 Hello, great to see you guys. So my name is Jati Helmelsson. I originally an animator. I've been doing like some different kinds of stuff at the studio, but I have animated a lot of different shots over the years in a lot of different films we've made. And I want to talk a little bit about this thing over here, which is the using video footage as part of your workflow for doing animation. So it's not a thing that you should necessarily use always and forever and nothing like that. It's a thing that is kind of a tool in your toolbox. And there is a reason why it can be very helpful. So when you have a live action film, they don't just shoot the film immediately. They do rehearsals. They do a lot of stuff where they figure things out. And this is kind of the equivalent of that, where you try things out. You try different acting choices. And you have to remember also that animation in general, out of everything in the pipeline and in the workflow, it's like the most time-consuming, energy-consuming, expensive part of it. So you want to make sure that as you go into it, you have like a strong foundation of where this shot needs to go. I have just a couple of examples from professionals in the industry. This is Carlos Baena. We have another one from Spiderwears, Emma Shee. I love their performances. That's why I'm kind of including it there. So it has become kind of a standard in the animation industry to do something like this, to create a communication between the director and the animator. And they can figure out together what are the acting choices that are going to work for this shot. So I do have to do kind of a disclaimer, a bit of a warning, which is if you just like follow blindly some live footage, you're not really doing animation unless you're actually applying the principles of animation. That is way outside the scope of this talk, by the way. But if you do it completely mindlessly, then you'd start having this weird, I don't know if there is a word for it, but it has this kind of rotoscopy feel or style to it. And there are some examples where this has been kind of done, where there is no principles of animation being applied here. It's the equivalent of kind of a Photoshop filter being put on top of live action footage. And I don't want to be a snob, but animation has become this vague definition, but in the strongest definition, it's not a black and white kind of a thing. But on the spectrum, you're closer to being something animated if you actually apply the principles of animation. This is another example that's kind of interesting because they are trying to put stylized characters on top, but they still are not look at how he sits down. There is no squash and stress. Like none of the actual kind of principles are being used. So it still has this uncanny feeling. So bear with me a little bit because I'm going to use character design as kind of a visual metaphor because it's a little bit easier. So what about if I see some animation, somebody else is done, and I love it. It's so amazing. Why can't I just use that as my reference? Why would I have to record something that's kind of live action or whatever? Well, you should study it definitely. If you love that animation, you should study it and check out all the choices that they made because they made definitely choices that where they tweak them and they figure them out until they complement each other for whatever goal they were aiming at. The problem is if you ignore that and you just take the final product that they make and you copy it, you will only ever make a kind of a derivative copy of it. And this can of course escalate where you just make a copy of a copy of a copy and whatnot. So it's kind of lacking that authenticity spice or whatnot. So I just had to do this disclaimer. Sorry. So anyway, here's 42 tips for making a video reference for animation. It could have been longer, but I had to stop myself at some point. So the first one is, and this is probably the most important one, which is try to work within your timeframe and budget. You're not going to be given, realistically, practically speaking, you're not going to be given like three weeks to perfect these performances that you want to do and then present to the director. You're going to be given maybe a day. And you have to, you know, but that's kind of the point of it. It's supposed to have a fast turnover. So you make it, you look at it together with the director. You find out that, oh, that choice is great. That choice doesn't work at all when I put it in the edit. Okay, great. Let's do another version or let's trim that one thing down and let's continue. Number two is it is pretty good to also look at any relevant extra materials for your performance. So just as an example, if you have a character you have to animate that is anthropomorphized cat, this might be a great excuse to go online and look at a lot of videos of cats and look at their mannerisms and little gestures and you can sprinkle those into your animation. That's fantastic. Be aware you might end up procrastinating and not actually doing any work. So that's, so be mindful of the time. So time management, this is important. Number three, layout is really your canvas. This depends on how the layout artist works. Some of them put a lot of information in there that is vetted by the director and some of them you just have like a floating T person kind of going from A to B. But some choices have been made where this sits now in the edit and the edit might have an already a particular editing rhythm. So it doesn't mean that it's written in stone but it does mean that you use the video reference as the opportunity to perhaps make an appeal to the director that an extra beat here would be great. Or I think this acting choice might be fantastic. It's just gonna just give me 48 more frames or whatever. Like please lengthen my shot. If you do that to every shot, now your film is twice as long. So there's a little ying and yang going on there. Number four, be aware of the hookups. So that means the surrounding shots. How your shot flows from one to the other. And this might mean that you might have to maybe have a conversation with the animators that are working on the shots around yours. Sometimes it's yourself, so you can figure it out yourself. Number five, if there's dialogue, you have to listen to it again and again and again until your ears bleed and it is painful. You will at the end of this process hate that dialogue so much. But it's so important to actually analyze it and write