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Assignment Two Finished

Sound Effects

An obvious element to the video I somehow overlooked was sound. I've noticed that in all of the stop motion videos I've watched, unless tester videos, have has sound of some sort in them.

Due to the fact I'm not allowed to use copyright material I found a website from which contains a massive database full of sound effects that can be used royalty free in personal productions

http://stonewashed.net/sfx.html

I have already found several effects I wish to use such as rain, explosions, lit fuse, sewing machine, cutting paper with scissors and coins falling. I also found another website which again has within a enormous database full of copyright free music, I have yet to explore the different music availible but will be doing so shortly http://freeplaymusic.com/

Update

I have been deep in production over the last few days so here's an update to the assignment:

I was able to hire out a Nikon D40 DSLR camera from the photography department which was useful as I was able to take better quality images with it. The preparation for the shooting has taken ages.

I started by choosing the font I wanted, even after looking at lots of different fonts on the web, I decided upon a preset 'Word Art' one which was large, bold and plain on the inside, this was perfect as I would be able to fill it in with colouring pencils when printed out. This is shown below:

Unstoppable

Before I printed it, I had an idea to do the entire thing on the computer using screen shots, I did a little test of this, the video of which is below:

I deemed that it would not be suitable as I would not be able to certain scenes such as the cutting by the scissors; so instead I proceeded to print of the frames I needed. I printed of 15 copies of the same page and 5 of the word on the page twice for me to cut out and use.

As soon as I started to take pictures I changed the storyboard slightly, I decided to get more movement shots in so I made it seem as if the letters that make up the word were travelling to the page the effect of which I found very effective.

The total time it took me to take all the necessary pictures was around 19 hours over a stretch of three days, the initially predicted 150 images and 1 minute 15 seconds seemed in hindsight a stupid prediction as the final number of pictures hit nearly 800 with the time not hitting 3 minutes 1 second. Throughout the production I again made several changes and modifications to the original storyboard all of which I feel were appropriate and made the overall effect better.

Here is the first draft of the video.

Here's a short bit of footage I shot while I was in the middle of creating it all:

Research on Animatic's

When doing research on pre production I discovered a popular technique used called an 'Animatic' I looked into them further on this site http://www.aboutanimatics.com/ and others and found that they can prove to be very helpful in seeing the way in which a video will flow, or as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storyboard#Animatics says "Better idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing"

I found several exampled on YouTube from which I got a more visual underatanding of what an animatic was.

With this knowledge I proceded to create my own animatic using the storyboard I created:

Doing this has given me a better idea of how the video will run and I'm happy with it, so I will soon be proceeding with production.

Storyboard

I've learnt recently through not only assignment one but also through some of my other units that planning is essential so I have sat down and created a detailed storyboard which shows how the video should play through.

I was also thinking about timing and the amount of shots I'll need, I've decided that for each frame in the storyboard it will count for around 5 images giving a total of around 150 images which, if displayed for around half a second each will give me aprox 00:01:15 of footage but possibly more as the more 'Movement' heavy scenes will need more images to allow the movement to seem natural.

Finding Fonts I Like

Idea Update

So basically instead of drawing each of the letters I will be finding fonts online that I like and printing them out, cutting out each letter and arranging them on the page where I will then create a 'Magical flash effect' and have the letters stick to the page behind and then the animation can continue as planned

Stop Motion Video Research

This is a video I found recently which I found rather inspiring, its extremely well done and brilliant the way it brings everything together at the end.

Where as this just made me laugh

I found this website which not only has a really good section on stop motion tutorials but also some really good examples

http://content.photojojo.com/tutorials/stop-motion-digital-camera/

David Hubert

http://vimeo.com/10227562

This video is brilliant, over 3000 photographs in under 2 minutes

Inspirational video research

Since I decided to create a stop motion video for this assignment I've had my eye out for inspirational things, I notice on the television an advert for a printer which had a really awesome stop motion video with it, after searching for it on YouTube I found there was another similar video by the same company.

Here are the videos

I also found the making off these videos

Researching Tips on Stop Motion Animation

I found a few helpful videos on YouTube which I will take heed from and apply to my project when I'm making mine.

After the video I made and watching this it reminded me of the importance of having the camera stationary throughout the whole thing.

To eliminate this problem I was considering doing it using a scanner but then I realised I would have to be working next to a scanner (which I dont have) and keep scanning in the new images as I progressed on the picture. Also it would disable me from doing the effect with the scissors I thought of.

So I realised I'm going to need a tripod for my camera.

After watching this video, despite how lame most of these tutorials are, its reminded me that to get a smooother animation there needs to be subtler changes between images and more of them. It also gave me links to some software which can help me animate the video, for the moment I find windows movie maker to be adequate, however I may explore other programs if necessary.

This next video I found very inspirational and I can only hope that my idea can come out as good as this

This also has given me the idea to put music to it or sound effects.

Stop animation test

So I decided to make a quick stop annimation using around 30 photo's. I drew a few things and cut them out and made the animation.

After I took the pictures I uploaded them onto my netbook where I edited them in Windows Live Movie Maker, I changed the time per image to 1 second and added an effect called Edge Detection

After doing this I exported the video as a .wmv file in 1020p resolution and uploaded it to YouTube

Got the idea!

After this idea I've decided to try out a little stop animation, A video of which I will post up soon, I will also be doing research into good techniques in creating stop animation and also viewing some sample stop animations videos online which I will post links to soon.

First initial idea

I've started thinking about and working on ideas for Assignment two and the message.

I found myself to be heavily influenced by my work in assignment one by finding out what's important to me personally. By brainstorming things about myself I have found that a key thing about myself is that I hate being enclosed and controlled. From this idea I thought I could do something to the text to show it being controlled, the message that will be shown I havent looked into yet, but I'm going to have it be something that shows that what looks to be me being controlled is not the case and there is more going on beneath the surface.

I was playing around with designs and think I've made one which I will go with, the example of which is below.

I will be looking into messages and developing this idea further soon in future posts.