By Ivan Victor
In live-action editing, each genre demands its own specialized skills. Maybe that’s landing a punchline with precision, constructing an action-packed montage, or drawing out emotion in a dramatic scene. But across genres, from dailies to final cut, the workflow is similar — working with multiple takes and coverage. Animation, on the other hand, plays by an entirely different set of rules. The materials are unique, the process is its own beast, and for editors on a show like “Bob’s Burgers,” that means mastering a whole different craft.
“Bob’s Burgers,” created by Loren Bouchard, debuted in 2011 and has racked up 285 episodes over 15 seasons on Fox, where it was recently picked up for another four seasons. It is currently edited by Jeremy Reuben, ACE and Stephanie Earley, ACE and won an Eddie Award for its editing in 2022.
Picture editorial is the focal point for all aspects of post. “Everything has to go into picture editorial and then come back out at different post milestones,” Earley said.
“We’re the center hub for everything,” Reuben added. “If someone creates a shot, an audio cue, or something like that, it has to come to us to be cut in to send to someone else to do what they need to do. And when what they do comes back to us, we update our cut and send it to the next department, who has to do their thing, whether it’s animation, music, whatever.”
PRE-PRODUCTION
Before Earley and Reuben start on an episode, supervising sound editor Adam Woronoff cuts a recorded table read of the script into what is known as a radio play. Animatic editor Kris Fitzgerald collaborates with the episodic director to transform thumbnail sketches into a full animatic [essentially a moving storyboard that includes timings and audio and models how the final product will look and flow (AI definition)]. This is exported to South Korea to be animated by hand. Roughly twelve weeks later, we get back the first of two color batches of scenes for the show.
ROUGH COLOR SCREENING
When the color batches arrive, assistant editor Matt Parcone assembles them into sequences. Earley and Reuben’s initial task, equivalent to the editor’s cut, is to prepare for the rough color screening, which is due two days after the second batch of animation arrives.
Typically, they work on small details such as tweaking eye acting, adding key sound effects, and adjusting pacing. Earley explains that “for the rough color screening, we want the showrunners to focus on the narrative. We don’t want anything to be distracting or take away from being able to discern if the words are correct.” After the screening, Reuben said, “A little group stays — the writer, the showrunners, the director, and maybe the art director — and we’ll focus-group what worked, what didn’t, or if there’s a narrative problem.”
COLOR REWRITE
The notes from the rough color screening are aggregated and sent to the writers room for the final rewrite, which leads to new dialogue temped by the showrunners.
To realize the changes, the rewrite often creates a need for new shots. Earley and Reuben collaborate with retake director Erin Humiston and supervising directors Bernard Derriman and Tony Gennaro to determine potential new shots, particularly those that require shipping overseas for retakes.
“Between the rewrite and the content lock is when we get to be the most creative as editors,” Earley explained. “We can put our director hats on and pitch that maybe this shot should be like this instead. Sometimes I think something’s better if it all stays in the wide shot instead of the three single shots, so I’ll include that in the color rewrite. If people agree, that’s awesome. This is the bread and butter of when we can be editorially creative. I like that about this part of the process, and they empower us to do it. They want us to add our creative flair.”
In animation, there isn’t the luxury of multiple takes and shot sizes that exists in live action. “Because there are no handles [extra frames on either end of the shot], if we need to shift something, there’s nothing to extend it, so we have to make our own handles,” Reuben said. “Also, if a shot comes in at 150 frames and we need it to be 180 because we’re adding a dramatic pause, we have to choose which frames to hold on in order to make the shot the length that we need.” Earley added that “if we need action to continue and we have an animation cycle, we can reuse that if it works for the shot.”
In live action, there are many techniques for pacing up a scene: changing coverage, cutting to reaction shots, using speed ramps [a video editing technique that creates a gradual change in playback speed] and fluid morphs [usually a jump-cut solution that analyzes the end of one shot and the beginning of the next, then creates morphing frames that turn the jarring cut into a smooth natural-looking transition]. For animation, different techniques are required.
Given his previous work in live-action, Reuben appreciates the differences between the forms. “While we can’t change an angle because we don’t have coverage, we do have an unlimited ability to do anything. If we decide a crane shot would make the scene work, and they’re willing to spend the time to do it, we can bring in a crane shot. It’d be like, ‘What would really kill is if we had this long pull-out,’ and they could make it happen, which is something that we’ve done before. Just conceive of a shot that would nail the scene and then we can make it at the end of the process.”
This step is one of Earley’s favorite parts. “I like building stuff from scratch in general. Whether I’m building a frame with all the elements that I like, or if we get new words for something in the content lock and we’re building a scene of multiple shots from scratch, we’re just like, we gotta do this. We’re moving this here and redirecting this entire section. I love that part.”