it down, write it down phonetically also and really study all the inflections that are going on, the intensity, because all of those moments of emphasis, you're gonna latch onto them and it's a perfect opportunity to put a really clear acting choice there. Once you have some idea of the beats that you're thinking of, don't allow them to just be there in your head. Start putting them down. Just you can list them down. It doesn't matter. You can make that list again and again and again. Some people like doing thumbnails, whatnot. But once you have it written down, you see that, oh, well, that doesn't work. Otherwise it's this ethereal thing in your head. Number seven, don't overthink the quality of the video. Who cares? This is not the film. This is just the thing you do quickly to look at and get some information. However, I will say this is where I'm a snob. Please do it in the same frame rate as the film, which in almost every case at this point will be 24 frames per second. Your phone may not want to do that, but there are apps to go around that or convert the footage afterwards before you start editing it into the video reference. Please use a tripod. There is no reason why you should be doing a handheld thing and adding more noise of information into the thing you're trying to analyze. Just keep it steady. When it comes to horizontal versus vertical, do whatever makes sense for your shot. You might have a lot of right-left movement in the shot, so then horizontal may be the way to go. But once you actually start setting it up, think of safety first. You may be wanting to do some jumps or whatnot. Make sure there's enough space for it and there's not a metallic radiator behind you that could pierce your skull. Maybe use some pillows or something. Also, you have to be very creative about the environment. Sometimes the character needs to be climbing out of a washing machine, but you don't have a washing machine, so you just use some tables and chairs or whatever you do to kind of recreate that setting for yourself. Or the character needs to be off balance. Well, just try to be off balance on a piece of wood. It doesn't take much. Wear also clothing that stands out and isn't too baggy. The thing is you're trying to analyze the information of the body movement, not how floppy the clothing is or whatever. You don't have to wear a loincloth or anything like that. That's too far, maybe. There are cases, though, where clothing can be used as reference and can be helpful. So if you have a character that has a loose jacket, for example, you might wanna wear a loose jacket. Here I made the mistake of not wearing a white T-shirt and covering that black TV behind, so it was not as easier to read as I thought it would be. But in any case, 15, most of the time you're gonna wanna wear shoes, and basically it's because at any given moment you probably want some good traction. It's gonna seriously affect the way the body mechanics are working, and your performance is on top of that. But in some instances, like this one, for comedic effect, it might be actually better to have the floor kind of slippery. You will almost never get a real prop that looks like the thing that the character is using. So you have to be very creative. So for Cosmos Laundromat, we needed a cassette player, we went to a couple of thrift stores, couldn't find anything, that's a thing, technology that doesn't exist apparently anymore. So, but I had a cassette and a holster, so I just taped it to an old hard drive. I got what I needed out of that performance. I had to do another kind of take on top of it, but it worked. When it comes to lighting, just use simple, neutral lighting. There's no reason to be going for some already harsh shadows, that just complicates thing too much. But try please to mimic the angle of the shot. It just saves you a lot of headache in the long run. Now, when it comes to shots where you wanna look at the body mechanics, try to do a full shot. That means that you have the entire body inside the shot. You don't wanna be cutting off the feet if that information will become critical later. But when it comes to kind of reference shots where you wanna look at more facial expressions, something like that, like in this instance, it's kind of a second pass that I did and it's aim for more medium shots. That's something that's closer to maybe chest level and include the head. And that's the comparison. I forgot to click, I'm sorry. When you're setting everything up and you're about to start doing your performance, before you do it, set up the camera, hit record and assume the positions that you're thinking about. Like just try a couple of the poses. Go back to the camera and just take a look. Like are you accidentally cutting your own head off or are you not in the frame? Otherwise you start doing all these performances that are kind of useless. Don't be afraid of looking silly because honestly, your profession calls for it. So you have to just be silly. I mean, there's no way around it. But the sooner you get past that, the better performances you're able to give. Now, do try to avoid having an actual audience. The exceptions to that is maybe if the director is there and they're trying to work something out with you or potentially you have another animator that's kind of helping you out. But basically it's just a distraction. It serves no purpose and yeah, it takes away from being in the moment. This is from Rick Schutte, my coworker. I just wanted to show also that even in more of a cartoony style, it still can be very helpful to kind of figure out the timing and the kind of main poses for it. When you start out and you're about to do your performance, just take a breath and really think, go into the mindset of your character and just imagine that you're in that scenario. And you know, all of a sudden you see the level of urgency. This might also mean that if your character is supposed to be very tired, do like three push-ups or whatever. Like just get your body a little bit fit. Sorry, two push-ups, I don't know. So if your character needs to think, there's something in the performance where they are thinking about something. You need to incorporate that into your performance. So you need to have a beat of thinking in there. Make sure that you represent all the acting beats. In this example, it's not too bad. It's like you have more or less eight beats maybe. But in some shots, it can go all the way to like 20 beats and you don't want to accidentally be skipping them or like doing them in