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Fade-Up/Fade-Down
A fade-up is where you use a number of frames at the start of a scene to
slowly bring in the image, or a number of frames at the end of the scene to
take it out. Essentially, a fade is a change of exposure from frame to frame.
For example, a ten-frame fade-up (or fade-in) is where your  rst frame at the
beginning of a scene is exposed 0 percent and it increases in exposure frame
by frame until it reaches 100 percent on frame 10.
A fade-up from black.
A fade-down (or fade-out), on the other hand, is found at the end of a scene,
where the exposure starts at 100 percent and goes down to 0 percent.
A fade-down to white.
Fades can be to or from black or white in the majority of cases, although any
other colored frame will work, dependent on the style and mood of the  lm
you are creating, of course.
Fades are used to give a slower more emotive transition from one scene
to another. For example, a fade-up gives the audience a slower or more
intriguing introduction to a new scene. A fade-down gives a more re ective
moment at the end of the scene so the audience has a moment to digest what
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they have just seen. A fade-down from one scene and then a fade-up to the
next can indicate a passage of time or place.
Dissolve
Dissolves (or mixes) are where two scenes overlap — that is, one is fading
down and the other is fading up over the same amount of frames.
The scene on the left is fading out and the scene on the right is fading in.
Like fades, dissolves give a sense of transition in time and space and yet
provide the audience with additional information in a more subtle way than a
cut. At the same time, this will also keep the pace of your action up more than

of  lmmaking, but otherwise they can be distracting or overly dramatic in
regular  lms.
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One-Shot
Establishing our conversation in a two-shot, you might now want to focus
more intently on one of the speaking characters. Therefore, you will need to
move your camera and feature only the one you want to see in a one-shot.
Alternatively, you may want the audience to keep some contact with the
listening character too, so you will need to choose an over-the-shoulder
one-shot, where part of the back view of the listening character can be seen
beside the full view of the talking character.

There can be many positions of the
camera for all these di erent shots, of
course. This just happens to be from a
low camera angle.
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Again, this shot could be from a high
or low camera angle, closer or further
away.
You have so many options in framing these kinds of shots that they don’t need
to seem predictable or boring.
In addition to this, you might consider the elevation of the camera when
framing your shots. For example, the speaking character might need to be
seen as dominant, heroic, or a bully. In this case, you can set your camera low
and literally look up to him or her, emphasizing that character’s dominant role.

If you do need to change the direction of the action for any reason, think up a
device for making it easier for the audience to understand. For example, in a
running sequence, cause the character to turn a corner at some point and then as
he or she disappears from sight, he or she begins to start moving from right to left.
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Crossing the Line
Finally, when staging a shot or sequence requiring two characters, never
forget that there is an imaginary “ line ” between them.
The markings on the ground of the parking lot make a very convenient line between the characters!
If you cross that line with your camera from one shot to another you will most
de nitely confuse your audience. For example, if you show our original two
talking characters and then suddenly throw in a shot from the other side of
the line, it will not look comfortable from the audience’s perspective.
The confusion that occurs when crossing the line is clearly seen in the middle frame!
See in the last  gure how the characters in one shot suddenly seem to be
oriented in the opposite direction to what the audience is familiar with. Even
if the audience is not consciously thinking about this, they will unconsciously
be trying to work out what has just happened on the screen: Are these
di erent characters? Are these the same characters in a di erent scene? Has
time passed and this is a new sequence? This e ectively runs the signi cant
risk that your audience possibly will not pick up on the most important line of
dialog, at the most signi cant point in your plot, and that could be disastrous!
The Line Is Not Limiting
Remember, once you have established the line between your characters, you
still have 180 degrees of options to set your camera, such as high or low, in a
one-shot or two-shot, tracking-in or tracking-out, etc.
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Some of the many possible camera positions that can be established on just one side of the line.

