VISUAL LITERACY FINAL PROJECT

 

Final Project: Stop-Motion Animation Movie

 

*A bit more information is in the description of the video (not much at all, really).*

 

 

Production Journal: Just click the link below to download the file

 

PRODUCTION JOURNAL

 

*If you have trouble download the file, I posted what I wrote below, but it is a lot easier to read off of a Word document than off of a blog post.  Also, if you don’t want to download the file (since it might just take up unwanted space), you can just read below.*

 

 

 

 

 

PRODUCTION JOURNAL

Pre-Production

My original goal was to simply create a movie.  Doing a movie with real people, however, seemed a bit too “clichéd” in my eyes.  A photo essay, honestly, seemed a bit too easy, and I wanted to challenge myself more.  I was thinking of ways to make a movie without using real people and the stereotypical “final project movie.”  When I was looking around for some inspiration, I came across two things that I was quite familiar with.  One was anime (this seems quite obvious seeing that I’m Japanese and anime is a staple in our culture) and the other was stop-motion animation.  It wasn’t so much that I was inspired by these two, but I remembered how interested I once was in them and how badly I wanted to make something similar to it at that time.  There was the maker “Pes” (http://www.eatpes.com/) which created amazing stop-motion videos.

I decided to combine anime and stop-motion (partly because they are basically the same thing), and create a story out of the adventure of a drawing.  Immediately, I came up with a “cycle of life” kind of plot, where the end connects to the beginning.  I decided on a drawing because drawings can have an infinite number of possibilities.  It means that they can do illogical and inhuman things and get away with it.  With this, I wanted to create a movie that people can simply just enjoy.  What I wanted to do with this is to just entertain my viewers and show them what a pencil and paper can really do.  People can predict the actions of other people, but it’s impossible to predict what a drawing is going to do.  I just wanted to show off the possibilities of a living drawing, and allow people to enjoy my movie without having to think about it so hard.

All I needed was a pencil, eraser, camera, tripod, and lots of paper.  I was planning to make a giant flipbook, and then take a picture of each page.  I had a basic idea of the plot, so that wasn’t a problem either.  The only difficulty (which sort of mixes in with the “production” section) was the amount of paper based on the time and drawing the drawings accordingly.  A good speed for the movie seemed to be 5 frames-per-second (fps), which meant roughly 600 drawings for a simple, 2-minute movie.  I had to think of how long each movement should be in order for it to not be too long or too short.

Production

The production wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, but it definitely took longer than I thought it would be.  With drawing, shooting, and editing, everything took about 3-4 weeks to fully finish.  Drawing 600 pages, although it may be hard to believe, takes an enormous amount of time, and so does shooting 600 pictures on a digital camera.  Several times I had to stop for an hour to let the battery recharge.  Since I had the drawing “escape” the boundaries of a notebook, I also had to cut hundreds of pages so that I would be able to animate the drawing on a table.

There were a lot of things that did work and a lot of things that didn’t.  The plot overall basically worked.  Almost 90% of the story, after all was said and done, I was satisfied with.  There were parts, though, that I had trouble with.  One part was running.  I plan to have a person run away from an eraser in the movie, but it was too time-consuming and hard to draw.  I fixed this by having the comical spinning circle to make it seem like he was running quickly (the advantage of a drawing~).  Another part was the ending.  I was planning to end the movie exactly like the beginning, but I realized that I had several problems with that plan.  One was the notebook that I was using.  I had to go out and buy small notebooks for my drawings, but the fourth and final that I needed was sold out (or more like I bought the last ones, so there was none left).  I had to settle with a larger notebook, which meant that making the ending the same as the beginning would be unsmooth.  What I had to do was what I did in the movie.  I had him run away from the eraser once again, but I had the hand take a light switch and turn it off to show it was the end.  Although it wasn’t exactly what I had planned, I was satisfied with it.

There was another large problem that I encountered numerous times throughout shooting my movie.  What I was doing with every picture was: take a picture, rip out that page, flip to the next page, take a picture, rip it out, etc.  Sometimes, though, I forgot to add an eraser or something was in the way, and I had to retake that picture.  But that page was already ripped out, so I had to find a way around it.  When these occurred, I usually just placed two paged on top of each other, with the top being the page I needed to retake, carefully place them in the right position, and then retake the picture.  Of course, if you look closely at the movie, you can clearly see which ones I had to retake, but when the movie is running at 5 fps, you can barely notice one page that is slightly different from the others.  I also did that for when I came to the end of the notebook.  I had to place another blank, ripped-out page on the other side to cover up the back cover.

I also had trouble arranging the cut out drawings to smoothly move on the table, but that I solved with careful placement.  On shots that were hard to tell with the naked eye, I: arranged the shot, took the shot, compared the shot to the picture before, went back and forth several times, and repeated it if I wasn’t happy with the movement.  Shooting the camera often gave me trouble too.  A lot of the pictures came out blurry because my camera couldn’t focus on such small drawings on large table.  No matter how hard I tried, it never went into focus, and I had to settle with what I had.

The last problem I faced was the music and sound effects.  I honestly was at a lost at what music I should have in the background, so I watched several other stop-motion videos for ideas.  I ended up “borrowing” a song from another video.  The other problem was the sound effects I wanted to incorporate.  It wasn’t as hard to place them in the movie, as it was to actually find them.  The iMovie software didn’t have a lot of the effects that I wanted, so I had to look online for placed that I allowed me to freely download effects.  Once I sound the site, though, I was able to get all the sound effects that I wanted.

Post-Production

Most of the solutions I encountered during the production, I was able to solve on the spot.  They weren’t extremely hard to figure out, and all it took was a couple minutes to sort everything out.  What I learned was how long it takes to create these videos.  I have even more respect for the people who make stop-motion movies well, and then some more at animators who create even smoother moving drawings.  Compared to them, my movie isn’t much, but I was still satisfied with my movie.  I thought everything overall was a success, and my only disappointment was that it wasn’t smooth (but that’s what comes with 5 fps).  My other disappointment was that some of the pictures didn’t come out as focused and sharp, but that was something I had to endure with my camera.

In the end, I was able to convey my original idea.  Aside from the ending, I think I was able to visually express my ideas on paper.  I think that is the good thing about drawings, that it can accurately take the form of ideas.  You can take an idea and put it straight onto a piece of paper without any changes during the transfer.

If I were to do things differently that would improve my overall project, I think I would make the frames-per-second even faster with more detailed drawings.  Sure it would take a lot longer, but it would make the movements smoother and easier on the eyes.  Some parts also seemed rushed, so I think it would allow it to slow those scenes down and make it clearer in expressing my ideas.

Overall, I really enjoyed my project.  I enjoyed thinking about this project, and I enjoyed making this project.  Although it was a challenge, I had a fun time drawing and shooting.  And especially at the end, seeing my drawings come to life was something that was extremely interesting to see.  It was a great experience for me to shoot this movie, and I would certainly consider doing it again.  Maybe next time I would make more of a mood piece rather than a story.  With a mood piece, you can have even more freedom, and you don’t have to have a specific beginning-middle-end plot.  Making simple movements that help lighten viewers up or calm them down would no doubt be interesting to make.