SCRATCH TRACKS When Fishy animator Guillermo Gomez first joined the project, one of the first things he said to do was create a scratch track of the song with all the dialogue. What is a scratch track? It’s a rough recording of the film song and dialogue. The goal of a scratch track is get …
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Ch. 4 Finding your Footing: Pitching and Loglines
PITCHING 3 minutes. I had just 3 minutes to pitch my film idea for an animated musical short to the roomful of veteran indie filmmakers. I had thought I was prepared. I had written a script, crafted what I thought was a decent logline, prepared a short power point presentation, and rehearsed the song. But …
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CH 3: Of Plots, and Scripts, and Shot Lists
Taking Flight: STORY IDEA to SCRIPT Developing a story idea usually involves crafting a logline and writing up a short one page treatment; however, in this case, I already had completed song lyrics which told a narrative tale of sorts. What I needed now was a fully-fleshed out, structured plot with dynamic characters. My song …
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The Story of an Animation Ch. 2
Where Story Begins First comes story. Let me repeat. Story comes first. Before you begin your film making journey, make sure you have a great story first. Don’t be tempted to get skimpy or gloss over this step—trust me you’ll regret it later. Story is the bones that you hang everything else on. If you …
The Story of an Animation Ch. 1
” Down the Rabbit Hole” Several years ago, I joined a San Francisco–based film cooperative called Scarycow. After volunteering on a couple of projects as a PA and location scout, I embarked on a journey to create a short animated musical film based on one of my scripts called “The Fishy’s Tale”. This is a …