| Today's Graphic Artist Has A Rapidly Expanding Role in Post-Production |
During
my experience as an owner of Lost Dreams Productions, a small post
boutique located in downtown Manhattan, I have had the opportunity
to watch the ascendancy of the graphic artist to a position of co-importance
with respect to a film's primary production team. In spite of the
fact that many people in the film industry still view the production
process as a short, linear period of anxiety and chaos followed
by post-production repair and cleanup, many of today's directors
and producers are surprised to find such traditionally post personnel
as animators, graphic artists, and computer editors appearing on
their production sets as full participants in the blocking, re-writing,
and cinematography processes.
Since film's inception, production has been the "real work" associated with capturing the writer's story onto celluloid. Historically, pre-production has concentrated mainly upon organizing the work processes so that the director's vision of the writer's story could be realized within time and money constraints. Finally, post-production techniques were utilized to edit out mistakes, improve time flow, and add special effects to the story line. In the traditional model, there was little if any feedback from the animators and editors during shooting, which was governed by the schedule prepared in advance. Indeed, any editor or artist asking for a scene to be re-shot had to be ready to endure scathing criticism at the least, and tottering job security at worst.
| It is obvious today that the explosion in computer editing, animation and graphics has vastly increased the importance of "post-production" to the success of a film. |
More and more often, as time went on, unforeseen production roadblocks encountered during production began to be dispatched in a less-than-optimum manner because of time and budget pressures. "We'll fix it in post," was the battle cry of this period. Problems that were overlooked in pre-production, such as continuity anomalies and booms dipping into the frame, had to be creatively finessed after the fact, frequently with jarring results. At this same time, the movie audience which, after all, represents the ultimate customer, began to expect more seamless integration of artistry and live action, demanding that the final product more realistically accommodate the special effects.
Until recently, a director or producer had a rather limited repertoire of tools to choose from in order to enhance their respective visions and make the movie experience more realistic for the audience. Linear editing restricted the artist's creativity because of the physical limitations of tape recorders and film processing. Special effects, such as stop-action and rotoscoping (which involved cutting holes in the actual film), were laborious and yielded uneven results.
Then an amazing thing happened. With the advent of new and powerful computers and software, outstanding special effects could be produced for a surprisingly small budget. This new capability was first appreciated by the independent film producers, whose success with the techniques subsequently percolated into the mainstream. Animation software began to provide the artist with a vehicle to travel to other planets, or visit a tiny atom, imbuing the set with a realism never anticipated by traditional production teams. It quickly became obvious that these new effects have the ability to enhance a film's message, rather than draw attention to the production budget. At the same time, computer-based nonlinear editing now allows artists to view their integrated scenes in many different formats before they decide how best to tell the story.
It is obvious today that the explosion in computer editing, animation and graphics has vastly increased the importance of post-production to the success of a film. In fact, the line between production and post has been irretrievably blurred, at least in the minds of the most successful directors and producers. Previously relegated to a cleanup or enhancement role, the realm of the new graphic artist has emerged as an essential piece of the production puzzle. In today's model, the new artists can be found wielding a strong voice in pre-production planning, during the shooting itself, and, when creativity demands it, a new-found assurance when he or she says, "this scene must be re-shot."