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Chapter 5: The Great Footage Fallacy
So my new, GDA, inc. exposure sheets had every twenty-fourth line be a heavy line; a heavy line for every second of running time! Then my New York studio and the Prague studio could work in synchronization, with no need for elaborate calculations. It only took a short while for each side to adjust to this, because it was entirely logical. I never attempted to patent my exposure sheets. I'm sure that the original, footage-type exposure sheets are in the public domain. They were most likely developed at the Disney studio in the thirties, and spread throughout the industry. But of course in those days international co-production didn't exist, and so no one ever questioned the logic of the system. I suppose that my idea of 1960 must have surely occurred to everyone else by this time. My type of exposure sheets are in use here now, but I actually haven't seen second-oriented sheets anywhere else. I must admit that in the ensuing 40 years, the subject never came up in any of my discussions with fellow-American animators... but if they have come around to the idea on their own, I propose an "anti-footage" crusade as of now! Who will "second" the motion?
Here illustrated are the two types of exposure sheets, side by side.
The traditional, "footage" type sheet accommodated three and one-third seconds of running time. In order to get four complete seconds onto one page of my new sheets, I had to have them printed on somewhat larger paper, but that was never a problem.
One of the arguments, I suppose, for the footage-type sheets was that 8 and 16-frame increments they were marked with were convenient musical beats or tempos. In traditional animation, it was common to animate to one of those arbitrary beats, and then force the composer of the music to strictly follow the mechanically precise tempo. They often made a "click-track," so the orchestra conductor could hear the tempo in his earphones and hold the orchestra tightly to it. To my mind, this "mechanized" the music, and disallowed any flexibility. I much preferred to allow the composer to work freely, and have the animators follow the music.
When our music was recorded and copied onto a 35mm worktrack, we would simply let the track run at normal speed, and then tap the tempo directly onto the soundtrack with a grease pencil, tapping as close to the moviola's sound head as possible. If I did this two or three times, I could be sure I had the beats on the proper frames. Then the sound editor moved the tape slowly through a frame counter, and noted the exact frame numbers of each mark. When this information was written onto the exposure sheets, the animator knew exactly how to move his characters to the beats. In this way, the rhythm was natural, and so was the animation! As I progressed in my work, I did more and more of the soundtrack in advance of animation, ultimately giving the animators the entire mixed track in advance, so that they would be aware of the entire atmosphere of the soundtrack. Dialog, of course, was nearly always recorded in advance, as a guide to lip-sync, but I felt that also the background music, and the sound effects were also important for the animator to feel.
Along with my emphasis that animation exists in the dimension of time, I wanted it to follow the entire soundtrack, which obviously exists in the time dimension. But trying to create an entire mixed soundtrack in advance of animation required a great deal of discipline and ability to imagine all of the action and effects, at a stage of production when the film only existed in the director's head! For me, the answer to the problem was the stopwatch. I would act out the film in my head, and with a certain amount of pantomiming, timing each fragment of the action over and over, breaking it down and noting the timing of each fragment. This was noted first on our Bar Sheets, which are analagous to an orchestra's conductor score, showing all of the elements together - in our case, action, dialog, music cues, and sound effects.
By working in this way, constructing the entire soundtrack in advance of animation, I was assured that my film would truly work in the time dimension, and I never gave the slightest thought to "footage."
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
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