Video and Sound Production - Final Project
1/4/2022 - 10/7/2022 (Week 1 - Week 15)
Sasilvia Cheong Pei Hoong / 0345031 / Bachelors of Design in Creative Media
Video and Sound Production
Final Project: Stop Motion
INSTRUCTIONS
Final Project week 1 task :
To do list :
- Watch stop motion & visual effects shorts
- Shortlist 3 stop motion and 3 visual effects shorts
- Explain reasons being chosen (style, art direction, character design etc)
3 Stop Motion Shorts
Fig. 1.1 UTOPIA by Guldies
I personally love how unique the art direction they went
for, it is abstract yet disturbing. The way they display
humanoid features yet able to make it so horrifying is
so impressive to me. I especially like the character in
the first few seconds where it was just a blob of
nothing and then slowly turn into something like a frog
and slowly evolving into a human frog. The way they are
able to make the clay looks like droplets of water in
the air still blows my mind. The cube clay stretching
out into smaller cubes of clay is so satisfying.
Everything felt so smooth like there was not a single
flaw, it has been made into perfection. The addition of
sound effects surely makes everything in the stop motion
come together very well.
Fig. 1.2 BENCH by Waaber
Fig. 1.3 Paper by Mat-a-Freelance
This one was a bit different from the first two stop motion videos I picked, the character is made out of paper. The art direction they used are more towards the anime sort of style. The characters are also portrayed in black and white which helps contrast them out from the colourful background. I loved how they utilized our real world space as the main character is small in size and living in big world. The movements of the character is amazing, every single expression and move is so smooth. The ending is very heart warming too. Overall, it is a lovely stop motion with a lot of meaning behind it.
3 Visual Effects Shorts
Fig. 2.1 A Magician Home Alone by Zach King
Fig. 2.2 Sneaky Parking Officers by Curlykidlife
Absolutely loved how the police officer is positioned
like he is larger than the car when they are a few
meters away. The way they used the highlighter to draw
the road line is so realistically drawn out even
when there was a slight off from the drawing the line
followed the same way it was drawn, Everything was so
smooth and perfectly edited.
Fig. 2.3 Wine Vs. Negative Space by Kevin
Lustgarten
This is just edited spotlessly. I can not find a way how they did this. It was also genius how they were able to utilize a negative space between two glasses of wine to create another cup of wine that looks like it is not being held by anything at all just air itself. It is so simple yet confusing at the same time.
Test Shot (Week11)
On week 11 we had f2f class where we were tasked to do a test shot for stop motion. We were separated into 2 groups, our group decided to do one scene from Alicia's stop motion which is her bunny Lily falling into abyss.
Group members
1. Me
2. Chung Yi Ki
3. Alicia Teng
4. Adlina
5. Adriel
We separated tasks for each other to do, Yi Ki and Adlina were in charge of the camera, Alicia was in charge of changing the position of the rabbit to make it move, Adriel was in charge of lighting, while I was in charge of holding the satay stick and moving it down for different shots. It was extremely tiring since my arms were giving up on me when holding the satay stick for more than 20 shots.
After we were done taking the shots for the scene, Yi Ki helped us upload the file with the help of Adriel's laptop and send the shots in a google drive file to us.
Fig. 3.1 Stills of test shots
I saved the file and imported the shots to Premiere Pro where I had to use the pen tool to cover the satay stick and my hand that was holding the bunny.
Fig. 3.2 Covering satay stick and hand
After covering all the shots with the pen tool, I added the background music.
Fig. 3.3 Editing of test shot in Premiere Pro
Fig. 3.4 Test shot of Lily
Proposal (Week8)
During week 8 we had to come up with a proposal for our
stop motion story and 3 stop motion references.
Fig. 4.1 Proposal
Storyboard (Week9)
On week 9 we had to create our storyboard for our stop
motion.
Fig. 5.1 Storyboard
Preparation for the Stop Motion
Before I started with my stop motion I had to print out
my puppets, facial features, and other props. I also had
to buy some other supplies as well, like coloured paper
for the colour and flower scene, a few mounting boards for
my background, etc. The total amount of money I spent on
printing and buying supplies cost me 62 ringgit T^T. It
took me approximately 8 hours to cut out all the pieces
and 4 hours to sew the puppets together. I painted
the background and table prop with acrylic paint but I
forgot to take a picture of them. Other props were cut out
during the process of taking the stop motion shots because
I got very tired of constantly cutting stuff.
