Test Run for Stop-Motion

Test Run for Stop-Motion Animation

This is a test run for making a Stop-Motion animation, we used object animation to make this 10 second clip. We did a test run so that when we did the real thing we would know what to do, we could sort out the things that went wrong with this clip. Watching other groups videos also gave us an idea of what could have gone wrong. To start us off we had to choose three words of objects around us that we would then be able to use in our animation, my group decided on the words pencil, orange and phone. Then because there were four of us in our group, we each had to come up with ideas, put them into a storyboard and present them to the group, we then decided who's was the best to use for the animation, this was my storyboard.

                                      

                                      

Every one in the group agreed that this was a good idea, so we incorporated it into our final film. Along with another idea from another person in the team. Once we had sorted out what we were going to do we did our final Storyboard, which looks like this.

This Storyboard incorporates about 3 of the 4 ideas the group had, this is because we could not agree on whose idea was the best so we decided to do a mixture of the three best ones and came up with the idea for this clip.

Once we had set up the lighting and the objects we started to take the photos, then move the objects,take another photograph and moved the objects again etc. We did this until we got to the end of the storyboard. My main responsibility in the group was camera and lighting operator. I set up the camera and tripod and helped put the lighting on the right setting, as a group I believe that we worked very well together. I think this because when we were planning, executing and editing we all communicated and agreed on what we should do and what the end product should look like. There were little to no arguments in the group. When we started uploading and editing the short clip I became the editor and editor's assistant when someone else took over, because of my lack of knowledge in the editing programme. Whilst other people in the group got the sound clips me and another person were working on the timing and the overall look of the clip. To edit we used Adobe Premier software, we uploaded all of the photographs and then added the times and sounds and strung it together to make the 10 second clip move. 

When everyone had finished we showed it to the class and this is what they had to say ...

• The sound effects for the pencil were good. (Screaming)
• All the sound effects were good, it gave the clip more depth and character 
• The speech bubble we made for the pencil was good and added to the story
• It was good that we were able to stand the phone up and move the swords
• The lighting was a bit off and needed to be sorted out, it fluctuated to much

Most of these points as you can see are in favour of our 10 second stop motion animation, there is one point that we could work on; I agree the lighting needs to be sorted out but as first runs go I'd say it worked pretty well. I'm not sure as to why the lighting was fluctuating considering we used studio lighting in the making of this clip. I believe that the cause of the fluctuation is because we only used one studio light when we should have been using two. I think that this was a successful first run of a stop motion animation because it was a smooth moving animation and almost all of the feedback we got was positive, also because we used all of the props we said we did and the animation is exactly 10 seconds long just like it says in the brief.