Changes...Changing...Changes

Greetings! I can’t believe it’s been over a year since I’ve checked in. Shortly after being promoted to 1st AE on “Vivo,” my production made the shift to working from home due to the pandemic. Not going to lie, finishing the film completely from home during Covid was one of the most challenging things I’ve had to do in my animation editorial journey. Not only was I overseeing two Assistant Editors (one joined us during wfh), but I was covering a lot of new ground I had never experienced before while working on an animated feature. Up until “Vivo,” I had only seen animated productions up to their early Layout stage, primarily working with the film in boards. In the final year of the film, we entered crunch where we were now juggling the film at all stages of production, last minute Production Dialog records, and turnovers to Sound, Music, and DI. I am so grateful for how patient my team was with me as I took on a lot of these deliveries for the first time. Not having the luxury of popping in to ask questions in an office setting was a huge adjustment, and I am so thankful for the grace was shown my way as I waded through it all.

Now that I have officially wrapped with “Vivo” and at Sony, I praise God for his blessings in providing me with a team that encouraged and pushed me to keep moving forward even when I believed I couldn’t do it. I was filled with a lot of self doubt and fear when I was asked to take on the 1st position - feelings that unfortunately clouded my thoughts at the height of the pandemic. But thanks to the love and support of the people God placed around me, my confidence in myself and abilities were healed and allowed to grow.

So what’s next? I’m pleased to announce that I have been hired as a 1st Assistant Editor at the one and only, Walt Disney Animation Studios. To work here has been a dream of mine for quite some time. Getting to work at a studio with such a rich history and holding the title of pioneering feature animation is such an honor. I can’t wait to dive in and learn as much as I can from the Editorial teams at the studio, as well as jump into a brand new feature film alongside my same “Vivo” Editorial posse. Time go “into the unknown!”

Tinkering Away

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've begun working at ON Animation Studios as a 2nd Assistant Editor on an animated feature film. With starting any new job, it comes with it's own share of challenges that continue to beat the dents out of you.

Having worked in Television promos at my previous job, it was a big change of pace jumping back into the animated feature world that I had experienced at Pixar. Thankfully, because my Pixar mentors shaped the Editorial workflow for the film I'm working on, I was able to hit the grown running on tasks such as dialogue processing and recording with ease. However, learning how much Editors rely on their Assistants has been a rather eye-opening experience.

At Pilot, our Editors cut short-form pieces, which meant that if they ever needed any additional material or aid with their edits, it was in the form of me bringing in a piece of media here or there for them. This was the case as I would always organize and ingest all the media needed for the project before the editor even arrived at our offices. Pilot had this structure in place as I was often juggling the Post of multiple projects, and the speed of Television production was extremely brisk.

Working on a feature, I've had to learn to think quickly on my feet and in the moment while the Editor is cutting. For example, one day I was processing some dialogue, when suddenly one of our Editors asked me to get her a certain line that I hadn't marked up yet. While I wasn't too far off from processing the requested line, I switched gears to get it to them, as the dialogue I was currently working on was for storyboards that hadn't been delivered yet. Promo multi-tasking tends to be on a single project by project basis, while feature multi-tasking concerns itself with the larger picture.

While less of a lesson, because my team and I were in a bit of a crunch recently, the Editors actually let me cut a few boards, sound effects, and dialogue. I had no idea that the Editors would actually hand off some of their work to their Assistants, but in hindsight, it makes sense. An Assistant Editor is there to pick up any slack and help ease the Editor's burden. The willingness to be ready to lend a hand at all times is necessary for Assistants as it shows the ability to be flexible under pressure and be an active team member.

The Trek

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(Left to Right: Matthew Rebong, Jackson Miller, Richard Andrews, Amy McBeth)
Photo Cred: Jackson Miller

On Saturday, August 22nd, Prism premiered at the HollyShorts Film Festival in Hollywood. It was the first film festival I've ever gone to, and was quite exciting! Especially since I was going to support a film that I had been a part of. Alongside Prism, my team and I got to view a handful of other great shorts before we briefly talked about our film in front of the audience. We received a lot of compliments from viewers following the screening, with many intrigued that the short was entirely made by students.

Recently, I also found out that Doppelgänger is going to Germany to be part of the Braunschweig International Film Festival. I will be unable to attend, but my director will be going, and I look forward to hearing how it goes!

Find the Solution

As part of my Editing Emphasis for Dodge College, I am required to cut a handful of Senior Thesis short films. Wanting to challenge myself outside of my comfort zone, I decided to sign on to a Digital Arts VFX Sci-Fi film, a psychological thriller, and a drama. As of now, the VFX and thriller films are in post-production, with the drama scheduled to shoot near the end of February.

The VFX film entitled, Prism has led me to dive deeper into AVID's effect and compositing features, as well as learn how to collaborate with a director to creatively restructure a story. One of the main characters, LARS, is a completely computer generated flying robot who interacts with the film's lead and the environment. As I did not receive any pre-vis from the VFX team, I needed to create it manually within AVID. Using various 360 degree views of LARS, I would keyframe his image to simulate floating. In handheld and tracking shots, I made use of AVID's tracking tool, mapping LARS to the camera movement. With the addition of dialogue, this temporary LARS worked nicely for screenings and also allowed my director to communicate more clearly to the VFX team of how he wanted LARS to move around the screen and be animated.

Following a screening for the Dodge Thesis Committee, my director and I received a handful of notes regarding the logic and overall tension of the film. While moving around various scenes and beats was familiar to me to address the notes given , what came as a surprise was the option of actually creating entirely new shots out of the footage we had. For example, in the first scene we wanted to establish that the main character, Dan, is trying to hide his pastel drawings from LARS. In the original scene, we had an over the shoulder of Dan drawing and then jumping back when LARS comes up behind him. However, the papers can still be seen on the desk in front of him. We decided to make use of Dan's backwards movement to imply him pushing away his drawings, having the VFX team then comp in a blank table top from a different set up. The process reminded me of David Fincher's approach to editing. A few months ago, an Assistant Editor who worked on Gone Girl came to visit my Editing Thesis class. During his presentation, he showed us a short shot comprised of performances that were comped in from different takes. It had never occurred to me until that moment the true power the editor had to directly mold the performances and images presented on screen.

Recently, I have been working closely with my director on my second thesis, Doppelganger. The film was shot and written in a way that relies heavily on the cut hiding or presenting specific information to the audience. As Doppelganger is comprised of three constantly shifting perspectives, I had to follow the script's writing to a T. Each line of prose dictated a cut, proving to be a bit more challenging than I had originally anticipated. My usual approach to editing includes analyzing the script to determine which setups I should make use of to evoke an emotional response from the viewer, and in turn, best tell the story. However, with Doppelganger, I quickly realized the cuts were less motivated by connecting the viewer to the characters, and more showing how one character's actions influenced another. This is definitely one of the more experimental shorts I've cut, and I'm looking forward to seeing how people react to it during screenings.