Recording Session 03
This voice recording session (which took place last Thursday) went really well. I decided it was important that all the actors attending liquor up before going into the booth. While the bourbon I brought along may not have made that much of a difference to the actors' performances, I think its presence changed the room's atmosphere somewhat (it smelled of bourbon).
I completely rewrote a pivotal scene a few days beforehand, which I imagine is always reassuring for actors. Nevertheless it was carried off well by Katrina, Thomas and Dr Justin Heazlewood, joining us for the first time. In this session we took our first shot at recording whole scenes with two actors reacting off each other. I was happy with the results, enough to stay up late redrawing the animatic to reflect the changes.
I was super happy with what we got, feeling that the new version of the scene (basically two guys sitting in a car) shot a lot more fun and action in than the original. Then today Adam dropped by and checked out the animatic as it stands, and told me he found the dialogue readings in the whole thing flat. This bothered me because I felt we had something pretty nice going. I mean, sure, a lot of the joy will be injected when the animation's actually done (the animatic is mostly still frames, after all), and nobody looking at the animatic is seeing what I have in my head, exactly, but...
Having discussed the thing further, I learned that Adam feels animation always needs "characterised" line readings. He feels that my earlier animated film, Herman, The Legal Labrador, suffered for my desire to keep some readings "naturalistic". I agree with him to a point, but what Herman may have suffered from equally was my inability/unwillingness to "keep things moving" with more active animation and faster editing.
So basically, I tend to err on the side of "dry" or "subtle", and risk ending up with "boring" as a result.
However, Adam considers the animated shows Daria and King of the Hill "boring". So we diverge there. I think both these shows are very funny, and are pretty good examples of how animation does NOT have to restrict itself to characters braying like jackasses to get a laugh (or not get a laugh, in the case of Family Guy). I feel that fast, stupid cop action and slow, quiet, "naturalistic" bits can coexist in one five minute episode, and I think through working on the structure and editing of the episode, I'll prove myself right.
What do you think? What other animated shows/shorts/films have managed to keep their characters "low key" and still funny?
