonsense in digital computer animation, where there is no such thing as a reel of film or even spool of tape. There is not a physical length of anything! The only length is time. Nearly everyone these days has a VCR at home, and perhaps a DVD player. Does anyone know how many feet of the reel of tape inside the cassette, or of the spiral groove on a DVD, is needed to record one minute of action? How many are aware that the tape in the same VHS cassette spools out 30%faster when recorded in the American NTSC system than in the European PAL system? But who cares? The important thing is that the action produced on the TV screen plays at the exact same speed, and that is what counts!
Time in Your Hands
If most of the world outside of North America measure film lengths not in feet but in meters, what is it that every filmmaker on the entire planet has in common? Seconds, minutes, and hours! - TIME! Movie making exists in the dimension of time.
So I had printed up a new type of animation exposure sheets. The traditional exposure sheets have horizontal ruled lines down their length, each line representing a frame of film. The numbered animation drawings for the various levels are entered on the lines representing the frames of film they are to be photographed upon. Every 16th line, representing a foot-length of film, is usually a heavy line. This is an arbitrary measurement, as it actually represents just two-thirds of a second. We certainly don't measure our work in three-quarter seconds. Of course not. We measure our scenes in whole seconds, and increments thereof.
I would not mind the change as long as the pay is the same. This is generally overlooked by most commentators on this issue. Equating 16 frames to 24 or 25 frames with the argument that the animation world has changed and we should be paid in seconds not feet, to me is a pay cut. Animators beware of this topic, it can be misleading. A point to remember is that the old animators fought and won this form of pay, so let's hope that new animators don't lose sight of this.
I've worked with all sorts of "log" sheets or "dope" sheets over the years as a stop-motion animator. Time has always been "King." The footage issue may well come from the "sync-block" (an editor's tool for breaking down magnetic sound tracks for film.) One rotation of a 35mm sync-block wheel is 16 frames or one foot.An animator has to live in "time" and not "footage" (which can be more of a producer's point of view.) Yet , even producers these days are expecting "seconds" of animation per day (not footage.)
As far as I remember, second-based x-sheets have been in use in Holland at Toonder Studios in the 50's. In the 60's, they also used 100 frame sheets for 4 seconds at 25 fps (TV).
For the last many years, we use the standard sheets with a bar every 8 frames, since it is an easy measure to tap, and easily devidable.
It is a crutch, yes, but one that holds - adding extra lines or printing numbers other than the traditional ones have shown over the years to be very restrictive. As an independant studio that also subcontracts and has to be able to work with others, (and that has attracted a lot of foreign talent over the years all used to different systems) we have to be as flexible as possible.
In other words: anything goes... as long as it does the job in the best possible way. I have seen sheets with lines every 10, 16, 24, 25 and 30 frames come and go.
Also, some of the studios have greyed every other frame on their sheets. This has the added disadvantage of not copying or faxing clearly. As always, simple is best.
We calculate in seconds and when sub-contracting for (or comparing to) US-based studios, we convert this to feet, as we are asked to do so (an easy Excel formula takes care of that). It has never been a problem.
As to digitalisation, in the 1927 Fritz Lang masterpiece Metropolis (recently restored on a great DVD) the 'boss' has a large 10-hour clock, which is also the length of the workers' shifts...
Fine. Seconds as a standard measurement....for traditional animation.
But we know since the begining of animation history those quotas
were put into place for the benefit of accountants and producers. Second for second or foot for foot or metre for metre there is a difference between the two guys' work who do the exact length but one had
a crowd scene and one animated an eye blink.
Today animation is not the gruelling time consuming , money consuming
form it was in the day of the camera and opaquers, thanks to technology. Yes, it
still seems gruelling because, thanks again to technology , we are required to turn out more in lesser time under the turn of last century's measurement.
I oblige myself to this tradition because I'm an honorable guy and signed something saying I would, but it is sensless to animators. We are not film processors. When I was a part of making a direct to video I would joke then why are still measuring in film units.
How then should animator's work be measured? There is a deadline. Everyone works toward that deadline doing their best. Individuals are measured and obsreved by how hard they work and the quality of that work, how they team play, etc. The same as many other jobs are reviewed and assessed.
That way the artist who produces 30 ft of an eye blink and holds...or sheer crap
cannot become the bean-counter's darling.
But this would make those who hold the gold nerovus to say the least. But in my little perfect world It could be done.
Seeing that this is the entertainment business can you imagine an actor being assessed or paid by the footage that winds up on the screen?
Gerard
I imagine that the use of footage as a standard came about because of film editors, who physically cut and spliced the film in short strips and who probably
found it convenient to think in terms of length. There are stories of Charlie
Chaplin editing his own films with lengths of negative film stock draped about
his neck and shoulders as he sat in front of his editing bench. With some experience, an editor might learn that 2 feet was a good length for a quick reaction closeup, for example, and tend to think of his cuts in terms of feet rather than seconds or fractions of seconds. This is 35mm, by the way; 16mm film has 40 frames to the foot, I believe.
I can't even begin to imagine working in feet. I'm a computer animator in the visual effects industry ans all my time thinking is in frames and seconds. I have a feeling that as computers become ever more prevalent, the imerical length relation to time will be phased out...
g
Post new comment