With most of the parts in place, this stage of the project is about adjustments. Some were successful, some were not so. This week had the feeling of dismantling something you just finished piecing together. All part of the process I suppose.
I wanted to work on a few key points with the fox project. First being consistency in style, as mentioned in the last blog. This meant polishing up some of the illustrations. With time to work on it, I opted for a more realistic look. See the transformed people of Thebes below:
Old Thebians
New Thebians
As well as the poor family cowering in fear of Teumessian Fox
Old fam
New fam
I also tightened up a few things here and there. Part of the Japan section about fox possession included some very jerky positioning as the view moved, Ken Burns style, to three distinct areas of one frame. This was not working no matter how much I played with it. I decided to drop this approach altogether and make three separate frames.
Speaking of jerky positioning! I spent much of this week trying to rework the intro section. My idea for this was to keep my existing time lapse illustration style, but follow the changes in pen direction by adjusting Scale and Position in After Effects. The viewer’s eye would follow the pen until an eventual zoom out revealed a complete fox illustration. What I didn’t account for was that I would have to speed it up when adding it to the rest of the project in Premiere.
The result was a rollercoaster ride, and not in a good way. It was very disorienting and whipped the viewer’s attention all over the screen. This was not how I wanted viewers to experience this project. Especially at the very beginning. I chose to scrap this idea entirely and go back to the drawing board. Because of the importance of this introductory section, I think this warrants some additional brainstorming and maybe storyboarding.
I struggled a bit with the voice over sections as well. I’m trying to strike a balance between a podcast-y delivery and a more polished documentary style. Within reason, of course. (Side note: the sound direction by Dirk Maggs in the recent Sandman audiobooks is outstanding. Truly like an “audio movie”. I’m clearly not going for that level of sophistication, but I’ve listened to a million audiobooks and this is top-notch work.)
Back to The Fox, some clips had to be cleaned up in Audition and I’m finding they really stand out against the mostly untouched clips, even when levels and effects are the same. Maybe I am just picking up on minor anomalies because I’ve listened to them so many times. This will take some more work.
On a positive note, I was able to find a few great sound effects of Freesound. Growls, cheers, and cinematic whooshes. There is a wild galaxy of sound out there. People will truly record and post anything.
There were a few setbacks this week, so my mission for next week is to have a new intro in some presentable form, cleaner audio, and an overall tightened-up project in terms of how sound and visuals work together.
‘Til next time!
AM