How do you cut a commercial's length in half?

In the old days of animation, if someone wanted you to adjust the timing or rearrange an action, it was almost as bad as if they told you to completely redraw and recreate your animation. In other words, it was almost impossible.

Several years ago, I created a 60-second animation about aggressive driving. The cable company liked it, but needed it to fit into a 30-second spot. Could I cut it down?

I looked at the animation and fretted: "This is impossible!"

The before and after animations are here:

I started with the easy stuff:
The end title was too long and could easily be shortened. The opening sequence could use less build up: Eight seconds cut. Only 22-seconds to go.

I used Adobe Audition to take the sound-track and speed it up without changing the pitch. A few more seconds were squeezed out. I broke out the pieces of dialog and shortened certain sections even more. I pushed it as much as possible without making it sound unnatural.

Now came the hard part: The actual guts of the animation. Dialog timing was changed. When possible, I had the characters talk over each other. This actually made the interaction more realistic and interesting. I shortened the crash explosion. I churned through the animation a frame at a time, looking to delete every possible unnecessary frame.

The ability to automatically synch dialog to mouth expressions was incredibly vital in Toon Boom Studio. Equally important: The ability to separate characters and change their "acting."

Finally, I hit the magic 30-second time limit. Initially, I was a little horrified at the result. Eventually, I got to see the shortened version as a significant improvement. The commercial no longer drags.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• editing
• animation
• toon
• boom
• studio
• steven
• mussey
• commercial
• comic
• drawing
• broadcasting
• cartoon
• spot
• animated
• advertising
• advertisement
• commercials
• Editing
• show
• funny
• Television advertisement

[drsteve64]

With Toon Boom Studio, it took about two months.

[lostkat13]

nice work

[minus36studio]

Nice one! - Did the client make you change the look of the closing phrase? I like much better the first one (blue background and yellow letters)

Cheers

[FatadeiFiori91]

how long does it take doing this animation? cause I like it!