Visual and Sound Production: Final Project Stop Motion
6/6/2023 - 14/7/2023
Edwin Choo Quan Rong / 0348305 / Bachelor of Design
(Hons) In Creative Media
VSP 60104 / Video & Sound Production
Final
Project: Stop Motion
INSTRUCTIONS
Final Project: Stop Motion
This is a group project that consists of two group members. We are tasked with creating a stop motion based on our project proposal. The given theme is based on social awareness, however we can come up with our own storyline for the stop motion and execute it if the project proposal is approved. Thus, my groupmate Jayden and me decided to have some fun with this stop motion project by creating a Mitsubishi Motorcycle advertisement with comedic scenes as that was our main goal for this project.
Fig 1.1 - Storyboard
This is our storyboard read left to right, top to bottom and acts as our basis when filming the stop motion. An app called "Stop Motion" is used to film throughout this project.
Filming
Fig 1.2 & 1.3 - Stop Motion App features
The app orders the images taken into one sequence so you can play the stop
motion in the app itself to check for any errors to which you can edit the
image or delete it to redo. One amazing function of the app is the ability
to view the previous image with lower opacity as shown in the second image
above. This helps tremendously when micro-managing the props as it gives us
information on how much we should move our set pieces by keeping track of
the elements from the previous image.
Fig 1.2 - Week 10 Progress
We begun with our first scene on Week 10. This first scene took an entire
class time to shoot and is about the museum robbery which starts a chase
sequence between the detective and the robber. We shot this scene by taking
turns in arranging the figures as well as managing the shots via the app. A
few issues were encountered here as the lighting of the scene was not
constant.
Fig 1.3 & 1.4 - Week 11 Progress
After learning from our mistakes, we redid our first scene again with this
time having better stability, experience with the app and consistent lighting
by using the lamps provided in photo studio. We got the outcome we desired and
proceeded with shooting our other scenes for the stop motion.
Fig 1.5 to 1.9 - Week 12 Progress
We proceeded onwards with our 2nd scene of the stop motion utilizing our
skills from learnt from the previous experiences to speed up our process. In
this scene, we saw an opportunity to use a slider shot which made the shooting
of this section more convenient and stable. We took turns in arranging the
figures and analyzing the sequence on the app, as well as creating any
additional props we need through clay such as our Mitsubishi Motorbike.
Fig 2.0 & 2.1 - Week 13 Progress
We breezed through our progression on our 3rd section of the stop motion as we
already got used to the work procedure from the previous weeks. While filming
our scene, we had an issue with the character not being in frame as we wanted
the character to be at camera height since the adjustable height of the camera
stand cannot be altered any more without having drastic changes.
We solved this problem by adding an elevation made by stacking Lego bricks on
each other, the height of this elevation is tall enough so that it does not
appear in frame but ensures the character stays in frame with stability.
Editing
Fig 2.2 - Week 14 Progress
After finishing our stop motion shoot in the past weeks, Jayden and me decided
to split the editing work in half. I took our images to edit in Premiere Pro
by first importing it and dragging it into the sequence. The sound effects
were obtained online with websites such as Freesound, Pixabay, YouTube or other smaller sound effect websites.
Fig 2.3 - Still Image Default Duration Setting
When first importing the images into the sequence, the playback of it is not
as fast as I wanted it to be. Thus, I went to Edit > Preferences >
Timeline to open this pop-up menu in order to adjust the values of "Still
Image Default Duration". The lower the number value, the faster the stop
motion animation will be. I found the range of 1-2 frames to work best
according to what I needed. One key note is this effect applies to images that
is imported afterwards, while the images already in the sequence will have its
previous settings. This means I can set a portion of the images to be at the
speed of 1 frame while other sections are at speed of 2 frames.
This technique is applied to the rest of the footage I'm editing as I decided
to split my edits into sections such as scene 3 section 1, scene 3 section 2
(ice-cream man), scene 3 section 3 (crash). Down below are the editing
overviews of the other sections which uses the same practices mentioned above.
Fig 2.4 - Scene 3 Section 2 Editing Overview
Fig 2.5 - Scene 3 Section 3 Editing Overview
Fig 2.6 - Adjusting dB levels
Certain sound effects had their dB levels adjusted to fit with the audio
levels of the rest of the sequence.
Fig 2.7 - Ending Sequence
The ending sequence is the appearance of the Mitsubishi Logo after the crash
with the camera panning upwards. The original image sequence is not long
enough for the audio dubbing later on which is done by my groupmate Jayden.
Thus, I duplicated a few frames of the empty sky to prolong the duration that
the Mitsubishi Logo stays on screen. A cross dissolve transition effect is
added so the logo appears smoothly.
After the editing is finalized in Premiere Pro, I sent these files to my
groupmate Jayden for him to do dub over the character's voices.
Fig 2.8 - Final Outcome of Stop Motion Final Project
This is our final version of our stop motion project. View it on YouTube ---> Here
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