Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
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FALL 2020 29 D E PA R T M E N T FALL 2020 29 above: Almost every storyboard artist on the production worked on this pivotal scene. "I definitely like to think about story musically, to think of story structure as [having] different movements." – MINKYU LEE watch it and say, 'wow, that was fast,' and we would lock the scene," says MacLeod. "It was a really fun process of having him draw whatever specific expression—that helps throughout the pipeline for the ani- mators to understand what he's after." The difficult part for MacLeod? Doing fixes on Keane's and Lee's scenes because "they draw at such a high level of drafts- manship." However, Keane's openness to change helped lead by example. "We all revisited each other's scenes. There was one scene in the movie that every board artist worked on, which isn't totally typical." The scene, where the entire extended family is seated around the dinner table, had tricky choreography with dialogue between numerous characters. The story team did several passes on the sequence— one for exposition, another for story and plot purposes, and a third for clarity. Another unusual aspect of this film—almost every story artist had an opportunity to board a song. "A good song will have a strong shape to it already," adds MacLeod "Every song has a different scale to it." He notes that some have multiple characters, some only a cou- ple. Some are really involved like boarding an action sequence while others, like an intimate duet, have very specific staging and blocking, with characters doing inter- esting gestures and expressing emotion in their faces. "You try to cast the right board artist for the right song," he says. "I definitely like to think about story musically, to think of story structure as [having] different movements," says Lee, who boarded three songs for the film. "You're working with creative, inspiring lim- itations. You have to fit this entire story in the duration of that song. And, oddly that helps, that becomes a really great compass for what the sequence is supposed to be." Lee begins with breaking down the lyrics, examining how the structure esca- lates as the characters figure out their problems and find solutions, while also approaching the process more fluidly, with inspired bursts of unbridled creativ- ity. The balance of the two creating harmony between the music and images. One of Lee's highlights while working on the film was boarding a song per- formed by Phillipa Soo. "I floated this idea of let's really let her voice soar and kind of pitched a brand-new introduc- tion for the song," he says. Keane liked Lee's concept and set up a meeting with the song writers. "And then it hap- pened!" enthuses Lee. "I think that just goes to show how gracious, generous, open-minded and open-hearted of a collaborator Glen is. That was a very exciting moment for me." The final elements of the film were completed during quarantine but that didn't dampen the excited of seeing the sequences come alive through music. "Everybody gets super giddy around the scoring sessions," says MacLeod, who watched virtually as musicians around the world recorded the final score. "It's surreal. You get emotional every time."