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October 4, 2007
"lurker in the lobby" book mentions me
by sven at 10:00 am
I've been meaning to write about this for ages... And since I'm trying to encourage people to come to the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival tomorrow, now seems an apt moment.
Lurker In The Lobby: A guide to the cinema of H.P. Lovecraft is a recent book written by Andrew Migliore (founder of the filmfest) and John Strysik. If you're a fan of the genre, then this is a book that you cannot do without. It reviews essentially every Lovecraftian feature film, TV show, and short that has ever been created.
A page is devoted to Edward Martin III's Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, which I had a microscopic role in animating.
The book also mentions Madness from the Sea -- my very first short film, which premiered at the Lovecraft Filmfest back in 2002. The synopsis:
Planets come into alignment, a storm erupts, and Cthulhu appears.
Well said! Accurate, and more succinct than I've ever been. ;-)
If you're interested in purchasing Lurker in the Lobby, I recommend buying it from Migliore directly, at the Arkham Bazaar. The book is also available via Amazon.com and bookstores such as Powell's (here).
posted by sven | permalink | comments (0) | categories: movies
July 2, 2007
animated installations at PLATFORM
by sven at 3:30 pm
I confess, when I heard that the PLATFORM animation festival was going to include animated installations, I felt dubious. I imagined it would just be films being projected onto gallery walls, nothing special. Boy, was I in for a surprise! The installation show turned out to be the most mind-blowing aspect of the entire fest!
Thursday night, as Competition Program 5 was ending, the "voice of god" announced that we should follow the marching band outside to the Walking Tour of Animated Installations. ...And as we streamed out of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts, there it was: the March Fourth marching band, already playing their raucous tunes. A joyous crowd followed the stiltwalkers, drums, and brass for at least 10-15 blocks. What a brilliant way to help lead a crowd from point A to point B!
As we arrived at the PNCA (the Pacific Northwest College of Art), Pika Pika started up their performance. What this group does is live animation...
A camera takes a photo of the performers using about a 30 second exposure. The performers draw shapes in the air using multi-colored flashlights. The lights' trails show up as glowing lines on the film. After taking a series of maybe 30 still frames like this, they use a computer to play back the images they've created, thus making an animation.
The animation is very rough, but personally I found it stunning. When a film of Pika Pika's animation showed earlier, during one of the competition programs, the phrase that went through my mind was "paralyzing beauty." It literally took my breath away.
When I went into the PNCA building, the first installation that grabbed me was "Copenhagen Cycles." There were three large spinning disks with paper cut-outs attached to them being filmed by video cameras. The principle is similar to that of a zoetrope -- but the images were actually three-dimensional, and the animation was accomplished by matching the disk's rpm to the camera's fps.
When I discovered the spinning disks, I could only see the animation by looking into the little 2" square viewscreens of the video cameras. I thought this was really cool... Then I walked around the partitioning wall and discovered that the images were actually being projected onto three ten-foot-tall screens! Wow!
The animation titled "Balance" was being projected on a 2-story-tall wall nearby. It was a fairly static piece... It created the illusion of 38 acrobats standing in a human pyramid. The detail that really made this piece work for me was that the uppermost acrobats appeared to be holding onto the railing of the second story balcony in order to keep their balance. A pretty amusing illusion, I thought.
"Dream of Lucidly Living" was a performance art piece by Miwa Matreyek, a student from Cal Arts. Animated images were projected onto a flat screen -- both from in front and from behind. Matreyek would sometimes walk behind the screen, and her silhouette would become incorporated in the images. For instance, her shadow seemed to pet an animated cat; and, at another point, a beating heart was projected onto her shadow's chest -- so it was as if we were seeing an X-ray. At other points, she was in front of the screen arranging white boxes, which were transformed into skyscrapers by front-projection.
The music for "Dream of Lucidly Living" was by a band which Matreyek is a part of; she herself was the singer in the recording.
