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.