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Video & Sound Production/Final Project-Stopmotion

 29/10/2023 - 10/12/2023 / Week 7  - Week 14
Janice Marie Eng Chia Hui  / 0361521
Video & Sound Production / Bachelor of Design in Creative Media / Taylors University 
Stopmotion/Final Project

Table of Content

  • Instructions
  • Task
  • Feedback
  • Reflection

Instructions

Task

3 different Stop-motion videos

At the start of the semester, we were asked by Mr Martin to find 3 different stop-motion videos that we liked. Here are mine:

1. AMONG US but it's a Stop Motion animation by Lee Hardcastle

Figure 1.1 Among Us Stopmotion

This stop-motion tells the story of a normal session in the famous game, Among Us. The use of lighting and well-timed music along with the comedic timing of some shots are some of the reasons I like this stop-motion. It's, overall a really enjoyable short stop-motion, really simple but highly entertaining. 

2. Isle of Dogs (2018) - 'Sushi scene' 


I love a Wes Anderson film. Above is a scene from the movie Isle of Dogs, where some sushi is being prepared. There is very high attention to detail in this scene, especially the knife-cutting skills. That is one of the reasons why I like this scene a lot. It's filmed from an overhead view, the music is fast-paced, and the movements are so smooth. There is so much detail. I love it.

3. あたしだけをみて / Look at Me Only - Animation Short Film

Figure 1.3 Look at Me Only

This short stop-motion film explores how someone's constant usage of their phones can make them closed off and uninterested in their loved ones, even going as far as to villainize their loved ones for their phones. The film uses felt as its medium. There was a scene where the felt woman transformed into a snake, and I was captivated by it. Overall, I appreciate the meaning of the film and the creative use of felt in conveying the message.

Stopmotion 

For the stop-motion, we were given the choice to form groups of 2 to make a 1 min stop-motion film or do it individually to make a 30-second film. I choose to partner up with 
Joey for this task.

Proposal

We had to come up with a proposal for the stop-motion. Attached below is the proposal we came up with (I did the storyboard and Joey did everything else 💀💀)

Figure 2.1 Proposel Document (Week 10)
Final Project: Stopmotion by Janice Eng (Proposal Slides)

We got some feedback from Mr Martin where he mentioned that we could make the story more personal to the bears, like making them girlfriend or boyfriend and such. In the end, we decided to make them a family.

Props-making

Moving on, after deciding on the storyline, me and Joey decided to meet up on a Saturday at Taylors to make some of the props. We were planning on making them with play dough. The first attempt at making the polar bears was ok, but I decided to go home and make new bears. 

We initially wanted to make the snow with white play dough but did not have enough of it. So to reduce cost, we decided to use cotton instead. There was also the sea of trash that needed to be made. I decided to use the waste and trash created by the prop-making to reuse it as trash. This consisted of the play-dough cardboard container and plastic, plastic from glue casing, newspaper and plastic bottle and then added some black and brown paint to it.

Joey had an idea to make some small cute igloos and trees to help decorate the scenery so that it wouldn't look so bland. She also made some powdered snow to help create the effect of snow breaking off. The sea was also painted by her and she had a smart idea of using blue plastic paper and paper to visualize the waves. 

Figure 3.1 Initial Bears (Week 10)


Figure 3.2 The making of new bears (Week 11)


Figure 3.3 Making the Trash (Week 11)

Figure 3.4 Joey's trees and igloo (Week 11) (See more of Joey's amazing props on her blog uwu)

Figure 3.5 Some stills of the props from the shooting (Week 12)

Shooting

We had chosen to use our phone camera to do the stop-motion instead of the app. Honestly, I was being a jerk about it at first, but using the phone made editing the shots that were not uniform. Good job thinking from Joey yet again. 

For the shooting, there were somewhere we shot it together and somewhere we shot it individually. Taking turns. We met some other groups when we were shooting in the studio. It was interesting to learn about their stop-motion idea.

Honestly, we should have taken a time-lapse of the shooting, but we did not, so here are some behind-the-scenes taken by Joey. 


Figure 3.4 Behind-the-scenes shots (Week 12)

Editing

For the part, I compiled the shots and exported them into Premiur Pro. I took out shots that were not fit to use and adjusted some shots to make them look consistent. There was a scene where the bear had to jump. I tried to mask the floating bear to be used in the shots with the masking tool in Premiur Pro. But it was very time-consuming. So, I imported one shot of the floating bear into Ps and removed the bg. I brought it back into Pr and made it look like it was jumping by changing its position. I also added in some fade-ins and outs. I edited the scenes on the school's Mac because my laptop tried to end its life when I tried to edit on it.

Figure 4.1 Bear jumping (Week 13)

Figure 4.2 Going to school to get images of the Pr editing for the blog (Week15)
Some outtakes that were not used in the film were used for the credit scene. Said scene was of the mom bear pushing the papa bear down. 

Figure 4.3 End credits (Week 13)

After that, I tried and compile some sound effects and music to be put into the film. Joey did the colour correction, colour grading, visual effects and putting in the audio. She did most of the work (I should belanja her). 

Figure 4.4 Sound Effects (Week15)

Final Work

Submission Document: CLICK ME!!!!

Figure 5.1 Final Stopmotion (9/12/23)

Feedback

Week 9: I recommend that at the beginning the are two polar bears dating or flirting. they are separated due to the "ice-breaking".....eventually only can see each other via binoculars...and the ending.

Reflection

Stop-motion was a turbulent experience. It was quite daunting having to do a stop-motion, something I had never done before. So I kind of put it off. However, the group aspect of this task gave me the push needed to start it. Making and filming the stop-motion would be a fun task if it wasn't graded and I was on a time crunch (and if my laptop wouldn't die when I used Premier Pro). I enjoyed filming and making the props, but because of the time limit and other assignments, we had to film the video in 2 days. Editing the shots together wasn't that hard. The hard part was combing through each shot and trying to edit the ones that weren't consistent. I am grateful to my partner (Joey) for doing the colour correction/grading and sound editing.

I realised that when filming the stop-motion, sometimes giving fewer frames makes the scene look smoother while sometimes having more frames is better. The ability to discern this is not something I have of course. Hence, there was a lot of trial and error with the shooting.

Overall, this task was stressful. But I enjoyed making the props and filming the things. Would I do this again? Probably not.

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