Stop Animation Experiment 4

We decided to try out a different way to display the title of the song "Moon Song" on screen. We cut out lots of little shapes of leaves and placed them on the OHP so that they looked like they were hanging from the tree. Then we took continuous pictures whilst changing the positions of the leaves, making them fall off as if blown in the wind, then forming the title of the song by moving into position. Below is the video that came from the pictures we took, which we are very proud of.
We thought that this was quite effective as it fitted in with the theme of the woodland style that we are starting our music video with.



However, recently we have changed our plans on this, and will not be using this technique to display the name of the song, as it doesn't fit in well with the transition from black background to white (light) background that we need.
We have decided to try to make it look as though we have zoomed in after showing "The Wild Wolves" with the moon in the sky and the stars, and then when we zoom out, it shows the title of the song, also in star form so it looks continuous from the band name. It is however, going to be stars forming the words "Moon Song" but this will be on what looks like a parchment, held by birds, so when the shot zooms out, the sky is now the light, and the parchment and stars is made by the shadow. This creates a smooth transition that we will practice as if it is the final try, and if it goes well we will probably use it unless we can develop on it and make it better.

Stop-Animation (Research & Information)

Stop animation (also known as stop-motion or frame-by-frame) is a popular animation technique that makes a inanimate object appear to move on its own. The object is moved small amounts between individual photo grams, creating the illusion of movement when the pictures are pieced together and played as a continuous sequence.
This is my favorite animation technique because of the interesting way it is made, and i am excited to use it on our own music video production.

The most widely known stop animation made, is usually with clay figures (clay-animation) and a famous example of this would be the "Wallace and Gromit" movies or episodes.

Recently Caroline and I attended a film festival at the forum in Norwich, which has a selection of animations, and some BAFTA animations. One of these BAFTA's was "Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death". The trailer shown below:



These Wallace and Gromit animations have always interested me, and a few years ago in Art classes we made our own clay animations to go with a song of our choice.
The animations take an extremely long time to create, as each second of the short films or the feature length (by Nick Park) takes 24 individual photo frames. The short films are about 20 to 30 minutes long, meaning that overall a maximum of 43200 pictures are shot for each short film made, and each picture has a minimal amount of movement to the previous one in the series, making the end film run smoothly. Reports from the animators have shown that they take about 30 frames a day, making just over a second of footage each day of shooting, as between each photograph they have to carefully change the position of everything in the shot by a tiny amount, including the figures in the foreground, and any background motion happening along with the main characters. The feature film they have made, "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" took them 5 years to create, showing how much time and effort goes into these animations.

Another type of film shown at the film festival was stop-animation using drawings, which was smoothly shot and i was amazed by it. It included a drawing of a girl (that developed later into 3 or more girls) dancing and moving across the page. I think a camera must have been set up over the page, and the drawing of the girl was shot in one frame, then some of the picture rubbed out and moved for the next frame, as we could see where the picture had been rubbed out, which left a grey smudge that looked like an effective shadow.

These animations that we saw showed us how much hard work we will have to put into our animation, and after recently shooting the introduction to the music video, we have prepared ourselves for how much time is needed to shoot short lengths of footage. However, even though its hard work, its extremely fun and we are enjoying making the animation, and hope that it will all fit together when we edit it, creating a great stop-animation mixed with shadow puppetry.

Revised: Costumes for Actors

We were thinking we'd keep the style of our actors pretty much the same as the actual band, as on their website there are a few live photos and photoshoot photos that we have looked at. These have helped us decide on what sort of thing the actors should wear as the band. The clothes are all along the lines of the genre of the music, indie/folk clothes, as most genre's of music are also a style of fashion.

These lists may not be copmletely spot on when we come to filming, but they are a general outline of what will be there, as some actors may mix and match from the others, and wear similar things.

However, these clothes will all fit the genre, and are all owned by the actors we have picked, as we picked them for their style and how they would look as part of the band. The specified costumes below reflect those of similar Indie bands such as The Kooks, or those featured in Blitzen Trapper's "Furr" music video. They have a strong sense of genre, and are featured in TopShop and seen on many "Indie kids" on TV and in the street. The costumes are typical of an Indie music video (The Kooks, The View, Paolo Nutini) and therefore will be suitable for our own production.

