Week 2: Production.

At the beginning of week 2 I went straight into work and began filming myself, all mimed up, painting the E4 logo onto the board. To do this, I set a camera on a tripod at an appropriate distance and set it up with the computer program named Dragon Stop Motion. This camera was set up on a “Time-Lapse,” mode and was instructed to take a high resolution photograph every second. And as fast and efficient as this program is, it did require me to do the process rather slow so that the camera could catch almost every move I did.

I found that whilst painting the logo onto the board, time was going past rather quickly. I found that I would need about 250 frames to make this animation last about 10 seconds so I slowed down massively on my painting speed. I also added water to some splashes of paint in order to help make the paint run, but still maintain a thickness that would make it easier for the paint to drip and be caught by the camera.

When it came near the end of my recording time, I had made a number of drips using the paint, which had been caught by the camera and then will be viewed in real time, which I think is very effective! The state of the paint, I feel, looked good, as it stood out against the white paper well and almost looked 3D. And I feel that when I edit this piece and turn it into black and white, it will look very effective. I chose paint that was the perfect shade of purple to advertise the E4 logo, and I also found that after I have filmed this piece, I can use the colour correct tool in after effects to bring back this exact shade of purple once I have turned the film black and white.

After I had finished painting the giant E4 logo, I began to let the paint drip and waited until the paint had fully ran, not so much that it would ruin the painting, but create an awesome effect when sped up.  Once this had been completed I went on to creating my entrance to the film; I decided to give manual stop motion a try and shoot the images, one by one, by myself. However, I found that the footage was far too jumpy and incoherent because of the mix of me having to concentrate on taking the photographs and keeping my facial expression the same. Because of this I chose to shoot the film through the “Time-Lapse,” tool on Dragon Stop Motion.

I started making my Time-Lapsed video with me on the floor, and as I did with the time-lapsed painting video, I restricted myself from moving too fast in order to keep the video at a slower speed, otherwise the audience would not be able to see what is actually happening in the video.

As the video went on I maintained a constant slow speed and I think this worked so well because it made me look rather sinister, as I wasn’t smiling or showing any emotion. It even showed me blinking, and this being captured on stop motion makes me look rather doll-like and synthetic.

When it came to me making eye contact with the camera, I slowed down much more and waited until the third shot before I made any movement. This had a great effect on the film as it makes my emotions and movements much more clear and easy to read. The only downside I found was that it does make me look rather sinister, hopefully not sinister enough to actually scare anyone though.

I also found through shooting this part of my film, that having done my makeup at least 5-6 times prior to shooting my film, I had perfected the look and thought it looked rather successful throughout the film! When I looked over the film I did see that it was slightly jumpy, with me moving from side to side every so often, however I think this would work well in my film because the style of the film is set to be jumpy and sharp because of the supposed “age” of the film.