the wrong order. So in some cases, if you have a really long shot, maybe you might want to consider breaking it down into smaller chunks to work with. But or you just rehearse a lot. This is from an old school project I did. And basically, if you're doing something that relies on body mechanics, don't pretend to do it. So the equivalent would be if your character needs to pick up a heavy box. Well, if you only have an empty box, well, I'll just fake it. You will see the bottom mechanics is wrong and your performance is based on top of it. In this case, I was sawing a box and I thought, this is fine. I just fake it. And the teacher was really angry and he got me to redo it and actually saw a piece of wood. And it's true if you actually go over the bottom mechanics and it changed my performance also. In any case, some things I cannot physically do. I am not very fit person. This was a school project where we were basically tasked with creating some kind of a collage that has a parkour run in it and trying to combine the kind of a compilation and figure out if you can create something that flows together. I mean, it's an interesting experiment and you can experiment things. 33, perform to the camera. This is kind of a rule of thumb for, for example, stage actors because if you're watching a theater play and they keep talking like this or whatnot, it's not very nice. So as a rule of thumb, unless there's a reason for it, try to kind of angle your body towards the camera. There is a reason. I mean, it's not random that I chose my right leg to be in the front here because it rotates my hip and it forces my torso to be more open towards the camera. And in some cases, you might want to ask for help with other animators that are just amazing at giving great performances. This is my friend, an animator, Sikyore. This was a school project. He does just such amazing performances of over-the-top acting that it fits really the style. Sometimes in a project, you might have an animator that's working with that. It's just so amazing at portraying this one character that you kind of want to get him in there and help him help you out. Be mindful of kind of happy accidents. This is something that you see more in live action films. Like this is just an example in Midnight Cowboy where an actual taxi ran a red light while they were shooting and Dustin Hoffman got really angry and yelled, I'm walking here, you know, and that's not in the script, but they left it in because it felt very genuine to the character. It became actually the most famous line in the entire film. Or another example where in the sound of music, Julie Andrews does this like amazing performance of a song all about how confident she is. I'm so confident, I'm so confident. And in one of the takes, right at the last shot of that performance, she just happens to trip and the director loved it because there's a poetic irony going on there. So an equivalent of that for me in my work is for example, we had some footage of the voice actors for Cosmos Laundromat. And I noticed in the footage at one point he was doing this thing where he was meant to light a cigarette but he did it in the wrong order. He let just in the moment, he kind of forgot in which order to do it. And it felt so human to me. I wanted to grab that and put that on the character. But in this moment, he actually needs to be doing something different. He needs to be closing the door behind him of the washing machine he just crawled out of. So I did a performance that tried to kind of encapsulate both things. And then, and this is another tip, this you might consider having to fuse performances together. It's not always easy, but you can do it. Dun, dun, dun, dun. Amazing, perfect. When you do takes, please don't do like 20 takes, 50 takes per recording. It's too much stuff to analyze and review. That's my child. I love you. So do, you know, if it's a really long shot and definitely just do one take per recording. But on average, I would advise maybe three to five takes and then just stop, go take a look because you might find that, oh, I'm angling my body here weirdly or I'm doing this gesture that doesn't work. Well, it's good to know that right away before now doing another set of takes if you've just wasted a lot of time. That's the whole thing of this. You want to waste as little time as possible and just try things out as efficiently as possible. Also, once you're done with all your favorite takes, all your takes really make note of your favorite ones. And not only that, be a little bit brutal. All the ones that you know will never be used. Just delete them because this is also another thing. As you move into the next step in the process of getting all the footage and editing it, if you just have like 50 different video files, you just clutter everything up. So try to be also kind of lean with the stuff that you're working with. As you start editing together your footage, I do really recommend adding the layout in its current form from the edit into the corner. It just kind of helps with guiding the timing. And also, I kind of like it when I put an adjustment layer for kind of that extra little bit of the shot before and after and I make it black and white. That way it's easy for me to get a little bit more context for the actual reference, but it's very visually clear to me when the shot started and when it ended. 41, export with a frame counter. It's kind of small. It's in the bottom left corner there. So it's very helpful for getting feedback and receiving, giving feedback and receiving feedbacks. And then 42, remember that this kind of rehearsal, experiment, it's all part of this bigger conversation that you're having with the director, with the team, with the editor. And it's, don't be too precious about it also because you're doing a performance that maybe you're amazing, the most amazing performance that you've ever done, but it turns out when you put it into the edit, there's something about it that doesn't flow with the other shots. So keep it in mind that you're making something together with the rest of the team. And just as a final little bonus tip, there is no substituting experience. I've now, making this talk, I've looked at some of my old stuff and I've definitely seen an improvement over the years. And some of that improvement is also efficiency, so you don't spend too much time doing what you need to do. But please try it and see if it works for you. You don't have to do it for every shot, of course, but please try it and have fun. Thank you.