Stop Motion Practice Run

In August before the recording of our original video (beach setting) we invested some time in practicing stop motion with the videocamera, tripod and a selection of fruit! As we have never tried the stop motion technique before, we wanted to see how effective it is at maintaining audience attention before being 100% sure of putting it in our video.

In order to create this short film the camera was set in birds eye view of the tabletop, the boundries were marked that showed where on the counter was in shot and where wasn't so that it was clear to the person moving the objects where the action needed to take place. To make the stop motion the fruit was moved around the marked area inch by inch, they could only be moved ever so slightly as this would add more detail and action to the clip and a smoother flow also. The motion was captured in a sequence of move fruit/record/pause/move fruit/record/pause etc. This turned out to be a lengthy process that we didn't think would take so long, we also came into complications as the camera slipped slightly meaning the marked boundries were visible in the shot, and towards the end hands kept getting into the shot.

It took a total of 30-40 minutes to complete the sequence, but upon playback the sequence was already practically smooth flowing and needed little editing, besides the shots were hands were caught in view. Therefore upon edit, the hands were cut out as much as possible without destroying the continuity of the film, and the overall film was sped up by 300% (triple speed) so that the sequence wasn't too slow as if it was left at its original speed there was a bigger threat that the audience would lose interest after a length of time. This was the final outcome of the video:

In order to improve the quality and the flow of the stop motion used in the revised video (surreal dream world) a digital camera will be used to capture the stop motion sequence, this way there will be no chance of hands in the shot as it will be quick and easy to check each picture after taking it. This will also reduce the time taken to both shoot and edit the sequence.