Video & Sound Production — Final Project : Stop-Motion

26/06/2023 – 07/07/2023  (Week 9 – Week 14)
Rachel Madeline Purwanto / 0356994
Video and Sound Production / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Project 2 : Production Shoot & Editing


INSTRUCTIONS 


TASK 

In this task, we are instructed to do a 60 seconds stop-motion video based off a certain theme and moral. For this project I worked with Michelle Huang to create a short children’s horror film so we made our first proposal surrounding that theme. 


Fig 1.1 Project Proposal, Storyboard, Planning


Fig 1.2 Storyboard

Our storyboard consisted of all the details of how each scene would play out or visually look like in each shot, so we tried our best to follow that.


The monster character we had was initially planned to be made out of aluminium foil sprayed with black spray paint, but since the paint takes hours to try up, we decided to use black plastic instead.


It’s mainly inspired by the Boogeyman and Wednesday and the character was originally supposed to be a little girl but due to some complications with lack of materials and the structure of the limbs being too heavy to support itself with its legs, we had to scratch that idea and change it to a different character where its proportions could support each other and not come falling apart that easily. 


From being inspired by the myth of the boogeyman, the moral of the short film is for children to respect their parents because if they don't, they would be hunted down by the boogeyman. This would be shown at the end of the stop motion film. 


1. SET & LIGHTING

The set itself was made out of mostly cardboard, coloured paper then assembling them together in the box. 


The lighting was a bit of a struggle to achieve as we were aiming to have dark lighting for the room so what we did was we cut a hole on the wall and make it as the window to act as the source of light for the room. We wanted a sort of night blue hue as well shining into the bedroom so we clipped on layers of blue film on the light to achieve that lighting. 


We were advised to make a contrast which in lighting to show that the room is dark indicating that the time is at night.


Fig 1.2 Experiment on the Lighting of the Room

Fig 1.3 Lighting of Dark room at night for first few scenes

Fig 1.4 Lighting of the room in the morning for the last scenes


2. SHOOTING
Before getting a tripod, we were struggling to get the right shots since the camera wasn't stable so we had to take a few shots for certain scenes as well since the lighting wasn't as expected in the first place until we got a tripod. 


Failed Attempts : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-8MwVjdVuycXdiMt19KY5SwUhF5eGyCT


Fig 1.5 Shooting process

Fig 1.6 Fail flashlight scene when shooting

This scene above was especially hard to do, as it was hard to achieve that flashlight effect without ruining the lighting of the overall scene so because of that, we had to retake the scenes many times. 

Fig 1.7 Refined Shot for Scene 5

The shot itself also still was not as good as expected and we were advised to create foreground and background to differ from each other which in this case, the background is blur and the character isn't as it is closer to the camera, though it was a bit of a hassle to make the camera focus on the character as it was a bit too close to the camera.

The flashlight effect was later edited on premier pro using overlays.


2. EDITING PROCESS
The frames and videos were then exported onto Premier Pro to be edited and refined along with the sound effects. Colour grading was also adjusted to be consistent throughout all the scenes. 

Fig 1.6 Editing on Premier Pro

Fig 1.7 Editing on Premier Pro 

I recorded the whispers, with the intention that as the monster's claws grew gradually closer and in greater numbers, the whispers calling out to her name also appeared more and more. 

Fig 1.8 Final Stop Motion Video

FEEDBACK 


Week 11

- Its recommended to do it in the studio, especially if some of the scenes require a certain lighting tone.

- Try to combine the materials together other than using clay, like the blanket, and characters’ clothes.

- Use the sound of quarreling outside the door by adding some movements as well as the camera shows a wide shot angle of the bed shaking and the shadow growing

- Add some movements of the shadow before the character goes into the room.



Week 12 

- Buy a tripod to keep the camera steady.

- Take a wide shot and adjust the lighting by creating a window as a source of light to shine the room to create contrast.

- For scene 5, the flashlight scene does not work well, it’s either omitting the flashlight or creating a small hole using a needle and attaching the phone’s flashlight to the hole. 


Week 13 

- Put a blue filter to create night lighting.

- Lighting in scene 4 is nice, and the lighting changes a little bit is okay.

- Other scenes have inconsistent lighting as it is too bright, but it is already similar and acceptable.


Under the bed scene (scene 5):

1. Flashlight lighting is not good, could be smaller.

2. The room lighting is bad. 

3. Show the legs of the sofa and side table


Week 14 

- As the video is not the only thing that is being judged, sound needs to be considered too so put sound effects.



REFLECTION 

I've always wanted to do a stop-motion project or anything around the animation aspect as that is my passion and also my specialization so although I was new to this, it was still enthusiastic and I may have gone overboard on the ideation process to the point we had trouble shooting some scenes or executing it because of how complicated it was. Despite the struggles and the many reshoots that had to be done, I enjoyed the process and it was fun working alongside Michelle to work on one of my first animation related projects. I learnt how to shoot scenes that required fast movements and slow movements, having the slow movements require more frames and shorter distances for the objects to move within one frame to another, and vice versa for the scenes that require fast movements. I also learnt that lighting and contrast is also crucial in the filming world especially in stop-motion as well as it determines the setting and the tone of the scene. Being in this group has also taught me to understand and accept each member's strength and weaknesses and figure out our way around it. Overall I'm very satisfied with the final outcome of the project and was glad that I got to work with Michelle on this as she had very interesting insights and ideas especially for the editing process.

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