....that you'd worked in animation. it still strikes me, though, that the experience may have been very different than the process of working on an hour-long drama produced stateside. in the u.s., televised animated series are very different than either half-hour or hour-long series production. and animated feature films (here) operate under production hierarchies very similar to those of live action feature films (which, again, is v. different from hour-long television dramas).
We worked on animated film shorts, one-hour animated specials for television, along with TV commercials. The only constant was that the client always changed and consequently, so did the job itself and what it entailed. Some commercial projects required timing the animation to live action, and thus working within it's constraints. And no matter, you always started with the dialogue - assuming the characters in the show were speaking as opposed to not, etc.
Pre-written dialogue (actor's voices) gets recorded to an audio track which is then handed to the animators so they can match the action to the timing charts; ie: make sure it syncs with the audio. So you always had to adhere to the script - storyboard, in that sense. If a character is speaking in a scene, you couldn't draw him with duct-tape over his mouth; chuckle.
So there were rules to follow.
But at the same time, an animator was able to play around a bit with the animation itself. "Keys" are drawings which outline the main action and cannot be changed because they're linked to the audio track; ex: a character starts "here" and moves "there" - at which point he then says something. Whereas "inbetweens" are all the drawings inbetween the keys depicting HOW the character moves and what he might be doing "while" he's moving. As long as the animator gets the character from A to B without falling out of sync with audio track, and providing the director is open to "visual subtext" - the animator could insert that into the action by, oh, say - having the character walk weirdly.
So again, there are rules - but you could also sometimes break them; the storyboard didn't SAY the character walks "weirdly" as he heads towards the door. That was the animator's creative imput.
All of which is in response to your statement above wherein you speculate my experience in animation might have been quite different - perhaps too much so, and thus I'm not really in a position to apply any insights I feel I might have, regarding how things "could be" playing themselves out, over on CI.
But then everything I type is speculative - as I'm NOT a fly on the wall. And I've owned as much; as seen in previous posts.
However....,
While I've never worked on a television show featuring live actors, Vancouver's a small town; ie: it's not L.A. People know one another up here, with everyone frequenting the same watering holes and such etc. So you get to hear from folks as to what goes on; the X-Files for example, when they were shooting up here. Productions like that.
In fact, chuckle, I came home one night and found the cast & crew set-up on a neighbours lawn. A group of aliens were having a smoke break. LOL! And I caught "tid-bits" of conversation - they were speaking freely for thinking the director wasn't around (grin.) And I gather David Duchovny had them change something - got an idea or some such - for which the aliens were glad because they'd REALLY wanted that smoke break. LOL!
And so I'm actually drawing on additional sources to suppliment whatever I'd learned while working in Animation, whenever I openly speculate "maybe he.." or "perhaps this is why.." etc etc.
But it doesn't mean I'm right in my suppositions. Nor do I think I am, whenever I share them. That's the point - I
don't know if my assumptions are correct. All I know is that I "believe" there's a 50/50 chance they could be - for at the end of the day, you're either right about something or you're not, eh?
Based on what you've written, I gather it's your position that the odds are more likely 80/20 against the likelyhood of my speculation & suppositions being the case.
Okkie dokkie!
I was only agreeing that the "idea" to do it in the first place, could indeed have come from D'Onofrio. If I failed to qualify that in my post, my error; point given.
Since the camera would indeed have needed to be in position to "catch" sight of Sonny catching Goren's briefcase, what I "SUSPECT" is that D'Onofrio did it as an experiment - the same way he placed his hand onto a guy's head inside the church in order to steady himself as he climbed-up onto the pews. Or the same way he suddenly pulled a "Gumby move" in the first episode of season 1 - bending over like a rubber band in order to draw the other actor's eyes back UP to meet his own - for having watched the cast interview "LOCI: Beginings" on the DVD, and taken note of what was said by Dick Wold and D'Onofrio.
That's the sort of stuff I "think" he tends to do, to this day. And when it works, they use it. When it doesn't, they go back to how it's written in the script because A) they didn't like it or B) there's no time to move the camera, re-block a shot etc.
I agree. But that doesn't mean the idea to do it in the first place "couldn't" have originated with D'Onofrio, either during the course of blocking out the scene, or as a consequence of him experimenting. For we know they've allowed him to get away with stuff, in the past. And for the want of being a fly on the wall that day so as to know for sure, it's my contention that the above speculation is as valid as
your assertion it's not.
Yes, but you hold that position while
standing in the
same spot as everyone else; for you're not a member of the production crew anymore than I am. And yet that despite that fact, argue here as though that weren't the case - for
appearing to present your views as being the
more likely truth of the matter because you
deem them to be so. (Whereas I've only ever offered-up the possibility that I "could" be right in my various suppositions - which is a 50/50 proposition and nothing more.)
Which subsequently strikes me as faulty reasoning on
your part; as technically, I can't be
more wrong than you are right - for the want of Balcer, Wolf and D'Onofrio definitively settling the matter for us. And so in order to "successfully" contest something I've written for disagreeing with it, imo, you need to find faults in my
own reasoning - ie: how I arrived at my conclusions and what not, by showing me where things didn't add up, make sense, points that don't connect etc, either for being illogical or poorly contested.
For again, in a Forum debate (as I see it) it's about how well one
presented their point of view and argued their case - not whether or not they were right; as all opinions are subjective.
I don't think you're wrong by the way, when you say "what's on the page is what makes it onscreen". Indeed, I more than concur that "I" could be in error!
But I made that concession from the start for owning it, and never presented my point of view as being anything more than subjective. Unlike your contrary point of view; which to me, doesn't seem to be based on anything beyond taking you at your word that YOU know more about the inner-workings of a television production, than I do. Which may well be the case, but it doesn't negate the fact that we know D'Onofrio has a measure of creative imput on the show and he's been successful in the past in getting some of his ideas past Balcer and Wolf via that "gumby move" and other such examples.
Which is why I feel you've ultimately failed to provide a strong enough case for why it's
more likely that your guess is better than mine.
Which is the name of the game here.
So "checkmate" Vance. Thank-you playing and drive home safely.
Chuckle!!!!!! ;D