Post production - Mixing and synchronising

Once all the sound has been produced, edited appropriately and given some sort of shape, it's time to go into post-production. This is a very complex and sometime long process, however it's vital to get a professional quality. The mixing stage in essence is the stage at which the sound levels are altered appropriately so that things that need to be heard will be and less important things that need to be in the background are exactly where they should be. This stage includes the addition of features such as surround sound to make the sound experience as immersive as the visual one. This stage is taken on usually by a sound engineer and the 4 main elements that they will be mixing, are music, sound effects, ambience and of course speech. Below is a link to an interview with sound Engineer Ben Burtt who has worked on a number of high profile movies including Start Wars and Indiana Jones, in this instance he's talking about his experience of mixing sound for the film Super 8.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryVNG6WPCxg

The synchronising stage is the culmination of what has gone on throughout the entire process. Matching the sound to the animation, this is part of the editing process. Not only does it include ensuring that spoken word is matched perfectly to the lip synch animations, it also means that music kicks in at the perfect time. For example dark, angry music might come on when a villan enters the room however if it comes in too early or too late, it can give completely the wrong impression. Below is a good example of how poor dubbing, sound acting ... and animation, can make a video look amateurish.

That's it, the sound production is now finished and can be added to the animation to make the final piece.  

Animation and Dope sheets

An example of a typical dope sheet

Whilst animation is obviously not a key part of the sound production showreel it does go hand in hand with the sound track as synchronisation is key to producing a realistic animation. The main link between animating and sound is lip synching. This is the process of making an animated character look like he's speaking the words being read by the voice actor. This can be a difficult and long procedure, however when done right it can be extremely impressive. Some animations simply open and close the mouth in order to represent the movement of the mouth, whilst others look in detail at phonemes to get a true representation of speech. A necessity when producing a lip synch is a dope sheet, this is a sheet listing all of the frames and when each sound occurs, for example on frame 73 the voice actor may be pronouncing the letter w, therefore the character needs to be mouthing the letter w. With a good dope sheet and a good grasp of phonemes the lip synch can start to take place. With the addition of gestures suddenly the character begins to come to life. A good animator should be able to make even basic models look lifelike with good use of the animation principles and great technique for lip synching, the example below is one such example. 

Recording foley

Foley is, in essence, sound effects. With any type of film or professional video it is important to have a foley track to ensure crisp clean sounds are being produced, when on set they may have been muffled and inaudible to the microphone, a foley artist will recorde sounds using a range of props to take their place. Naturally this is a big job for a film, so in animation where you are given literally nothing, it's vital to recreate every single sound that might possibly be taking place. The whistle of birds in the background, the distant noise of a busy road, the breeze, everything must be considered and added. This website provides a brilliant insight into how foley works, where the name originated and a whole host of other useful information.
http://www.marblehead.net/foley/
Careers in foley are not a directly easy thing to come across, as stated in the website above, there are no degrees or schools in foley, so there are no direct routes into it, sound artists can take a number of different pathways to becoming foley artist. Below is a video from the one show looking at modern developments in foley and giving some good examples of traditional foley artists and how they do what they do.

Editing - review

Once sounds have been recorded, and though there is still a vast amount of the project to go, it's important to put the animation and sound together and to review what stage you're at. Music must be edited, foley must be moved around so that it's timed better, more echo needs to be added in some areas to create depth, a floorboard needs to creak a little louder. All of these little subtitles have to be reviewed, considered and appropriately altered. This is an important stage as it adds real finess to a film and can be the difference between a film being realistic or a badly dubbed flop. If the sound of hammer dropping on the floor takes place 2 seconds after it actually occurs and sounds like a stone being thrown down a well, something isn't going to fit. There are a number of jobs for sound engineers and sound editors in the film, T.V. and animation industry. This website shows a number of small jobs looking for people to work on the sound for their respective films, video projects etc ... Albeit in America, it still gives a good idea of the kind of jobs available.
http://www.indeed.com/q-Sound-Editing-jobs.html
As you can see from one of my earlier posts, the editing -review stage takes place twice in the pipeline, this is important to ensure that any alterations to the animation are taken into consideration within the sound of the piece. For example if they've removed a section in which a character is punching a punch bag, it's no good keeping the sound of the punchbag in the file. A website produced by Channel 4 giving a tutorial on animation said this about the second part of the editing process. 

'Post-production sound editing primarily involves preparing the sound track for import into the video editing software, this may involve adjustments to the sequence or occurrence of particular sounds due to changes made in the Editing stage. Many sound changes may take place simply within the Video Editing software itself and may not require much, if any, changes to made within the Sound Editing software.'