Female 1
Denim/Coloured (maybe patterned) dress that finishes around the knee.

(Patterned scarf)

Plain pump shoes.

Plain/patterned light coloured cardigan.

Female 2
Tight fit jacket/cardigan.

High-waisted skirt/shorts.

Patterned/Light coloured leggins.

Patterned/Plain Tee.

Pumps/Indie Trainers.

Male 1
Trilby hat.

Skinny Jeans.

Checkered Shirt.

(Cardigan)

Plimsole Shoes.

Male 2
Wolf Tee.

Denim Shirt.

Skinny Jeans.

Plimsole Shoes/Small Trainers.

Male 3
Larger-Checkers Shirt.

Tight Jacket.

Skinny Jeans/Shorts.

Smart Shoes.

Male 4

Plain Tee.

Tight Cardigan.
Checkered Shorts.

Small Trainers.

Individual Responsibilities

Roxanna Barry (me)
1. Cutting out the imagery for shadow puppetry after Caroline draws them.
2. Taking the photos of each part of the action, after each movement by Caroline, i will then take the picture, making sure the camera is in the same place/right angle.
3. Finding suitable actors.
4. Own storyboards, evaluation and commentary on pictures/experiments.
5. Taking pictures of the real life locations to be used.

Caroline Gooch
1. Drawing outlines for the animation shadow puppetry (as she does art and is a good illustrater)
2. Movement (picture by picture - small movements) of the puppets/cut-outs for the stop animation, changing it after each frame.
3. Finding suitable actors.
4. Own storyboards, evaluation and commentary on pictures/experiments.
5. Taking pictures of the experiments for our animation.



(More to come)

Possible Actors

We are still searching for actors, and asking if they would be OK with being in our film, but below is a list of the ideas we have for possible members of the band (there are 6 members - 2 girls and 4 boys):

1. Jessica Allen
2. Elizabeth Greengrass
3. Jakob Montagu-Shaw
4. Matt Beaumont (?)
5. Will Wynne (?)
6. Jack Mullane
7. Oliver Kirby (?)
8. Johnny Allen

The ones with (?) are the people we still need to ask to be in the film, but as we have 7 people in mind and only need 6, hopefully we will have enough people.

Shooting Scedule

- After school in media edit room (animation)
- Any of Ms Barton's media lessons that we choose to do our animation in
- After school outside of school (real life part)
- Wednesday, Period 4, Week 1
- Thursday Periods 1 & 2, Week 2

We can only do our animation at school as we are using a windowless room off of a media room.

Meeting Schedule

- Wednesday, Period 4, Week 1
- Thursday, Periods 1 & 2, Week 2
- Most lunchtimes
- After school in media rooms


Also we plan during some media lessons where allowed.

Stop Animation Experiment 3 (3 times)

This first video was our third and final experiment of stop animation. We used the cut out shapes of the wolf and tree's we had made, along with some leaf shapes for added effect, to create the continuous motion shown below. However,as you can see, there were certain pictures in the video with hands in, which was a big problem. This was accidental and would obviously be more carefully avoided. This video is the closest thing we have made so far that looks like what the finished product will probably look like. This is because we decided to add in the wolf shape, and the tree's with the small detail of the leaves falling in the background, behind the main action of the wolf. These small details to the tree's and other aspects of the wood are what we are hoping to add to the animation, to make it that extra bit interesting for the audience.

The next video is the same as above, however we cut out the 3 pictures that contained a hand shadow in the picture. This didn't really affect the quality of the video, and didn't make it too jumpy, which is good in case any mistakes were made. However hopefully if we spot a mistake with hands in the final thing we can easily take another picture there and then, and replace the bad picture with the good one. We didn't do that this time as we didn't have much time to take the pictures, and was only a trial run, however deleting certain pictures also seems successful.




This final video is the same again, however we noticed how the leaf and the wolf's movement may be too fast, so we made the video slower by lengthening the time of frames each picture was shown for. This technique could be very useful for getting the animation in time with the music, so its not too fast or too slow for the track. It also helps it create a more natural feel to the otherwise make-believe world the wolf is in, and we may use this to our advantage in the end production.