Audio Record
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The advent of sound in animation was very crude compared to today ’ s technology!
Source: “Endangered Species”.
Guide Track
If precise lip synching is not a priority with your  lm, then it is perfectly okay
to use a guide track at this stage. If precise dialog is required, however, you
will de nitely need to create a  nal track, with  nal actors and  nal sync
sound e ects included. However, based on the notion that you can use a
guide track for now, which is perfectly acceptable for narrative and non lip-
synching approaches, you should have no problems recording what you
need. With your script to read from, it is perfectly acceptable to use
the built-in microphone that most computers have these days. Your own
voice, recorded in the way you want the  nal actor’s voice to perform the
lines, will certainly give you timing cues that you can use to structure the
images in your animatic and beyond. It is even better if you have a webcam
attached to your machine because it will allow you to both record your track
and see yourself performing the lines, which eventually could be a valuable
visual reference for when you go to animate a character’s performance!
Therefore, you should try as hard as possible to put the same kind of timing
and delivery that you will require the actor or actors to use when you do the
 nal recording with them.
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The better your recording is, the more
expression you will be able to get out
of your animation! (Source: DigiPen

everything with a professional actor on professional equipment. To do
anything less will entirely undermine your  lm project, unless you are trying
to give it a “ home movie ” look and feel. This is where the real expenses for
 lmmaking start to bite into your budget. You may have a friend who is a
great voice actor, and another friend who has his or her own professional-level
recording studio. But if not, you will just have to bite the bullet and pay for the
professional-level services you require.
I am assuming that you will be using professional actors and a professional
studio to record your  nal track. If so, you will have the bene t of a
professional recording engineer too, who will advise you on the best ways to
achieve your recorded results and will supply you with a  nal edited  le in the
format of your choice. If you are not able to do this, however, here are a couple
of tips that you should bear in mind when recording your track:
1. Make sure the sound quality of your recording is high and, as mentioned
earlier, you save your audio  le in a format that can be used later. If nothing
else, ensure that the microphone you use is of good quality.
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2. Make sure your voice artist does not get too close to the microphone
during the recording. Otherwise you will get loud and unwanted “ pops ” on
the track as he or she breathes or speaks certain words forcefully.
3. Make sure your actor is fully conversant with the script before you start.
Better still, have the actor read through the script with you before you ever
get to the studio. This way you can actually use the read-through as an
audition, which will help you decide if you even want that actor to record
your track in the  rst place.
4. Don’t try to have the actor attempt to read the entire script in one sitting.
Work at sections and only move on when he or she gets the  rst section
correct. Show the actor your storyboard and explain what is going to
visually happen for the section he or she is going to record. That way the

headphones but, of course, without my voice actually being heard on
mic. You can even sit in the recording booth with the actor. However, you
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have to be super careful that your feed lines don’t “ crash ” with the actor’s
lines — that is, your voice doesn’t overlap the actor’s voice. This would make
it impossible to separate the two voices later, when you bring in another
actor to read the required second character lines.
8. Once you have your “ perfect ” reading from the actor, ask him or her to
do some wild deliveries. This means invite the actor to push his or her
performance beyond the guidelines that you have provided. Allow him or
her to also use his or her own words instead of yours if he or she has any
ideas. You’ll be amazed how the more “ improv ” style of actors can come up
with something you may never have thought of in the  rst place, which
will work much better for your  lm than what you originally wrote. You
don’t have to use it, but at least it’s in the recording to give you the option
to do so if you choose.
9. Sometimes actors will stutter, cough, or even sneeze during a take. Don’t
stop them. Sometimes the unscripted or unexpected will bring greater
presence or believability to the lines, as well as give you a “ hook ” to
animate to, which could bring more personality to the speaking character
at the same time. Naturally, if the “  u ” sounds bad though, you should
not use it!
Slow-thinking characters require slow-speaking deliveries by the actor. However, sometimes that adds
signi cant production time to your  lm, and therefore your budget! (Source: DigiPen student art by Pat Jandro.)
With your  nal takes complete, you now need to edit them all together to
create your  nal track. A software program like Sound Forge will not only give
you the capability to easily do this, but will also give you sound e ects options
to add to your recording, such as echo, megaphone, stadium speaker, radio
speaker, etc.


