Ryan Estrada

Greetings from Panama! I’m orchestrating an international move while compositing in a hostel. My busiest month of the year has bled into my second busiest month of the year, making this month very busy and awesome. I want to give you an ETA on the movie, but I’m waiting to hear from Jessica what’s the scoop with the scenes that are on her computer in Chicago.

So since the whole idea of this was to gain movie-makin’ knowledge by jumping in the deepest end there is, I thought I’d share some of what I learned.

1) Post production does not happen magically.

Yes, I know this is common sense. But up to the very end, I was thinking ‘once I finish animation, I’ll just pop everything into Final Cut and be done!’ This did not happen.

2) The amount of time something takes is proportionate to the time you have.

When I had hours left, before I found out that the scenes in Chicago wouldn’t be back on time. It was very plausible that I could composite all my scenes on time. They wouldn’t be pretty, but they’d get done. I finished one scene in an hour. The character had his back facing the camera the whole scene for no reason other than so that I didn’t have to do lip sync. But once I had already missed the deadline, I couldn’t rationalize phoning it in like that. Scenes started taking a full 12 hour day, so I could make them look AWESOME.

3) If you set and fight for a ridiculous goal, even if you don’t complete all of your own anal retentive rules, you can still do seemingly impossible things.

I didn’t fit post production into the 31 days, or do it myself, but I single handedly animated an entire god darned animated feature in a month. Golf clap. It may sound like I’m post rationalizing, but I know I failed at my stated goal. My real goal, however, was to start making movies. And hoo boy, have I started, and boy am I hooked.

4) It may very well be possible to make a career out of independent animated features released free under a webcomic-like business model.

If I had to choose between becoming rich as a director for hire or being a poor webcartoonist who does my own movies instead of my own comics, I choose poor webcartoonist all the way! And Now that I’ve seen what can be done with no resources, and judged what resources I’d need to make films at the quality level I’d like, I think it’s possible to make movies the way I want, and find an audience that can keep them going!

5) Give the people who support you the support they need.

When Jessica first offered to help me composite, I kept blowing her off and saying I had a shot or two down the line that I might need help with, stubbornly trying to keep as much in my control as possible. When I finally let her try compositing a scene, it came back far better than my rushed animation had any right to look. She is far more talented than I. Unfortunately, I waited so long to give her what she needed to work that she didn’t have the time and ended up pulling a lot of long hours and all nighters, and had to continue working when she was back at her full time job!

That’s all for now! I’ll update again soon with “5 more things I learned” and of course, with the finished movie!