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MillimeterHigh-Definition Courage
Nov 1, 1999 12:00 PM, Michael Mallory
When HDTV finally becomes a reality in the U.S., Cartoon Network's animated comedy series Courage, the Cowardly Dog will be ready. In fact, it is ready now. The creation of New York-based animator/writer/director John R. Dilworth (who nabbed an Oscar nomination in 1996 for the first Courage short), Courage, the Cowardly Dog is TV's first animated series designed to play on HDTV. The trick, however, was designing a show that would register equally well on conventional TV without vertical letterboxing.
"We had three formats to work with," says series producer Robert Winthrop. "HDTV, which is a 1.77:1 ratio; TV, which is a 1.33:1 ratio; and film, which is a 1.85:1 ratio. You have to be careful that your main action will work in all three."
The storyboard panels that guided the overseas animators (at Wang Animation in T'aipei, Taiwan) were completely redesigned for the wider picture. "Normal storyboard panels usually have a window in the center called the TV cut-off line, which would be used to center the action being staged," explains storyboard supervisor Bob Miller, who devised the new template. "However, we indicated on all of our boards that the TV cut-off line was actually the edge of our panel, and we had crosshatched lines to show a hypothetical border of where to stage the action."
Even though the show was posted and delivered on Digi-Beta for 1999 airing, episodes are also being rendered at high resolution on 35mm film, from which the HDTV images will eventually be telecined. But the use of film goes beyond HDTV accessibility, according to Jay Bastian, CN's manager of original programming. "If everything's in a digital format and not on film, who knows five or 10 years down the road if you're going to be able to access that file?" he asks.
For Miller, producing in a format that will not be available for years is just an example of deja vu all over again. "We're preparing for the future," he notes, "just as Hanna-Barbera made color cartoons in the age when TV was in black-and-white."
More HDTV cartoons are on the way, including Cartoon Network's revamped Johnny Bravo. "We're setting it up so that when high def comes around, the edits we make now in NTSC will also come across on the high-definition tape," notes Tim Iverson, director of postproduction for Hanna-Barbera. Iverson has not worked on Courage, which was posted at New York-based Pharaoh Editorial and supervised by Peter Roos, but he is handling the CN shows that are coming out of the H-B studio.
"We receive a Digital Betacam from the overseas digital ink-and-paint system [at Wang Animation in T'aipei, Taiwan], followed by high-definition digital files that are at 1.5K resolution," he explains. "Whatever cuts we made in NTSC will correspond to those digital 1.5K files, and we will be able to re-render those files when we're required to deliver in high-definition without having to re-edit."
Iverson uses Avid Universal Symphony to interlink between the NTSC and high-def files and allow for the conversion of edits. He is awaiting the new Avid HD system, which he says the company promises will be out next March. But Iverson is satisfied that the high-definition groundwork being laid today will put the H-B/CN/Warners TV group at the cutting edge. "I don't know of anybody else that's doing this at this point," he says. "We're fairly confident that we've got all the bases covered to make this a reality."
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
