Hellboy Animated

Busy Bees

What I'd really like to write about is the third story because it's chock full of fan favorite stuff, old and new villains and lots of paranormal and occult science weirdness!

But I can't.  One, there's no greenlight until people buy enough of this little beauty to the right. (Visit Hellboy.com and order through their Amazon link)  So there's no use getting your hopes up.  Two, I'm not going to give away stuff like Rasputin, Von Klemp and... wait, uh-oh. And third, you need to focus on  Hellboy: Blood and Iron.

Except I'll say that Cartoon Network is scheduled to rebroadcast Hellboy: Sword of Storms on December 30.  Check your local listings... in a month.

What we were doing last week we are still doing.  We just found out that Ron Perlman is in town so we have to rush to get his ADR work done before he returns to Nova Scotia and his current film.

So that's it!  I gotta go downstairs to call retakes.  Talk to ya next week.  --Tad

Postus Interruptus

Posting through the holidays is always a start and stop proposition.  Post is always the part of the schedule that gets cramped because that's the part of the process that's shoved up against the release date.  So when everybody else takes a little extra time to make their part of the production as good as they can... it's post who has to make up for it. But although it's routine for the guys to work late and on weekends, holiday breaks are planned well in advance so you either plan for it or use weaker or unfamiliar talent.

So I'll update whenever there's something interesting but it's going to be fairly erratic.  So here's what's happening these days: I just got off the phone with Christopher Drake who is scoring the opening sequence of Blood and Iron.  He's already has several sequences completed but now that he has the complete, locked picture he can start filling in from beginning to end.  We also discussed tweaks to the opening sequence which will be a little more ornate than just a Japanese scroll.  Otis Van Osten and the crew at Audio Circus are moving at hyper speed until they take off for some Thanksgiving turkey. 

The DVD for Sword of Storms is all but finished and will include a trailer for the second movie.  Cool menus and a really nice DVD Rom package that let's you search the script and the San Diego panel transcript which ties you directly to the part of the movie or panel that's being discussed.

Other than that, I'm ramping up for a second, non-Hellboy property that will overlap my work here.  Maybe it will get its own blog!  Finally, Mike and I are in the middle of the story for the third Hellboy so all is cool and good.  Happy Thanksgiving for those celebrating and drive safe! -- Tad

The CN Gods Smile On Us

BLOOD AND IRON has suffered from late deliveries from overseas.  The first movie wore people out and yet the animators wanted to do their best.  I was told animators just refused to turn in scenes until they were happy with them.  You would think that's good news but that all puts the pressure on everybody in post.

Otis Van Osten can hire sound editors from all over town but the more bodies working the less control, the less cohesion.  "Oh, you're using that sound for a ghost pass by?  I thought we should use this."  Keeping the right tone throughout the movie is especially hard.  How "cartoon?"  You'd think the answer is simple but anything that's not absolutely realistic is subject to interpretation.  So trying to cram all that work into a shorter amount of time does the movie no good at all.

And that's just effects.  Because the animated face doesn't have the subtleties of a living actor, I really need Chris Drake to play the emotions of the story.  This movie relies on music much more than the first.  Chris was looking at composing and performing the entire film score in eleven days. 

So I was not happy.  Guillermo and Mike are on record saying how much more they like the story of this movie over the first.  Sword of Storms has more spectacle than this movie and lots more visual variety.  There are no 100 foot skeletons, zombie armies, spider women, and the entire movie is set in two, arguably five, locations -- so that was making me nervous and the idea that we'd have to crap out the post as fast as possible was just driving me over the edge.  We had already gotten minor extensions from Cartoon Network and we couldn't ask for "just a leetle more time" because the schedule was backed up against the holidays when people were going to be out of town.

But bless Cartoon Network who let us lengthen the schedule into January so this movie can finish right!  Thank you, Terry and Bob!  Ultimately everyone will be happier and I'm sure my medical bills will be much lower (although there's little hope for my rapidly falling hair).  I'm sure I'll relax when the DVD sales shoot through the roof.

BUT WAIT!  THERE'S MORE!
We're trying to lock the picture tonight, a day earlier (every minute helps).  We will have to hold off one sequence due to creative retakes that reworked the ending.  (Yes, both will be on the DVD).  It's lots of fun editing psychic visions and trying to up the shock value of certain images.  There is an action sequence that uses a bathtub as a weapon that is unbelievable. Certain to produce lots of "Whoa!  Ouch!  That had to hurt." reactions from the audience.  Try to watch it with friends.