The most stunning installation of all was "No Never Alone" by Gregory Barsamian. As you entered a darkened room, you saw before you a living sculpture.
It was a seven-foot-tall spherical cage. In the center of the cage was a life-sized human figure, motionless, covered by a shroud. Around the figure, there were two rings of hands. The upper ring was (I'd guess) 24 pairs of hands, each crumpling and uncrumpling eye charts. A lower ring of 48 hands was opening and closing books which showed pictures of hands clapping. At the top of the cage, carrots swung gently back and fourth.
Everyone who walked into the room was transfixed. It was hypnotic, and you just stood there wondering how this living sculpture could possibly exist...
The trick: The spherical cage was actually rotating at about 15 miles per hour. A strobe light was flashing at the precise rhythm required to make the sets of hands seem to exist in stationary positions. I overheard someone refer to this as a "strobascope." Fantastic!
...
In all, there were 18 installations in the show. By necessity, of course, I'm only sharing my favorites. I think one more is worth mentioning, though.
During the installation show, there was a car that was driving around the neighborhood. As it was in motion, it was projecting images of a running tiger onto the sides of the buildings it passed -- creating the illusion of a tiger actually running through the neighborhood. Sadly, I never actually got to see this one in person.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (4) | categories: exhibits & events, movies
impressions from the PLATFORM festival
by sven at 8:00 am
After going to my last screening on Saturday, I walked out into the Performing Arts Center lobby. I just stood there for a moment and looked around the room.
There was Henry Selick having a conversation with Peter Lord. Behind them was Joan Gratz talking with some friends. "Spike," from the Spike & Mike festival, walked by. And just outside I could see Will Vinton sitting at a table.
That moment was emblematic of the festival for me.
What films did I go see at the festival?
- all seven of the primary Competition Programs (which included the "TV for Children" and "Adults Only" blocks)
- two Student Showcase programs
- the Internet Competition - short films that were made for the internet
- the two "Best of Pictoplasma" programs
- "World Animation for Kids"
- "Films By Kids For Kids"
- Tekkon Kinkreet - a gorgeous feature-length anime
- "Creature Comforts" - an unaired episode from the cancelled U.S. version
- "Sita Sings the Blues" - a work-in-progress by Nina Paley
- "Hey, Check Out My Pes Collection" - a Pes retrospective
- "Portland Animation Showcase" - films by Portlanders
- the last 20 minutes of "Princess Iron Fan"
- one of the two Open Screenings (the one that my films were in!)
I prioritized going to screenings of films rather than going to presentations. Nonetheless, I also made it to the following presentations:
- "Attack Of The Blog: Meet The Bloggers" - a panel discussion
- "Aardman Animation: Genesis to Revelations" - by David Sproxton
- "Aardman: Soft Clay, Hard Work, & Lucky Breaks" - by Peter Lord
- "An Afternoon With Henry Selick"
Profoundly exhausting!
The first showing of the day was often at 9:30am, so I'd be getting up at 7:30 in order to eat, shower, drive across town, and find parking. The last showing would often run til 1:00am -- so by the time I'd driven home, caught my breath, and gotten to bed, it was usually heading toward 2:30 or 3:00am.
Everyone was similarly tired. I managed to stay awake... But I did have to give a friend a little nudge at one point, when he'd nodded off.
There reaches a point where the exhaustion just makes you stop caring. You know that what you're seeing is amazing animation -- but you're just too tired and numb to feel anything.
In addition to the sleep dep, sitting still for six days is also a bit of a marathon. It's physically demanding to have to stay still that long -- it's like taking a cross-country flight every day. There were screenings where every-other-film I'd have to switch which cheek I was sitting on.
There were fewer films that had characters and a beginning, middle, and end than I would have expected. Often if a film had humans in it, they didn't speak, and were somewhat inscrutable. I'm not sure if this was numerically the case, but it felt like a majority of films weren't story-based at all... I was surprised by my own reaction: it felt like the films that did have story had an inherent advantage, that they were able to engage me and draw me into their world in a way that artsier stuff just couldn't.