CONTENT LOCK
“The content lock is where the words are locked,” Earley said. “These are the words that are going to play. We have an in-depth all-day edit session with the supervising directors, and sometimes we need a part two. This is where we dig in to make sure the picture works with the new dialogue. Sometimes we want to rearrange a section, or we notice something is hard to follow or would be difficult to make work with picture, so we figure out a way to fix it. Maybe a line has been added from a character who’s currently off-screen, so we have to figure out where they are in the scene and how we want to treat that line. Do we move to a wide? Do we need a new single? Can we cover with a cutaway reuse? Do we have a setup that could be used as a base to build a new shot?”
At this point, the showrunners come in for the final stretch. “We pitch any changes or adjustments and get final sign-off on our content-lock cut,” Earley said.
“Once we lock, they’ll break down the script and what lines they need to re-record, then they’ll kick all that back to us,” Reuben said. “Often there’s anywhere between 60 and 280 lines of dialogue that we’ll cut in, so it can be like watching a whole new episode. Sometimes, based on a major rewrite, the timing could change from a swing of 15 to 20 seconds in either direction.”
LOCKING
As we near the lock phase in live action, we often delight in the fine-tuning of edits in our show. What are the hand positions on either side of the cut? When does a character blink, if they blink at all? How much of a door close do we see? At “Bob’s Burgers,” as an episode gets close to locking, the finer points of the craft of animation editing also come to the fore.
One unique aspect of storytelling in animation is eye acting. “We’ll get notes on eye acting and shifting the eyes a little bit during a certain part of the line, or the eyebrows go up and down, which is something that I don’t even know if I noticed before working in animation,” Reuben said. Eyes to center is being deep in thought or talking to oneself, as opposed to lying eyes, which is a subtle little eye move and pause. Thinking eyes would look away from the person they’re talking to and then back quickly. I feel like we have to play with it. Is it one pixel? Is it an all-the-way-to-the-edge-of-the-eye kind of thing? We have to play with it a lot to see which one looks right. I enjoy how very subtle things make a big difference.”
“As long as I can get a clean line, I can build it,” Earley said. “Is it a thinking eye dart or is it a lying eye dart? Or do they go eyes to center and then eye dart back? These things are so subtle, but they boost the acting. Jeremy and I make those choices. Sometimes we’re wrong, and they’ll say, ‘Remove that eye dart,’ or ‘Change this.’ And I’ll say, ‘Oh, that was an animatte [Google it], I’ll just mute that, no big deal.’ But it allows for minute pauses in the deadpan performance to be more impactful visually, which I love about this style of show.”
Another important aspect as content lock nears is fixing picture to match final dialogue. Earley explained that “If a shot has ADR that matches what the shipped audio was, it may be possible to avert a retake by fixing lip sync. This work before our retake edit session, AKA our official lock session, can be very editorial-heavy, depending on how much temp dialogue was in the episode. We pace the new audio and check picture to see what we can fix and what is a broken shot that needs a retake. I love to fix what I can, but even if I can fix lip sync, acting may no longer match an actor’s line delivery, or the way it connects to surrounding shots no longer works, so it needs to be massaged by an animator to make it work. Jeremy and I go through the episode with a fine-tooth comb and analyze each shot to see if it requires an animation conform.”
At the end of the ADR pass, they’ll have a day-long session where they review the picture, shot by shot. The in-house retake animators create any new shots needed.
POST LOCK
Both editors are on deck past lock to fix any problems that crop up, which always do. They have a retake lock session where the supervising directors give notes for the editors and the animators. Assistant editor Matt Parcone will cut in retake dailies each day through the animation retakes period. Then it’s on to two pre-dubs. Inevitably, there are notes from the pre-dub and sometimes picture notes that arise during the final mix. Once those are addressed, they go to online editing. “During our online,” Earley said, “we are on call for any animation fixes that are flown in for us to drop in. We send a fix bin with the new takes and then we are Final!”
Neither of these fine editors are tempted to leave the world of animation and the world of “Bob’s Burgers.”
“I grew up on 2D animation,” Earley said. “I know how much this medium can bring joy to people. I love being part of something that people love, that people escape to. I hope they let me continue to be a part of the Belchers’ story, because I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
As Reuben put it: “I would be thrilled to do this forever. I love the unique challenges of animation. I like working on multiple episodes at a time, and I find it exciting that there’s always something important happening on every episode. Plus, my favorite show of all time was ‘The Simpsons.’ So the fact that we’re doing something analogous to ‘The Simpsons’ is amazing to me. My 15-year-old self would be so envious.”
Ivan Victor, ACE is a picture editor.