Meanwhile, I need to get together with Mike before he heads to New York because we've been okayed to start the script of Hellboy: No Name Yet.  This will be the one that shows the lessons learned from the first two.  Fanboys, buy your drool cups now.  Of course, green lighting number three all depends on the sales of number one.  So consider going  here  then scroll to the  bottom of the page and preorder your DVD.   

There's a lot of drool in you that needs to get out.   -- Tad

Less Is More

Try telling that to a kid when you're dishing out desert but when it comes to editing Hellboy: Blood and Iron it's absolutely correct.   The animation is looking great.  In fact the level of draftsmanship on some sequences blow away anything in Sword of Storms.  But, for whatever reasons, many of the scenes have been timed long.  Nothing that hurts the quality of animation but it hurts pacing or flow of action from scene to scene.  It's all easily fixable in editing.  BUT you have to have the footage to edit.  If the movie had to be eighty minutes long we wouldn't be able to do any editing.  We'd need to create some footage.   But at 75 minutes we'd have great raw material but it would be flabby.  I don't know if a layman would notice specifically but there'd be less tension, less excitement and a couple of scenes that hurt the flow of action.

So ironically, the great news is that I have permission to cut more out of the movie.  It can't be less than 70 minutes and it will hopefully be a few minutes longer than that but my depression has lifted.  Now I know that we can make the most out of what we have and I'm excited all over again.

Where We Are
You aren't going to get as much detail about the development of Blood and Iron in this blog because the last of our "take ones" are due today.  We've started editing and we'll be editing over the weekend, scrambling to give our post people as much time as possible to place effects and compose music.  But over the next few weeks I'll try to think back about the decisions that made this movie so different than the first.  Later. -- Tad

I Need Mignola to Storyboard for Me

I got to see the preproduction offices for Guillermo's next Hellboy movie when Mike and I had lunch a week ago to talk a little story for the next Hellboy Animated.  The design work being done is incredible but that shouldn't be a surprise if you've seen stills of Pan's Labyrinth... which is only about a month away.  It's like a little clubhouse for the cool kids.

Anyway, we went next door for lunch and instead of
talking story we talked about the advance reaction we were getting to Sword of Storms. Thank you all for your compliments, by the way.  The internet response has been overwhelmingly positive.  I hear your frustration with not being able to buy the DVD yet.  Even the people who didn't love the movie had good things to say about it.  Christopher Drake's score was considered very strong by most viewers.  We're investigating the option of putting it out as a customer premium when you purchase the DVD at certain stores.  I've heard bits and pieces of the score for Blood and Iron and it's just as strong - yet completely different as is the movie.

So I was talking to Mike about the action sequences between Liz and the big monster. Relax, no spoilers follow.  Those sequences were both rushed and late.  You think you're standing back and looking at the whole but you're too close to it and there's no time to re-conceive it.  There's plenty of nice action in those sequences but they feel repetitious.  There's not a strong build.

Mike responded by describing several sequences out of the Abe Sapien mini-series he's writing. Jaw droppingly good - exciting, weird and hilarious.  It was an extended action sequence with little dialogue.  It broke up the action into separate kinds of action - confrontation, chase, confined space, surprise revelation, etc.   Applied to the Liz action sequences - maybe the thing should have chased them onto shore, maybe the geography could change - instead of them always looking up at the thing, maybe they could've climbed higher and be looking down for one of the sequences.  The fire effects were too even.  There should be a little fire the first time, then more then when Liz finally unleashes the damn island should've started to melt - she and the monster could've disappeared in a cloud of steam as the lava hit the water.

Woulda.  Shoulda.  Coulda.  That's not just the value of hindsight, it's the value of time.  As I wrote in an earlier entry - in live action, every effects shot is the result of a literal meeting between many department heads so that the shot is done efficiently and safely.  There's no way a moment like that gets short change. 

What does all this introspection help?  The next movie.  Not Blood and Iron, that ship sailed long ago.  We're getting in the final footage now- painfully late, but great looking.  No, I mean the third, un-greenlit movie.  The new script will be written with the lessons learned fresh in my mind and the fan reaction we've had to the first movie.

More on that movie, and Blood and Iron, in the future. -- Tad