Recording sound

The next step, having researched what sounds you're going to need, having found the people/items that are going to produce this and knowing what equipment you're going to use is to actually record your sounds. As with most thing in animation, there are a number of ways in which this can be done. For smaller companies who probably have a limited budget, time constraints and a small crew, it's not viable to record every sound necessary, for these sorts of companies there are websites such as http://www.freesound.org/browse/ as well as others that require small payments. These websites allow people to download hundreds of different sound samples that they can use in their videos. Naturally there are royalty fees and trademark issues involved in using music downloaded straight from iTunes or via other websites, so it's important that these companies can find both music and sounds from websites such as this. For those who are gifted slightly more time and slightly higher budgets there are a number of other ways that they can get and record sound. Music can be produced by other companies such as Circa music (http://circamusic.com/ a company I previously mentioned in my motion graphics blog) who will produce taylor made music for the animation that you intend to make. There is of course the extremely high end side to animation, where companies like Disney and pixar can have scores and soundtracks produced for them by artists, orchestra's etc ...  It's important to experiment and play about with sound at this time to get a feel for what you really want, the same way that you develop the visuals in the concept art stage of the animation, it's now important to develop the ambience and feel of the piece. A great example, although not in animation, was Hans Zimmer attempting to get the right feel for the music that should embody the Joker in The Dark Night.

It's this level of depth and intuitiveness that gives a truly great piece a truly great soundtrack, whilst it may be in the background and often very subtle, a powerful and recognisable soundtrack can add levels upon levels of depth to a film or animation 

Research

Once a script is in place and everyone has a general idea of the direction in which they are heading the next stage is to start researching things. Naturally in the sound production side of it, people are going to start looking into the noises they're going to need, the items that are capable of producing those, the equipment and software needed to record those noises  voice actors suitable for the roles etc... There are numerous areas that have to be carefully looked into before production can even be considered. Looking into voice actors is a hugely important part of the process, if you have the wrong person for the job, the script can go from being a masterpiece to becoming a mumbled mess. The link below gives a great example of how the use of Ashley Burch in Borderlands 2 took what may have been a slightly odd choice of words and made them into something believable that really worked in the context of the game. 
http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2012/09/23/getting-voice-actors-right-in-borderlands-2/
The video below is a great example of some of the most iconic voice acting used in animation, the cast of Toy Story is made up of iconic and renowned actors however they really take on the characters they're playing, if you close your eyes it isn't Tom Hanks that you picture stood there saying the lines, it's Woody acting out the scene. 

It isn't just the actors that need to be searched for, it's trying to find the right set of noises that will slot hand in hand with the aesthetic of the animation. Disney animations for example wouldn't be the same without the grand orchestral pieces playing throughout, where as more modern animations usually prefer realistic sounds to match with the animation. It's vital to experiment and play around with sound at this stage to get exactly what you need at later ones. 

Script

The first and often most important part of any piece of media is laying down a script, a rough idea of what's going to happen, when it'll occur, how it'll fit into a scene. A good script should cover all of these basis, it can be edited or added to at a later date, but it's vital that it exists in one form or another. Naturally a script will include various characters, providing artists with ideas of what they should look like, ideas about what the settings will look like, allowing concept artists to begin creating an aesthetic for the piece and it can even provide ideas as to who can voice the characters involve, all this and much more comes from the script, it is a hugely important and necessary starting point. It's very important that whilst writing a script for an animation, one must remember that animation is visual, whilst the spoken words are important, they aesthetic of the piece is equally important, the goal is to show the audience what is happening, not simply describing every little detail, it's the audiences job to explore the finer details and to figure out what's occurring for themselves. There are often animations with no vocals at all, so it's important to remember where the emphasis and priority should lie, therefore the visuals must always be held in mind. Having said that, strong visuals and a poor script will result in equally bad results, as stated in this article.
http://feldmanfile.blogspot.co.uk/2005/12/animation-its-script-that-counts.html

Sound production

There are a number of various sections to the production of sound for an animated film, whether it be a short piece to be posted on google or a feature length film for cinemas worldwide, there is always a long process behind producing the necessary sound to create a fully immersive animation. Obviously nothing is set in stone, so dependant on the length of the animation, the companies and capital involved and of course the sounds needed then the length and stages of production will change. A basic example of a sound production pipeline might be as follows:

- Script
- Research
- Recording sounds
- Editing - review
- Recording Foley
- Editing - review
- Dope sheet
- Animate
- Mixing
- Synchronising