Planning And Producing a stop motion piece

The primary Idea for a stop motion animation production is a time-lapse. The main premise is a time-lapse showing the activities on a (Hopefully) sunny day, it would take up to a full day to do.

Examples of Time Lapses on various things including a beach:

Here is the type of time lapse I would be aiming to achieve

Here is a good example of a time-lapse however I feel this would be impossible to do within the given time parameters

This one is also a good example and a famous one of a woman documenting her daughters growth from 0-14 years old, obviously undoable as I don't A. have a young child and B. 14 years.




Upon further thought I have rethought  my idea and Have decided to go with a claymation piece the scene in question has yet to be properly planned out but here is a few examples of inspiration that comes to mind.

Lee Hardcastle has become renowned for adding horror and lots of Gore into his animated pieces, he even has a piece in the compilation film 'The ABC'S Of Death'. His style is something  I hope to mimic and pay homage to.

Here is a famous video that features his use of Over the top violence and Gore, the shock is obviously dumbed down by the fact it is claymation.

One of the two main ideas for a claymation piece was to recreate a film scene this can be a lot more difficult than an original idea as some intricate details might be extremely important, however I can base an original idea of something that has already been done for example I could pay homage to the reservoir dogs standoff scene with my own characters and creations. An idea I did have was to do a scene that takes inspiration from the standoff scene in reservoir dogs but my rendition would use my own creations. Here is the scene in question.

Here is the infamous wide shot of all the characters involved in the standoff, they would all have to be created, as an interpretation I can say that the models are original as I cannot recreate the characters exactly so they will be my characters "acting" out the scene as a homage, I may however take snippets of dialogue from the scene and insert it into the animation.

Here is another shot, I can make the three main characters once because they maintain the same posture throughout the scene.

Here is the second last closeup of the scene the following one is of one of the other characters then a wide shot of the three characters shooting each other.

After this close up is the wide shot.

Upon further though I have decided that it should be shot using the cutout technique to animate the sequence. this will be achieved by printing out the characters and cutting them out, then during the dialogue and close ups when they are talking I can cut the mouths and move them to make it look like they are talking.
 Here is an example of cut out animation at work.

this is relatively easy to achieve within the time left for the assignment.

Here is a small version of the backdrop I am going to use for the cutout sequence.

Here is the folder that contains all the screen shots I will print off to help animate the cut out animation.

NOTE: This blog wont have any pictures of actual filming the animation as all of the paper has been disposed of

I will cut out the figures from the screen shots and cut the mouths in half so when there is dialogue it looks like they are talking

I began editing the animation in Adobe Premiere Pro, I created a simple title with a black background that explained what it is and what film.

After I exported the film from Istopmotion I opening a new project in premier pro and imported the film, I just added a simple fade in and out onto the titles to give it some effect.

Here is the effect control panel on premiere pro I added fades on both the end and starting titles.

Here is a sample of the audio editing done, This is 16 seconds of the 5 min standoff scene in Reservoir Dogs from 3:00-3:16 I added a mark in at 3:00 and a mark out at 3:16.

Here is the song I used to introduce the project along with the title card, As you can see I only used a small section of the song


Feedback

Personal Response
I think that overall the project I set out to do was achieved regardless of the quality and that was a cut out animated recreation of the standoff scene in Reservoir dogs. However I can see the obvious lack of quality as on my part the production was rushed and there was a lack of attention to the details which definitely brought the quality down. Overall I am still happy that I at least tried despite being my weak point, I can feel proud to at least have some work finished for this assignment.

Response To Feedback

Here I agree with the audio  not synching correctly, this would of been because of not watching the scene carefully while producing the animation and again yes I feel like the actual production of the animation was very rushed with it being completed within a 1hr session  however I do appreciate the comment on the use of sound, as I thought that using some of the films score would prove effective.

Here I do also agree with the the criticism that the cutting out of the characters could have been a lot better if I had taken the time to look over them or given myself time if the cutouts were not perfect, however as  I didn't do this the productions overall quality was lesser than what it could of been.

I am also pleased that the idea to use some of the films score was at least recognised and appreciated. 

Improvements 

Firstly I could of improved the overall quality of the animation by taking the time to look at how neat the cut outs looked or whether they needed to be improved, I feel if this was taken into account the quality of the production would of been increased. \

Secondly I could of improved the animation by watching the scene as I animated, this would of ensured that the scene from the film and the animation I produced would of been in synch down to the second, this would of definitely made the production better.

Thirdly I also believe I could of improved by actually setting myself a set amount of time to produce and animate it,normally it would take 2-4 sessions to perfect how the animation flows and looks, so I could of made sure to not waste time and waiting till later and then rushing it in 1 session, I would also choose a animating method that requires less handiwork as thats a big weak point for me.

Making Improvements

I think yes I would make these improvements based on the feedback I would look at the quality of the cutouts as a main change as here you can see how un neat they were as they were just thrown onto a  background of a abandoned warehouse.

So overall I think yes there is definite room for improvement but I do not have enough time to make these improvements but I would take them all into consideration next time