Stop Animation Experiment 2

The below video shows our second experiment, showing the shadows of leaf shapes we cut out, moving round the screen using stop animation, as if they were playing follow the leader. (An owl does come up at one point, as whilst trying this out we were practicing cutting out other animal shapes and seeing what they looked like on the OHP.)
We tried this idea because we were thinking of having the leaf shapes coming on in this fashion, and moving round the scren to form the title ofthe song, "Moon Song", however this is only an idea at the moment, as we are still thinking of ways to show the title, as we have to think about the change in the sky colour, as it is black when it starts with "The Wild Wolves" but is white when we get to the wood part of the animation with the wolf.

Stop Animation Experiment 1

The below video shows the first try of our stop animation. We cut out a tree shape and some leaf shapes and moved them on the OHP as we took shot after shot with Caroline's camera. We thought we'd keep it simple, and so just shot leaves falling off a tree, but in shadow. This will be what we are doing when it comes to the final shooting, however we will take alot more pictures, so it runs more smoothly.

Locations, Props and Tecchnical Requirements

Locations:

Obviously, some of the music video won't really have a location, as we will shoot it in a dark room with the OHP, and the scene will be a forest.

For the real life part of the film, we want to shoot it somewhere attractive, similar to the forest in our animation. This is because the wolf has come from this animated forest and we want to match the place he goes into to the animated world he exits.
The pictures below show my garden, which has a few forest like bits, where we could go into the tree's with the actors. It also has an opening where the wolf could seem to come out of, as it could be the passage to the shadow land.

We also thought the street outside my house could be useful for the rea life scene, as with the right camera shots with the band it could look quite artistic.

Props:

We are using paper/card, scissors and compasses for the stop-animation part, as it creates the shadows well, and is simple to use.

We will be using the OHP shown below to project the cut outs onto a wall, creating the shadows so we are able to take photos of the wall for the stop-animation.

We are hoping to find a friend who owns or knows someone who owns a husky dog, so in the "real world" part of the film, when the wolf goes from the shadow land to our world, we have a wolf-like dog to take part in the film. However, if we cannot find one we have other ideas, like using the camera as the wolf's eyes.

Technical Requirements:

1. OHP (Overhead Projector)
2. Camera to take pictures for the stop animation
3. Video recorder for the real life part of the film
4. Tripod to balance the camera so our stop animation works

Animation plans for the music video!

Below are 3 pictures of our developing imagery of the wood scene. This includes the autumn trees, grass, woodland creatures (+ the bird + squirrel), the Wolf and some signifiers of the genre of music the song is, such as a banjo, saxophone or guitar.
This is just a phone camera picture, and the end product will be more sharp and a wholly better image.
We will be using stop-animation to create the first animated part, by taking photographs, moving an object (the wolf) then taking another picture, and finally piecing it together to make it into movement. Once we have finished that we can carry on with shooting the real-life part of the film, shown in the storyboards in an earlier post.

Visual Practice 4 - OHP Genius try out

The below 2 photos are of the cut outs we have drawn and scissored out, which when placed onto the OHP create shadows that then piece in the picture of the woodland forest we are aiming for. We drew on sugarpaper and cut out shapes of tree's, a wolf, toadstools, birds and other various woodland related things. We also cut out a saxophone (showed below in purple) and a trilby hat, that we can place in the woods as subtle signifyers of the folk/indie/ska genre we have with our music video.

The below picture is what the above cut out tree's look like when on the OHP, projected onto the wall. You may see the small leaf on one of the upper brances, as we wanted to see if we could add leaves to the tree as a nice effect. Caroline also cut out some extra paper and placed it on the tree, on the lower brance, which when projected looks amazingly like a nest.
We are very proud of this form of shadow puppetry as it has allowed us to create a simple -to-use and effective form of animation.

This picture shows the name of the band "The Wild Wolves" with the moon as the "o" in the word "Wolves". We have also added a tree below, for the forest effect as this is meant to be the sky above the forest, with little stars dotted around. We created this in a similar way as the above picture, however with the opposide use of the paper. We cut out a piece of sandpaper to fit the size of the OHP screen, and used compasses to poke holes in the paper, forming the band name in the sky. We then poked random holes around this title to create the star effect, and cut a bigger hole for the "o" so it looks like the moon. We also cut up from the bottom of the paper, to create a tree like cut out from the paper, so it looks like a glowing tree, with dots of leaves around (these also made with compasses).

