Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1544997
SUMMER 2026 11 S H O R T S T O R Y This didn't just mean getting finger movements right. It meant integrating those movements into the overall motion to make sure they could be seen clearly. "There were difficulties if the character spun around because we had to make sure that you could always see the hands when you needed to," Reid says. In "We Don't Talk About Bruno," the most challenging of the three songs, "there's so much choreography and movement embedded into the scene already," says Sacchetti. "Everyone is moving onscreen, offscreen, but we're still hearing their voices." This might require whirling a dancer so that her back is to her partner, and while he holds her, her hands are free to sign. Choices were also made to use signs with movements that complemented the emotion of the moment. An instance that stands out for Reid relates to the original script when Moana says: "This is bigger than Motunui—bigger than us." She is talking about connecting with people on other islands and bringing everyone together. Reid says that when the team translated the line, they had to think about what Moana meant by "this." In the translation, Moana signs: "Motunui isn't the only one." While this different angle captures the same concept, "visually it feels better," Reid says. Throughout each step, logistics and the cinematic side had to "play nice together," says Osmond, who used a "There's so much creativity and freedom and flexibility that goes into animation... In sign language you have the same kind of flexibility." different camera at times and often had to shoot closer than in the original scene to make the signs clear. Then there was an issue Reid discovered once a scene was shot. "When we followed the live- action reference frame by frame, often the motion was too fast to read in the animation," he says. "With the sound on, it also gave a sense of slowing time, which could mask what was truly legible. By turning the sound off, we could see the movements more clearly, giving us a better sense of which signs were legible and which needed a few more frames. Once we had that working, we could then turn the sound back on and adjust to hit the musical beats if desired." A sense of responsibility to the deaf community underscored the production of Songs in Sign Language, and it turned out that animation is well suited to meet this responsibility. "There's so much creativity and freedom and flexibility that goes into animation," Sacchetti says. "In sign language you have the same kind of flexibility." To this Osmond adds: "Sign language is a cinematic language in and of itself. It was a natural fit." —Kim Fay