In The Blink Of An Eye

I was working on a shot a little while back; one that involved a CU of a character addressing another off-screen, in a kind but firm way. I knew what I was wanted to do, so, after thinking about it for a bit, off I pootled to my computer and started clicking things.


...Cue typing montage to the tune of the "Murder She Wrote" title score...


With my shot up for final, the director stopped by my desk to review it. We all looked at it, and yet something was wrong. I had shown it before, at a less developed stage, and it was fine. Unfinished, but fine. So what had a done?

Finally Rex, my head of Animation, said, "Was that blink always in there?"
He was right! I had squashed the eyebrows and lids, adding an accent to the dialogue, and had pushed it into a blink. This completely changed the whole attitude of the character, as he then momentarily disconnected from the other, weakening the intensity of the moment.

Duh!

Correcting it took thirty seconds, and made all the difference in the world. I was surprised by how much, in fact. I had shown it to loads of people before the review and none of us had spotted it!

So, as we can see, in this case I shouldn't have pushed the accent that far. Usually it is preferable to really exaggerate certain phonemes and support them with the eyes, (even to the point of squashing them to a blink). Here though the blink acted like a shutter, disconnecting the characters and indicating a change of thought where there was none.

Keeping that last bit in mind is an incredibly powerful little trick to have up your sleeve, and one that will definitely help the me's of this world in balancing the movement of shapes on screen and the feeling the character displays.


See? We all need a little help from time to time, (and me more than most).


....



PS. Incidentally, the post title is also that of a book about editing. By all accounts it is a good read. I have mine on order...