MONTAGE COMPLETE POST ON ANIMATION SERIES

MONTAGE Productions have recently completed post production for a series of fifty top motion animations based on the work of the famous cartoonist Michael Leunig.
The producer of the series, Deborah Szapiro of Freerange Animation, who commissioned Montage, has described her partners as a “dream team”.
Montage was approached by Freerange Animation and producer Bryan Brown to develop a documentary style project on Leunig. The project involved bringing 50 Leunig moments, each chosen for the insight provided into Leunig’s trademark philosophy, humour and observations on life. The resting documentary will be a mixture of live action and animation and will screen on SBS in February 2002.
As an existing client of Montage, Deborah Szapiro knew the team was working with a recently upgraded Editbox FX from Quantel. Familiar with the versatility and speed of process that makes the Editbox FX number one in its category, Szapiro was confident that, working with Montage and utilising Quantel equipment, the project would come in on time, on budget with a superior finish.
The project overall involved a huge amount of layering on the Editbox FX, as well as the particle generation of effects such as rain, smoke and fog of SoftImage XSI. All footage was shot on Super-16, and came to Montage on Digital Betacam with a preliminary grade.
3D effects completed on SoftImage XSI were sent over the network to the Editbox FX as a background task while editing and compositing work continued. Many effects also made use of the Masher running 5D Monsters plug-ins such as glass, glows, neon and lightbeams, which were rendered in the background from the Editbox as work continued. (CD)