Guerrilla Design with Peter Bielicki; Leica Reels due this week; What do I do with my Scratch Track?

GUERRILLA DESIGN

This week we have two events to address the design phase of the animation pre-production process. Our guest is Peter Bielicki, whose credits include Pocahontas (1995) Mulan (1998), The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001). Peter will speak at the 11 am Lecture on "Guerrilla Design  - Workbook Development for Short Animated Films." Peter currently operates Show Communications in Kingston, which specializes in multi-media exhibit design, art direction and direction for live action, and animated educational films.

Peter will also be on hand to review and discuss your design work at the 2 pm Workshop,  "Animation Design & Workbook Critique", taking place as usual in A151.

Leica Reels due this week

This is also a big week in your production timeline because your Leica Reels are due. Discuss with your mentor the exact due date and requirements.

Looking ahead - next week your Mentor will bring a guest to view the Leica-reels with you and offer constructive criticisms and story suggestions. It's an opportunity for a fresh point-of-view and maybe some new ideas to help solve problems in the story development and visual presentation.


Creative design of the scratch track

Your soundtrack is an extremely important part of your film. A good soundtrack will make your film better, and a bad one can break it completely. The Leica reel is the right time to begin the sound development process using the creative design of the scratch track as your focus.

By creative design I mean the choices you make regarding where and what style of music to use; which story points to highlight with sound effects; what the characters or narrator sound like, etc. You're the only person who can really make these decisions at this stage. While you can get some assistance with the more technical portions of the soundtrack production (like composing the music and mixing), the creative design should be entirely yours.

The creative design is why it's so important for you to have a scratch track ready even for  the earliest stages of the Leica reel. It becomes an essential tool to communicate the intention of the film both to your audience and (later in the production process) to your composer.

A quick reminder - your scratch track must include some representation for each of the following:

1. DIALOGUE
2. MUSIC
3. SOUND EFFECTS

I say representation because none of these has to be completely fleshed out at this early stage - that will happen later. But it does need to have the key voices, sound effects and music in place for this reel and for the upcoming presentation and screening.