Fig. 6.1 Puppets cutout print (8/6/2022)
Fig. 6.2 Other facial features and props cutout
print (8/6/2022)
Fig. 6.3 Lucius full body guide print (8/6/2022)
Fig. 6.4 Fae full body guide print (8/6/2022)
Fig. 6.5 Puppets pieces cutout (8/6/2022)
Fig. 6.6 Puppets assemble (9/6/2022)
Fig. 6.7 Other facial features and props cutout (9/6/2022)
Fig. 6.8 Colours strips and flowers cutout (29/6/2022)
Progress of stop motion
I decided to take the shots for my stop motion at home
as I find it more convenient for me as I have way too
many small pieces of paper cut out and it is very highly
likely that they will go missing if I were to do it in
campus. The process of taking the images for the stop
motion took me 3 days but not full days, the first day I
only did it for 6 hours, the second day was full (it was
extremely exhausting), and the third day took 5 hours since I only have 3 scenes left.
Fig. 7.1 Day 1 of taking still images of stop motion
(22/6/2022)
Fig. 7.2 Day 2 of taking still images of stop
motion (26/6/2022)
Fig. 7.3 Day 3 of taking still images of stop
motion (29/6/2022)
Stop Motion Editing
Total frames/ shots: 460 shots
After taking the shots with my phone I uploaded them into a google drive file with separated files for separated scenes and shots so that I won't get confused when exporting them to my laptop.
Fig. 8.1 & 8.2 Shots in Google Drive (29/7/2022)
It took me around 2 hours to export everything since there were a lot of shots taken.
Fig. 8.3 & 8.4 Shots in laptop folder (29/7/2022)
My shots taken were not the same size as the Premiere Pro board, since it will be crazy and inaccurate to move one shot at a time to fit the size, I used nest to combine all the shots into one.
Soon after I combined all the scenes and shots in Premiere Pro. I wanted horror classical music with a jump scare and I came across this on YouTube which was free to use and it was perfection. So I added it to the end part of the audio section so that I can place the sound effects in the first few sections.
Fig. 8.7 Background Music- Ross Bugden - Haunted (29/7/2022)
Then I look through https://freesound.org/ and YouTube for my sound effects.
Fig. 8.8 Sound effects (29/6/2022-9/7/2022)
Since my lighting wasn't top tier, the shots taken were a little bit faded, especially for the ones with black backgrounds in colour and did not have the appearance I wanted. So I added the adjustment layer and added the lumetri colour effect and adjusted the settings to my preference.
Fig. 8.9 Darkening the black background (29/6/2022)
Fig. 8.10 & 8.11 Black background before and after (29/6/2022)
I also had to colour correct most of my shots since my room light is yellow so the shots came out a little yellowish, I did the same thing with the adjustment layer and lumetri colours and also tweak the mid tones colour wheel a little bit to get rid of the yellow tone.
Fig. 8.12 & 8.13 Colour Correction (29/6/2022-9/7/2022)
Fig. 8.14 & 8.15 Colour Correction before and after (29/6/2022-9/7/2022)
This part was a little time-consuming since I had to add the eye pupils for my character every single time he moves. I was not able to add all the eye pupils when shooting the stop motion since it was impossible to cut such a small circle out so I just planned on adding them in Premiere Pro with the eclipse tool.
Fig. 8.16 Eclipse tool (29/6/2022-9/7/2022)
Fig. 8.17 & 8.18 Adding eye pupil (29/6/2022-9/7/2022)
For my ending scene with the stop motion title and my name, I found this font called Help Me font from dafont.com. It really suits the theme I was going for so I really love it. To create more impact when the dramatic piano sound effect hits I made the word "Schizophrenia" red.
Font Used: https://www.dafont.com/help-me.font
Fig. 8.19 Stop motion font used (29/6/2022-9/7/2022)
After getting feedback from Mr. Martin, I added a vignette in some parts of the scene to make them look eerie and spooky.
Fig. 8.20 Vignette settings (8/7/2022)
Fig. 8.21 & 8.22 Vignette before and after (8/7/2022)
Here are the bins that I created in Premiere Pro, I decided to be more organized since there were way too many files to handle and the risk of getting confused is very high.
Fig. 8.23 Bins in Premiere Pro (8/7/2022)
This is the final look of my Premiere Pro stop motion editing. The top two rows are adjustment layers. The bottom five are graphical elements such as the eye pupils, removing unwanted elements in the shots, and fonts. The middle part is the shots taken, while the 3 green ones below are sound effects and music in the last row.
Fig. 8.24 Final sequence in Premiere Pro (9/7/2022)
Final Stop Motion Animation
Fig. 9.1 Is this really happening? - Schizophrenia
(Final Stop Motion Animation) (9/7/2022)
FEEDBACK
Week 9 (27/5/2022) -
The story looks fine.
Week 10 (3/6/2022) -
It's great, the storyboard is interesting, making something crazy, that does not make sense is what stop motion is about. Everything is thought through well, proceed with your stop motion.
Week 13 (24/6/2022) -
What you have now looks great even though there is not much
action going on yet, if the whole stop motion has the same
quality as this then it is promising.
