Over the course of learning about stop motion animation much writing and thinking were done in the classroom, but to counteract classroom time and add some fun to the equation we also preformed many practical tasks! Some of these tasks included making a minute long surrealist film, making and filming a flip book and partaking in a camera workshop! These tasks were set up to insure that you were able to apply what you had learnt in the classroom into your own individual piece of filming.
Below are some of the notable examples of when we got to do practical tasks, in addition to this I have also talked about the brief we were given for each piece of film you see and what it helped me learn!
1: 'Real Racing' (Mario Kart stop motion)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7Vd_Lp0QJs
One of the first practical tasks we were set involved producing a short stop motion animation. The subject for what the film would be about was entirely our choice. We had no boundaries when it came to genre, just that the film we produced had to be stop motion!
After half and hour or so of thinking we came up with an initial idea, we thought we could do stop motion racing but with a twist, this involved the human being both the driver and the car itself. This we felt would take advantage of what stop motion provides (turning an inanimate object in this case being the human and making him move smoothly and in a controlled manor.)
We thought if you get a human to sit down on the floor in a position as if he were racing a car, and we were to make him move slightly forward frame by frame, his hands holding an invisible steering wheel and his feet on invisible pedals, then we could make it look like he was a moving vehicle and the driver of the vehicle at the same time.
After looking on youtube we found these videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq7ar7hGkxA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_bENYRRxHg
After researching and writing up a basic storyline we were ready to film!
The movie took an hour to film, slowly making frame by frame movements and making sure we were happy with the positioning of the people in the frame and how they were acting!
Then the film to an additional half an hour to edit, this involved putting all the pictures together in sequence, adding a title screen, soundtrack and credits, and it was here when we got the idea that to add some humour to the piece we could theme it to Mario Kart.
After searching online for a bit, we found a perfect mario kart soundtrack for our movie, we then combined this (in sync) with the action going on in the frame, added a title screen showing the name of the film and added credits to the end. The finish product is what you see today, our first proper attempt at stop motion!
Surrealist short
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CorxANMb8xo
Another practical task we did involved surrealism. In class we had recently been looking at surrealist videos, what surrealism is, and how to portray it threw film.
We had been looking at the work of Jan Svankmajer, and here is one of the videos we looked at in class:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxpqUas_Vqc
In addition to this we also looked at Tim Burton and a 'Nightmare Before Christmas' since the theme of that particular film was quite dark and surreal.
From that our group had a base, and that got expanded on as the storyline was written. We decided to create a piece which revolved around a character (the person whom you see in the picture above) who had lost control of the front half of there body and is forced to move everywhere backwards, and what kind of challenge that would play in everyday life.
So we had a basic storyline, it was time to start filming!
Much like the racing video that was previously talked about, we had roughly and hour to film and half an hour to edit. From experience we knew editing a film is just as much a part of the overall production as filming. Upon looking at the footage we agreed that it looked surreal, yet not surreal enough, so in the editing process we added to the surrealist effect by implementing a vignette onto the top of our video. In addition to this we also added a soundtrack which fits in with the video and finally we included random footage from places and props we had been filming over the past hour.
The finish product is what you see in the link under the photo above, the first piece of surrealist filming we had done, in order to set a benchmark for future projects.
Final stop motion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz2Ug1kphxM
Finally what it's all built up too, the stop motion ident! Now upon first approaching this project I decided to work alone, why? Well there are many reasons really, yet the biggest one is the fact I wanted to prove what I could do when it came to filming and to see my capabilities when it came to storyboarding, scripting, filming and editing.
Below I will state what challenges occurred in the process of filming, what was relatively simple, what wasn't and why!
When first given the choice between wether to choose an ident or an advert, my initial thought gravitated towards the ident, I just thought I could get to be quite creative with this and create something that didn't focus on showing off something else (a product). Also with an ident you have the opportunity to create something that has not been seen before whereas adverts for products tend to be quite repetitive.
Now to move to stage 2, thinking about the genre of ident I will be creating and what that will involve. After days of thought and research I came up with the idea to produce an ident for a fictional horror channel, I also decided at that point to put a surrealist twist to make things a bit more exciting and engaging for the viewer.
Stage 3, storyline and storyboard. After much time spent researching horror I gathered some aspects of what I had seen and liked and worked on what I could add to this in order to make my ident unique. Once the storyline had been completed and I was happy with it, I would transfer what I had written into a storyboard. Storyboards are good because they allow you to preplan visually what scenes will look like, what shots will be used, the duration of the shot, the location in which it will be set and finally and dialogue and soundtrack that would be added over the top.
The storyboard for my ident can be seen below:
Now that we have a storyline and storyboard, we can go out and film!
Filming was relatively simple, this was because everything to do with filming in terms of shot types, where the camera would be placed and in what location where shown on the storyboard. Therefore when it came to the actual filming, it took very little time since we pre planed the majority of it.
Though when it comes to filming things are never as easy as they seem, in order to meet the time required for my ident (1 minute) I had to include another whole scene at the end of my ident. Along with this I had to put up with factors such as weather which could not be controlled and this put a halt to my filming on various different occasions. In addition to this after filming and looking back at the footage that was just shot, on numerous occasions I was not happy first time with the footage that I had, this could of been due the actor not being in the exact position or the shot not being focused enough, therefore for some scenes more than one take had to be taken.
The next step in the process was editing, this took up the most time since I wanted to make sure the final result would be atmospheric and scary enough to belong on Horror 24. The first thing I did when it came to filming was to put all of the pictures in sequence and match up the frame rate so they all ran smoothly. After this effects were ready to add to the sequence.
The video effects I added to the ident included:
- Vignette
- White flashes
- Tally marks (made in Motion)
- Bad TV (effect in Final Cut Pro)
The audio effects I added to the ident included:
- Overall soundtrack (edited)
- Man Screaming (edited)
- Metal door slammed closed
- Walking threw shrubbery (self made audio)
The combination of the pictures that I took in addition to the audio and video effects I have used combine to give you my finished ident. This would turn out to be the final piece of footage we were to shoot in stop motion and the most advanced footage we had currently shot.
Focus group Feedback!
A focus group is an ideal way of getting a variety of ideas to include in a production, to verify ideas, and get to know what the public think about a creation subject!
But what is a focus group you ask?
Well a focus group is when a diverse group of people are assembled to participate in a guided discussion about a particular subject, in my case the subject which needed addressing was what people thought about the genre 'horror'!
For my focus group I asked a number of questions, these included:
- What colours and sounds do you most associate with horror?
- When thinking of the word "horror" what are the first images that pop into your head?
- What to you makes a good horror film?
These were some of the most common answers:
For question 1, I repeatedly got black mentioned, in addition to this the majority of people also said red. Two out of the six people I talked to also included the colour blue.
For question 2 many people said Samara Morgan, (one of the main characters in the famous horror film The Ring) along with that I also got a mention of ghosts, darkness, satan, fire and the mention of a haunted house.
For question 3 all 6 members of the group mentioned that a good horror film has to have some form of psychological impact on you, this could include an impact such as dreaming about the film the night after watching it.
From conducting the focus group I was able to gain an idea of what the public thought about a certain subject which links to my ident, this therefore can help me engage audiences more by using the knowledge I collected on what they think about.
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