Pre-Production
The goal of pre-production is to develop an efficient structure for your project on which the final animation will be produced. In pre-production, we identify potential difficulties in production and work with you to minimize or eliminate them. Pre-production involves several phases, which are explained in detail below.
DEVELOPMENT BACKBONE, IDENTIFYING NEEDS & RESEARCH
Before we begin any production, we set up our project structure and development backbone for you, allowing us to streamline and track all aspects of the project from contracts to final delivery. We build a password-protected portal for project review that is accessible 24/7. At project kick-off, we work closely with your team of managers and scientists to determine the project’s scientific, technical and artistic needs. Our team of writers and medical illustrators then begin to research your topic so that we can begin the work on developing your compelling, accurate and memorable animations.
REVIEW PROCESS & PRODUCTION SCHEDULE
A production schedule will be developed for you at the beginning of the project. This schedule identifies the dates you can expect to review the program in progress, including submission dates for medical and regulatory review. We provide constant communication and make the project portal available to you 24/7. Our review process is designed to lock down design and content decisions incrementally throughout all stages of production, with reviews at storyboard, modeling, scene design and rough animation stages. At each of these stages, two rounds of client modifications are built into the process. This allows for maximum efficiency and helps to identify unforeseen and time-consuming changes. Our aim is to achieve the best work possible while preserving the budget and delivering on time.
OUTLINE & SCRIPTS
Scriptwriting is the first essential step before any animation can commence. Our professional medical writing staff researches and collaborates with your science, product and marketing teams to best tell your story. We take your complex concepts and ideas and transform them into an accurate and effective script that engages your audience and drives your message home. Each script we help create is fully documented and referenced in order to pass Core Team, Legal and Marketing requirements. When writing scripts, we use the metric of 125 to 130 words per minute to make sure that target project run-length is maintained.
STORYBOARDING
Storyboards are the bones that an animation is built on. Our medical illustrators can either use existing project storyboards or create them from scratch. These storyboards convey the composition of the scenes, the position of the camera, the story’s theme and characters, as well as, the overall flow of the script.
SELECTING VOICE OVER TALENT
You will have the opportunity to review a variety of voice over talents. We have access to talent from around the world who specialize in medical and scientific narration, in numerous languages. Once a voice over talent is selected and a recording session set, we provide you with a dial-in number that allows you to listen in and give feedback live during the recording session.
ANIMATIC CREATION
We match the approved script voice over scratch track with the approved storyboard frames to generate a run-time animatic of the proposed animation to give you a feel for the flow and timing of the finished animation. This is an ideal time to nail down timing tweaks before production begins.
“XVIVO met our tight publication deadline to produce a colorful, engaging, and accurate illustration of the brain structures children learn about in my foundation’s MindUP program. We are so grateful that XVIVO helped us produce this wonderful resource for the children and their teachers.”
Goldie Hawn, Actress, Children’s Advocate, and Founder of The Hawn Foundation