For the competition programs, audience members were given ballots as they entered the theater. After each short, the lights would come up and an announcer (the "voice of god," I quipped) would say the name of the next film and what category it was in. Filmmakers were encouraged to stand up and be recognized during these pauses.
I had the impression that these pauses are something that happens at other festivals -- an etiquette that PLATFORM's organizers have chosen to emulate. It never felt like the audience (and filmmakers) really got comfortable with it. For the first program, I don't think any filmmakers stood up -- which just left the audience futilely craning their necks, searching the room.
One of the categories that the "voice of god" would announce was "Best Film Over $50,000." I think, to an extent, we were expected to feel impressed -- like we were in the presence of celebrity... But every time "Best Film Over $50,000" was mentioned, what I perceived was uncomfortable, mildly embarrassed chuckles and shuffling in the audience.
During the awards ceremony, legendary animator Marv Newland was one of the presenters. At one point he appeared to "break from script" and commented on the money-based categories... Saying that they were somewhat ridiculous, that the finances for independent films are always rather muddy, and that he had "literally" stolen the money to make one of his films. ...It was a surprising moment of on-stage criticism.
The award ceremony was really a curious beast.
Bill Plympton was the emcee. He was great -- he really had the gravitas to do the role justice.
There was an on-stage band, Portland's own "3 Leg Torso" -- which was also an excellent choice. An accordion, cello, violin, xylophone, and percussion... A sophisticated mix of klezmer, tango, and chamber music.
Children all dressed in white (under age 12, I'd guess) were in charge of handing the awards to the competition winners. (Personally, I rather liked this choice. Much better than using supposedly sexxxy women, imho.)
The award itself was a designer vinyl toy called "the god of animation." It's a hot pink, six-armed, three-eyed cartoonish character. Me, I think I'd feel more honored with something made out of bronze or glass... But I gotta hand it to the festival organizers: it's a unique and daring design.
There were at least three big TV cameras, presumably for Cartoon Network. There was a sense that this event was maybe supposed to be a black-tie gala...
But animators don't glitter.
Most of the animators who got up on stage were in jeans; some in T-shirts. They were awkward and self-effacing. Animators aren't celebrities. They get up on stage and remain... Geeks.
The makers of "I Met The Walrus" won the award for Best Sound. A little baffled, as they accepted the award they pointed out that there actually wasn't any sound design in the film -- it used a tape of John Lennon being interviewed by a high school kid who snuck into his hotel.
Don Hertzfeldt won the "Best Film Under $5000" award for "Everything Will Be OK." When he got up on stage, he talked bout how strange this was... How he'd just been asleep, and literally only woke up minutes before! He said he was able to make his film so cheaply because a friend of his had won at several international festivals that award Kodak film stock. But the friend is a computer animator! ...So he simply gave the film stock to Don.
The anecdote about receiving a useless gift symbolized for me a disconnect between money/status-driven festivals and animators. Animators are so often scrounging to get by, and are used to being in a poorly understood/disrespected profession. After years of slaving away like this, a moment in the gilded spotlight seems kinda bittersweet. There's a tinge of... Not exactly resentment... But perhaps a sense of the facade?
It's hard to explain the vibe at the awards ceremony without it sounding like I'm putting down PLATFORM. Let me be clear: PLATFORM was wonderful! What I want to convey is the disconnect between animators and the trappings of celebrity.
Gregory Barsamian, who created the astonishing and transfixing installation piece "No Never Alone," as he was accepting his Grand Prix/Installation award made a lovely comment on who we are as animators... He referenced the film, "Freaks," and its famous line "one of us." The animators filling the auditorium: freaks. Wonderful freaks.
At the very end of this (at times oddly awkward) awards ceremony, PLATFORM festival director Irene Kotlarz was brought to center stage and given a huge bouquet of roses. (They never see it coming!) The audience gave her a standing ovation -- the first and only standing ovation of the festival, I believe. After three years of bringing the event to life, she wept at the recognition.