This next picture is the same as above, however we tried the idea of the tree coming out from the side of the paper, to see if it looked better or more effective, also so we could smoothly move the shot down and the tree could disappear, whereas the above one the tree would just be cut off. This was thought helpful as we could have easily brought up the name of the song, however now (25/09/09) we have an updated idea of how to get to the title name and woods, which is mentioned in a later blog post.

This is the picture of the title of the song, "Moon Song", which like the above picture, is formed from holes in the paper appearing as stars, and a "glowing" tree. We were trying this out because we thought we should display the title of the song in a similar fashion to the artists name. We thought we could pan down (or make it seem like the camera is panning down, by moving the paper cut outs upwards and out of the camera's vision) from the artist name to the song name, and then cut to the woods with some clever transition.

This is the wood scene (following 2 photos), created by cut out sugar paper, and a cut out of a wolf. Overlapping these with a grassy bottom, creates a nice woodland scene into which we can interpret generic signifiers such as trilby hats, musical instruments or other woodland creatures for visual effect. The 2nd picture includes a squirrel and a bird, as we tried to cut out creatures that would look like what they are meant to on the OHP, which proved difficult.

The below picture shows the OHP we are using, whilst it is turned on with a tree and some grass on it. The picture shows the one peice of equipment we are mainly using to make our animation all it can be.

14-09-09 Afternoon Visual Practice 3

We tried the shadow puppetry with a projecter in our media room at school, which proved to provide better pictures, however there were streaky lines across the white bit because of the type of light we were trying to capture with the picture. This may disappear if we use a projecter with material like the second visual experiment.

We found that the card/paper had to be a certain distance away from the screen for it to be a crisp image, as shown in the picture above and below... The one below is a more accurate image of what the video will actually look like at the end, as it takes up the whole of the screen.

On these final images, you can see that the outline gets fuzzyer the closer the camera gets to the cut out. However on the one above, we can see that the type of projecter we used (the picture below) created weird lines across the image. We are hoping to find a different projecter, or an OHP to solve this problem.

Music Industry Research - Initial Ideas

Looking at women who are represented in a "bad" way to the public (1. Lady gaga
2. Christina Agularia
3. Britney spears/Jessica Simpson
4. Shakira
5. Katy Perry),
looking at women who are represented in a better/"good" way to the public (1. Kelly Clarkson
2. Celine Dion
3. Dido
4. Adele
5. Duffy)
and looking at women who are represented in a mixed way, good and bad, to the public (1. Beyonce Knowles).

All of these artists are in the "Pop" genre, however are seen by the industry and their audiences in different ways. It is also notable that the type of Pop music that comes from the badly represented females has similarities within that group, however differs to that of the good represented females, which are also similar within the group. I will also be looking at this further.


MORE TO COME...

14-09-09 Morning Visual Practice 2

1st go:
First off we tried using my desk as a sort of shadow puppet theatre, with the desk covered in a bed sheet, so the light could easily go through it and the shadows easily seen. We used a lamp light, which was a bit dim and didn't really display the stars we punched into our card as well as we liked. As shown by the first few photos:



We noticed that by using 2 lamps, instead of making it brighter and creating a sharper image, we got 2 shadows of the same thing. We tried this out with the tree's, which ended up with quite a nice effect of layers of trees looking more like a forest.

Storyboards for Music Video & Narrative

I produced my story boards on a whiteboard with black marker, and took photos of these as i went along. I found this easier to demonstrate editing techniques (shown below the picture) and other simlple information about the shot (such as Animation vs. Real life, or the colour of the shot).

Animation:
The animation sequence we decided should come first, leading to the real life section.
It will contain the following 7 shot-storyboards, depicting a wolfs journey through a wood scene, made with stop animation and shadows.

