{"id":297,"date":"2015-11-02T21:15:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T02:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2015\/11\/02\/a-grueling-look-at-making-the-simpsons-start-to-finish\/"},"modified":"2015-11-02T21:15:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T02:15:00","slug":"a-grueling-look-at-making-the-simpsons-start-to-finish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2015\/11\/02\/a-grueling-look-at-making-the-simpsons-start-to-finish\/","title":{"rendered":"A grueling look at making The Simpsons, start to finish"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2015\/10\/25\/9457247\/the-simpsons-al-jean-interview\" style=\"margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"241\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-G_scS1nmqek\/VjgKi-yMqRI\/AAAAAAAAB-w\/c0_ek4-Ran8\/s320\/rastafy.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Digital techniques have greatly sped up the rate at which animation is produced. <i>South Park<\/i> can turn out a full episode in a week, and some topical YouTube videos can be cranked out even faster. But the producers of <i>The Simpsons<\/i> have opted to keep things slow, spacing our production over nearly a year to ensure that every little background detail and facial tic has been revised and remastered. For maybe the first time, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2015\/10\/25\/9457247\/the-simpsons-al-jean-interview\"><i>The Verge<\/i> offers a look behind-the-scenes<\/a>, telling the story of how an idea for a <i>Simpsons<\/i> script grows into a full episode.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the lengthy turnaround, it sounds like this process still often comes down to the last day, and the staff certainly never gets a break. Of particular interest is the work of the &#8220;timer,&#8221; a production member who breaks down every action and detail frame-by-frame as a blueprint for contracted animators. Ongoing quality issues aside, you&#8217;ll develop a lot more respect for the show&#8217;s craftsmanship when you see how every single detail \u2013 even character fidgets and mouth movements \u2013 have to be spelled out for an entire 22-minute episode.<\/p>\n<p>If you want a practical example of why all the revision matters, check out our DVD copy of &#8220;Some Enchanted Evening,&#8221; the last episode of <i>The Simpsons<\/i>&#8216;s first season (<a href=\"http:\/\/catalog.wrlc.org\/cgi-bin\/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=7821001\">HU DVD 14324<\/a>, disc 3). That episode had a famously troubled production cycle, eventually produced twice and resulting in the quality control process described by <i>The Verge<\/i>. The DVD includes commentary explaining the process as well as a few select clips of the doomed original episode. It&#8217;s a great complement to the article to prove why the show needs a longer production cycle.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Digital techniques have greatly sped up the rate at which animation is produced. South Park can turn out a full episode in a week, and some topical YouTube videos can be cranked out even faster. But the producers of The Simpsons have opted to keep things slow, spacing our production over nearly a year to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[130,212],"class_list":["post-297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animation","tag-film-production","tag-links-of-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}