Week 14 (1/7/2022) -
Some scenes feel a bit rush, especially the front one, try to make them longer. And also move the main character to the first scene and only the lady in the next, then before the shadow appears make the main character appear again. Overall great work, it can be seen that a lot of effort has been put into the work. Once you put in the sound effect it will be even better.
Week 15 (8/7/2022) -
Add restaurant, ghost breathing, lady reaction, lady fall, sweating, main character reactions sound effects. Also add another adjustment layer to make it look darker because right now it looks a bit too bright, and add a vignette in some parts of the video.
WhatsApp feedback:
Just a tiny bit more improvement can make it an A work. Change the restaurant ambiance, speech bubbles need pop-up sound effects, after the restaurant ambiance faded away, needs to blend in horror ambiance. The eyes, colour, and flowers part need the main character's reaction sound effect and a crash zoom at 0:14.
REFLECTIONS
This project was indeed a great experience. I never really imagined having to film a stop motion in my entire life, mostly because I was afraid about how tough it would be. After I did my stop motion for this module, it was for sure tough and tedious to do an entire production of a stop motion with zero experience, but honestly, I found it really fun and enjoyable. The part I loved the most was being free to choose whatever story we wanted and also create characters to be set in the world that we have created.
The reason why I chose paper cut out of all the other types of stop motion is that I am able to be more creative with the character I created, I can give them different body shapes, hair colours, expressions, clothes, and so on. I was also able to draw my characters out before making their physical form, this semester did not have any modules I could draw much for so I was dreading being able to draw and this project gave me the chance to do so. It was extremely fun making the character puppets although it was extremely time-consuming to do, being able to see the end result of my puppet was so amazing. Cutting out the props was kind of fun too, but my hand did get tired cutting papers for hours. When shooting the stop motion the only part I did not like was setting up the lighting and place to shoot the stop motion. Finding great lighting, and setting the position of my tripod and ring light to suit the stop motion was extremely exhausting. I found moving the frame of the paper by frame actually quite enjoyable because it excites me to see the final results of it.
The editing part was fun too, I always liked using Premiere Pro so I did not find any difficulty in editing anything. However, I did learn that adding sound effects throughout the entire stop motion during a reaction, movement, or even a mood can change the overall results of the stop motion. As stop motions are all just movements so to enhance the experience of watching one, the sound is needed to be added. I am really proud of my outcome and I really love how all the still shots made were able to be brought to life through stop motion. Will I make another stop motion in the future? Maybe, I did enjoy the process of creating it and seeing the end results but it was really time-consuming and draining to do. But if an opportunity comes my way I will for sure try to improve my skills in stop motion animation.
REFERENCES
Music and sound effects used:
Ross Bugden - Haunted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-xs6SbOcjY&t=198s&ab_channel=NotchbackMusic
Restaurant
https://freesound.org/people/soundmast123/sounds/504900/
Conversation
https://freesound.org/people/bpayri/sounds/504738/
Confused
https://freesound.org/people/by.hathor/sounds/491492/
Speech Bubble
https://freesound.org/people/halimturk/sounds/392634/
Ghost Breath 1
https://freesound.org/people/MeijstroAudio/sounds/372869/
Ghost Breath 2
https://freesound.org/people/FunWithSound/sounds/361486/
Ghost BG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvKoTnfnsPc&ab_channel=FreeSoundEffect
Lady Gasp
https://freesound.org/people/AderuMoro/sounds/213292/
Thud
https://freesound.org/people/yummy9987/sounds/494931/
Static
https://freesound.org/people/harveyjnz/sounds/337700/
Sigh
https://freesound.org/people/K1m218/sounds/60669/
Spoon
https://freesound.org/people/hinzebeat/sounds/275585/
Sweat
https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/343764/
Spoon Drop
https://freesound.org/people/hinzebeat/sounds/275581/
Blood Filling
https://freesound.org/people/delaneyrose13/sounds/199427/
Bugs
https://freesound.org/people/kMoon/sounds/90799/
Scream
https://freesound.org/people/adriancalzon/sounds/219858/
Eyes
https://freesound.org/people/firecamel/sounds/169349/
Colours
https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/411577/
Flowers
https://freesound.org/people/younoise/sounds/577426/
Gasp
https://freesound.org/people/Thomas1702/sounds/459605/
Man Breath
https://freesound.org/people/jason130178/sounds/210000/
Whimper
https://freesound.org/people/Drkvixn91/sounds/318077/
Crowd
https://freesound.org/people/mcthespian/sounds/586946/
Insane
https://freesound.org/people/crazyguywithcomputer/sounds/110383/
Horror Bells
https://freesound.org/people/Porphyr/sounds/189702/
Horror
https://freesound.org/people/GowlerMusic/sounds/262257/
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