Editing was done concurrently with the compositing, though in reality the editing began when the first storyboard was drawn.

Editing animation is significantly different from live-footage editing. There are many more elements left to chance when shooting live footage and it is the editor’s task to identify and keep the “lucky” takes and discard the unfortunate ones. Also, with live-action, the editing normally occurs after the film has been shot. Because animation is a far slower process, the editing can happen concurrently with the film and be more integrated in the filmmaking process. The workload is distributed over a much longer period of time.

To keep computer animation affordable it is essential to keep unnecessary footage to an absolute minimum. Editorial tasks need to be completed from very early on in the design processes to achieve this. We did not have a dedicated editor working on the riverbank scene, but could clearly see the benefit of having one by the end. This has led us to an understanding of what role a dedicated editor would play in the production pipeline of the full feature film.

Collaborating on the storyboard and providing advice on issues such as continuity, pacing and scene dynamic.

Cutting the voice track

Cutting the storyboard to the voice track to create a basic video storyboard. This preliminary video storyboard should also contain experimental elements such as music and sound effects to help congeal the group vision of the story.

Replacing hand-drawn stills with basic animatics as they become available and identifying any potential problems as early in the process as possible.

Cutting a full-length animatic of the film. This is essentially a crude, grey, unshaded version of the film designed to give the director and supporting crew as much flexibility as possible in deciding the flow and dynamic of the film. It is much more economical to discard, re-arrange and create new animatic shots than it is to create fully-rendered shots so here is where the film must find its structure and rhythm. It is worth spending extra time on this step as it is designed explicitly to save time later on in the production process. This master animatic should be approved by the director and producers and serve as a template for the creation of the rendered images.

Replacing crude animatics of shots with more refined version as they become available.

Together with the audio engineer, developing the foley sound for the scene.

Collaborate with the music composer.

A ssembling the finished, composited and rendered shots into a full cut of the film.

Outputting the final cut in the appropriate formats for screening, TV or web broadcast.