These first 3 storyboard shots show the introduction of the music video, presenting the band name and song title. The band name will be presented as stars in the animation and will come across the screen. Then the shot moves down to show the title, on a scroll of parchment. The camera "zooms out" to show the parchment as it flies off with the cut out birds holding it up.

These next 2 shots consist of the wolfs journey through the woodland, with additional small generic details to make the shots more interesting. This includes the saxophone and the trilby hat plan on the 2nd picture. We also plan to add in additional features such as a squirrel, owl and birds.

These last shots of animation show the wolf encountering a special part of the woods, and entering inside a tree (which will eventually lead him to the real world, and consequently the real life section of our music video). We plan to end these with a shutter black out from the top and from the bottom, to give the appearance of the wolf blinking. This will then lead to the real life part as it is shot from the wolfs point of view.

Real Life:

The real life section of our video will follow the animation video, linking the animation and video with the style of camera work and the type of shots. We decided to use the camera as the wolf's eyes as "Wolf-cam" to continue from the animation.

These first shots of the real life show the wolf exiting into the real world, and encountering the actors that will be posing as the band members. This will be shot from the wolfs point of view with a hand held camera. The wolf will interact with the band members through green areas and down a sunny road.

These last shots of the real life will show the wolf leading the band back into a source of light, which will be the entrance to the other animate world. This will be done from a dark room to an extremely bright room so that the contrast is correct, letting the light engulf the band members as they exit the real world. The wolf exits last, and the doow closes to a blackout on the last beat of the song.

Developing on Initial Ideas (Lyics linked to visuals) & Visual Experiments (Shadow Puppetry)

For the first part of the video, we start in a "magical" world in a sense, which is our use of shadow puppetry showing the wolf in the woods. We will be using cut out images in cardboard to form a shadow onto a plain surface. Below is a quick sketch of what we hope the forest will look like:

The equipment used to make the cut outs is shown below. Scissors, compasses (or needles), blank surface and a light source. (In this experiment a desk lamp against a white wall was used)
The first experiment of the cut-outs was to see how the technique works and how to improve on it. We would probably need a stronger light source, and thicker cut outs as the paper wasn't a crisp black for the shadow. A darker room and stronger light source could also help this, or adjusting contrast when we come to edit it.


To begin the practice, a simple circle cut from paper, which represents the starting of the video of the moon at night. This is shown in the picture below, with the shadow from the paper and light casting onto the wall:

Next, add some stars by puncturing the paper with the compasses, as we are hoping for a starry night with the moon at the introduction. The glowing ring of light around the moon may be lost when we use harder paper such as cardboard.

From the idea in our story boards, we wanted the name of the band in the sky, created out of starts or fire flies, both of which would need planning and good editing. Again, compasses can puncture the paper to create the name in the sky (& again, contrast could help here too, making the writing clearer):

We had then planned to show the name of the song, "Moon Song", with the moon as an "O". However, we have decided to use the moon in "The Wild Wolves" as the "o" in "wolves" as this is the first shot that comes up with the moon. Below is the song name made out of stars, which cold fade in if we fade out the band name, so the "o" in "song" could also be the moon:

The next image, below, shows how we could develop the forest. It would probably take a while to create a whole forest, however Caroline also does Technology, and could get permission from her teacher to use the Laser Cutter, however we may be able to make them by hand. We would have mre layers of tree's to make it look more like a forest, however a few tree's are shown below:

This final image shows the Wolf amongst the trees at the bottom of the picture. It is quite blurry, though thicker card would probably help show the ragged fur we are hoping to create with the wolf. In our final image of the woods, we hope to have folk/ska indicators in the woods, such as a trilby hat resting on a branch, or a trumpet hanging or laying next to a tree (as a trumpet is used in the song, or a saxaphone) to focus on the genre of music we are portraying.

The mise-en-scene of the animation is woodland, beneath the moonlit sky from the introduction with the wolf. This is the general overview, as i mentioned in my "Initial Idea's post". We picked this to animate, as if you listen to/read the lyrics, the song "Moon Song" is unsurprisingly about the moon and the night-time. We have decided to link this with the video by placing it at night-time/sunset and including the moon. We have included the wolf because wolves have a strong connection to the moon (especially were-wolves) and it also linked in perfectly with the name of the band - The Wild Wolves.