PRA Declassified

Nick left this great comment on my last post, and made me think about the so-called 80/20 rule.

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Nick Says:
January 18, 2008 at 2:11 am   edit

Final touches (taking a project from good to perfect) in my experience can result in some of the most lengthy operations that you could do. I think the key to any project is to keep everything dynamic enough so that changes are as easy to make as possible. Organization really helps with that, especially with a complex project.

I am a strong believer in everything from creating presets to using batch operations to writing custom tools. With a relatively large project, those things can be huge time savers.

Sound is certainly critical as well. I realize that people tend to be a little bit ignorant about it due to budget considerations (which is understandable), but if it’s possible to invest into good sound, it should definitely be done. There is arguably nothing better than a feature that combines strong visuals with strong audio. They reinforce each other. I recall Quentin Tarantino saying something to that effect in one of the interviews that I watched. Although I thought that the audio for your commercial was very well done.

The dubsat system seems very interesting as well. Certainly a time and cost saver! I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an equivalent on this continent, but I’m not as involved with that industry, so I could be missing something. The last thing that I had to deliver was in person, to a local TV station, on a Beta SP tape.

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In the late 19th century, an Italian economist named Vilfred Pareto did a study on income distribution and found that 80% of the wealth in England belonged to 20% of the people. This ratio became known as the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, and quickly came to apply to many situations. In retail economics, it is said that 80% of your sales comes from 20% of the items you stock. In a service based business, 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your clients. And in terms of effort put into a project, 80% of the work can take 20% of the time, and 20% of the work can take 80% of the time.

I think some of these generalisations are a tad over-exaggerated, but nevertheles it’s easy to underestimate how much work you have to still do when you’re so close to the end of a project, and it always surprises me how much animation progresses in the last couple of weeks of production. Sometimes it feels like about 80% of the work gets done in the second to last week of production!

The clients were happy with the fine cut. There were a couple of comments about the sound, but we were unable to get in touch with them when we were having our last sound session. Sam made the executive decision of keeping it as it was: the comments were minor and better they got what they already knew about than putting something experimental to tape.

James took the high-res renders to Jeremy to get the online done today. At this stage, we’re looking for any small problems that might show up on a TV or cinema screen – making sure the colour levels are right, no “hard edges”, “soft edges”, everything inside the safe zones. There were some minor fixes – a couple edges here or there, a dangling lens flare that wasn’t turned off before rendering in 3D, and some sketches on a layer that hadn’t been turned off.

Once all that’s fixed, the video and audio get put on a DigiBeta master tape. DigiBeta (and the SP Beta duplicates made from the master) is the broadcast quality format for TV. Film festivals also often accept these as well for projection. Mastering/Dubbing can be an expensive cost when getting work out to festivals. and after two years when the work is no longer eligible, you’re left with all these useless tapes (you need to keep the DigiBeta master, but you can’t reuse the SP Beta tapes). The new dubsat system lets you upload the digital file to a server that then gets broadcast. There’s lots of speculation that film prints for features will go this way as well, revolutionising the movie business.

We just got there in time for the delivery of the tape; Jeremy turned up with the DigiBeta master just as the courier was backing out of our driveway to make the delivery date tomorrow. All done and on schedule. just have to sit back. It’ll air next Wednesday!

Jeremy has one of the coolest studios going around – it’s an old wine cellar connected to a silvermine. You can still walk through the shaft that leads out to a grate in the next suburb. A cool breeze always wafts through in summer keeping the place cool.

The fine cut we’re sending off tomorrow will also have an audio mix on it.

Audio is in my opinion is one of the toughest business to be in. The equipment is expensive and you need a lot of space if you are doing cinema mixes to simulate the dimensions of a theatre. There are only a couple of good sound designers for screen in town, and only two facilities that can do cinema mixes. Martyn Zub at Tracks Adelaide is doing the sound design and mix. He worked really well with Ben on Sweet & Sour, and they made us a great offer that we couldn’t refuse. Thankfully the clients are taking care of the cinema mix, so that’s one less thing to worry about.

Audio can really make or break the animation. The visuals might be great, but it needs a good score and sound to really bring it to life. It’s easy to neglect and worry about at the end and try to beg, borrow and steal to get it done, but it’s something that has to be done right or else the difference is noticeable. Literally like wearing an Armani suit with a pair of Dunlop Volleys. Pete Best (not to be confused with Ringo’s predecessor) from BestFX, reckons you should spend about 10% of a budget on audio.

Good audio usually involves the work of a number of people each with specialised skills; foley artists, sound designers, and mixers to name a few. It takes a lot of people and skills to create the believable world we hear with the images. I imagine that the sound industry has the same challenge as we do in educating people on how much work and expense is involved in producing a good result.

There have been only a handful of projects where we’ve had to worry about audio – our own short films and the occasional TVC that we take more creative direction of. So it’s not an area we’re experts on. Nevertheless, it’s worth giving it the attention it deserves because failing to do so can drag down much of the good work done in the visuals.