Character & Narrative- Week 10 -Filming the Stop Motion & Final Week

Week 10 -Filming the Stop Motion & Final Week

As I had already started filming, when I came in for this final week everything was set up and ready to go. This meant the full day could be put to use. Here is an image from filming which is the scene just before he gives her the rose. Its been really hard for the male character as he is the one that cannot stand properly but the female is much easier and stands rather easily.

This is an image I tool when I did the first scene that had to be done at the end. This was becuase I would have to cut the male in half to show him coming out of the grave. This is the hole the hand will be coming out of, as well as his torso. This is before I painted the inside black so no white could be seen and it will look deeper.

I also needed to cut the arm of the male character as it falls off in the final scene. This meant for me to do the first scene, I had to wait for the moment it falls off near the end. As the inside is just a metal frame it meant it wasn't hard to cut and turned out much easier than I was imagining it would.

This is what he looks like coming out of the grave. Again it was easier than I thought as I was thinking it would be difficult to place him and work out all of the movements but it was fun to film and get going with.

Filming

This is the final image of the couple after his arm had fallen off, I had glued it back on and then they hold hands. It has been a really fun experience but there is much I would change within it all doing it again. Like working out spacing and making smaller movements so it isn't as quick and jerky.

As I could only see certain scenes when filming, I couldn't see the overall end sequence until I composited them all together at the end. This meant it was exiting to see it all come together at the end. When filming one of the last scenes I did make a mistake. I left the overhead light on, therefore making the light setup redundant. This can be seen in the test shot below but it meant that when bringing it through to Premier, changing the lighting could be done in there so I didn't have to worry all that much but i'm not very confident with Premier so it will be another challenge.

Tests

I did tests for all of the scenes so i could see which bits moved too quick and which scenes weren't as long as they should be to make sense and have the audience understand. I did this by simply bringing all of the image sequences for certain scenes, into Quicktime so it could quickly play them through and I could see which scenes needed changing. Here is one below that shows the lighting change and issue, as well as backgrounds that needed editing to make black and it going too quick.

This shows where the lighting needs changing in this test shot.

This is the full scene showing where the light changes and needs changing and where it goes too quick.

Premier

In Premier I composited all of the clips together and pulled them together into one tapered strip that showed me how long it was going to be, which is 33 seconds. After doing this I needed to change lighting. Here in the image below you can see where lighting has been added in effects as well as me changing the way some  scenes changed as my tutor didn't like the black that I was doing so he suggested fading from the scenes. This made it look like a quick time-laps so it looks like the character has been stuck in him grave trying to get out for quite a while. 

Premier was a lot easier to use than I thought as it was quick and easy to add in add of the scenes, as well as changing the brightness and contrast which you just drag into place and change with percentages of which one needs changing. This meant I could then pull it all into Photoshop to add the mouths in and experiment on what works as i'm still open to different changes.

Photoshop

One of the things still needed to be edited on the animation is the faces, since the beginning i've intended to put mouths on the characters. This and making sure all of the backgrounds are fully black. Yet since starting, I'm really not liking how it looks. As i am used to working digitally you can see the frames and build them where you want, but as its on images, the mouth seems to flicker and draws too much attention from the audience. This wouldn't work as I want the body movements and narrative to be the centre of attention. This is when I opted to leave them off. I like how they look without mouths but this was a big change from what i've been working towards so I will go ahead and make all of the other changes and see what it looks like at the end but i think it will still work.

Before moving on and adding the sound I just have to go over a few scenes and make them fully black becuase in some frames you can see the greyish walls which doesn't look right.

This didn't take too long becuase when editing in Premier, i adjusted the lighting so this really helped make the background and foreground seem separate. This is what I was trying to aim for as it draws the audiences attention to the foreground only.

Sound

For sound, I went to BenSound as I was told about this site being very useful and certain festivals like MAF use them for their background sounds. On the site there were two main songs that I really liked. One more suspenseful but the other more jaunty. I didn't think i would like it for this type of narrative but it actually really works. The pauses and different sounds go perfectly for what is going on within the animation which i'm very happy about as I always struggle finding music.

Final Animation

This is my final Stop-motion animation showing where the spacing has been changed and extended where needed, the jaunty music that perfectly fits with what is happening making the animation more charming and where the lighting has been changed. Even though there are no mouths I feel it doesn't matter as the body language shows enough of what is happening and feeling without having overly expressive faces. Like Gromit, it isn't needed to get across the feelings and thoughts of what is going on.