Less is more! (Source: DigiPen student art by Nicholas Rubatino.)
I  rst coined the term “ Bacher Boards ” while supervising project classes at
DigiPen in the fall term of 2008. Hans Bacher had just released his excellent
book, Dream Worlds . (Focal Press, 2007) which, among other things, instructs
designers on the use of minimal value designs in creating solutions to
major shots in a  lm. (See pages 136–137.) The idea is that if the  lmmaker
reduces the visual content of each major scene to simple light to dark values
(speci cally three grays in this case, with perhaps black and white thrown in
if you really need it) prior to de ning key visual requirements such as staging,
lighting and composition.

The judicious use of even quite limited values can still create an amazingly dramatic visual sequence. (Source:
DigiPen student art by Nathan Kellams.)
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Hans Bacher is one of the outstanding art directors and concept artists that
have come through the Disney studio in recent years and I strongly recommend
his book to everyone who wishes to approach any  lmmaking from a mood,
impact, emotional, and aesthetic direction. He recounts how just by using a few
values like this you can attempt to replicate the general themes of nature and
de ne various options available to you in your visual scene-setting palette.
By exercising certain tried and tested rules of visual perception and layout …
i.e. light over dark/dark over light, etc. the  lmmaker can really mold and
de ne the actual impact of each shot on their audience. Consequently, part
of my own (and therefore my students ’ ) production process is now to adopt
“ Bacher Boards ” in the pre-production stage of creation. Indeed, the process
of “ Bacher Boards ” will serve any  lmmaker or artist well if the technique
is applied to any aspect of presentation, layout, and design for any media
project.

number the drawings 3_1, 3_2, 3_3, 3_4, and 3_5 .

Five animatic frames indicate a slow change in time of day in a kitchen,  nally arriving at a black screen.
(Source: DigiPen student art by Greg Attick.)
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Initially, each drawing should be numbered outside of the image, until it is certain that each image will appear
in the  nal animatic. (Source: DigiPen student art by Greg Attick.)
Make sure that you do this for your entire  lm storyboard without leaving
out any scenes or drawing numbers in the process. I  nd that it helps to have
the scene/frame number visible in the corner of the screen, so that when you
watch the  nal movie of your animation, you can see what scene and frame
you’re at during any point in its viewing.

When you are sure that each image is
going to feature in the  nal animatic
it is important to number each frame
in accordance with what scene it is
in and what order it appears in the
screen. (Source: DigiPen student art by
Greg Attick.)
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Actually, you can write these numbers in when you create the storyboard
drawings in the  rst place, or else you can add them later using the  lm-
editing software that you will compile the animatic with.

I use Adobe Premiere Pro for creating my animatics. (Source: Fire Gods .)
With all your storyboard drawings separate and numbered according to scene
and frame order within the scene, import them into a  lm-editing program

back on the monitor in the animatic, you could well  nd that you have missed
something. This will, therefore, be an opportunity for a new shot to be added
or a frame to be taken out if you have done too much to describe the action in
a scene. Therefore, don’t be afraid to cut out drawings to make the sequence
work better on the screen. Likewise, don’t be afraid to add new, quickly
sketched frames if you think the action needs them.

I often scribble out a new frame to
include in the  rst-pass animatic if I
feel the animatic needs it to keep the
story  ow going. (Source: Fire Gods . )
Anyone who owns the fantastic Spirited Away movie on DVD will note that as
an extra feature there is e ectively the entire  lm animatic that was created
before the animation was begun. As you watch it, you will notice that the
director, the wonderful Hayou Miyazaki, has dropped in quickly scribbled
sketches in addition to his original storyboard drawings to emphasize or add
action where he had missed it before. This is all part of the process of creating
a good animatic for your  lm, and consequently you should never go with
your  rst thoughts from the storyboard point of view when creating it.
The Animatic Is Your Film Bible
Ultimately, you will arrive at your  nal animatic, upon which all the action
sequences and scene cuts will be based. This will be your “ bible ” that
everything else will be based on. Therefore, if you have edited your animatic
well, there should be no reason to change or edit your  lm later, once the