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The Editing Process
In television the editing is almost the last thing that happens. But creature comforts are different. For a start the editing is done at the same time as filming – or even before it!! This is because the episodes have been constructed in audio form before any decisions have been made about how the creatures will look so the voices have to be edited together, along with the initial images of the characters.

Dan Lincoln is one of the people who edit the interviews they collect. The first thing that he does is listen to the chosen voices – all 137 of them – whilst looking at the transcript showing which bits Golly wants to use. Then Dan picks out the lines from the audio material and puts them into a rough edit. He has to get about 1 ½ hours of audio down to just 8 minutes.

Once an episode has been roughly assembled the editors sit down with Golly and put the dialogue along side the original sketches of the characters. Together they make a simple film called an animatic. This allows them to see if the voices go well or not with the characters they have in mind. This means they can tell if its going to work as a character before they start animating.

It’s only when the animators start producing their 4 seconds of animated characters per day that the voices can be put to lips. Dan hen takes the dialogue that us being used and fits the moving lips to it. During this process the characters really begin to take shape and our creatures start to come to life.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 10:59 AM