It sounds so predictable... But the moment was authentic. It made my eyes tear up. The man standing beside me teared up, too.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (2) | categories: exhibits & events, movies
July 1, 2007
praise for the PLATFORM International Animation Festival
by sven at 11:59 pm
The first PLATFORM International Animation Festival was a triumph.
Understand, this was the premiere of the ONLY major animation festival in the U.S. -- an event of historic importance.
The organizers did a simply phenomenal job...
The scope of the festival was visionary. It included not only traditional short films, but also animation designed for emerging platforms (hence the festival's name) such as the internet and cell phones. It made a bridge to the broader world of art by including an exhibit of animated installation artworks. And, while looking to the future, there was also honor for animation's history -- embodied by the showing of Snow White (with guest speaker Marge Champion, who was Snow White's movement model) and the earliest feature-length animated film produced in Asia ("Princess Iron Fan", 1941).
The orchestration of the event itself was excellent. The Portland Center for the Performing Arts -- the main venue for the festival -- was beautiful, and well laid-out to accommodate several films running at the same time. Each day's program of screenings (from an attendee's perspective) ran extremely smoothly.
One organizational choice that I think was particularly brilliant: It's maybe a ten block walk from where the film screenings are to the Pacific Northwest College of Art, where the installation pieces are set up. How do you get everyone from point A to point B? Get the March Fourth marching band to lead everyone there!
Cartoon Network was the financial force behind PLATFORM -- but the company was remarkably reserved about making its presence felt.
This was a "no logo" event. With the exception of the organizers verbally thanking Cartoon Network for its support, you could easily have missed that the company had anything to do with the festival at all. It was a very classy choice on CN's part. Supporting the animation community without shoving a lot of self-promotion down our throats engendered a lot of good will toward the company. (At least among those who attended.)
Let's hope that all involved see this festival as a triumph, and that it becomes an annual institution. ...I eagerly look forward to attending again next year.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (2) | categories: exhibits & events, movies
March 9, 2007
elder thing puppet test
by sven at 4:40 pm
Yesterday I was a busy boy. I built a new puppet and tried out animating it.
While I was driving to Tucson, I thought through some changes in the script for Let Sleeping Gods Lie. I've been really unhappy for some time with the "joke ending" I'd originally planned. I've come up with a story now that is much more dramatic -- while still using my basic elements.
But changes? Oh dear...
I'm loath to ask my actors to come back for yet another shooting session. I still might be able to avoid it... I've decided that my storytelling style has generally been too linear; I want to switch my approach to "hitting the high points." By using a style that's similar in pacing to a movie trailer, I may be able to get away with using only what I've already got in the can. ...And then if there are a few vital pick-up shots, I may try using myself as a stunt-double.
An important development: I'm adding a whole new section to the film. I'm calling it the "deep history segment." Because it's a sort of flashback, I think it's appropriate for this segment to have a different visual style. I'd been contemplating animating something viscous -- like black molasses, or a mixture of ink + hair gel on glass. But then yesterday it struck me: why would I not use puppets?!?
So I set out to build a "quick and dirty" elder thing puppet -- just for proof of concept.
The limbs are made from 1/16" aluminum armature wire: two strands for the arms and eyestalks, three for the legs. The arm and leg wires are 6" long.
The spine is a piece of wooden dowel, and the limbs are attached with plumber's epoxy putty. After fixing the limbs onto the dowel, I added an additional layer of epoxy -- just to make absolutely sure everything holds together.
I've got 1/4" and 3/8"-thick sheets of cushion foam on hand, which I cut into long strips and wrapped around the armature to bulk it out. Most of the time I chose the 1/4" foam. It allows greater control -- but does take quite a while to layer.
The foam strips are held onto the armature with athletic tape.
It's a little hard to see in this photo, but I remembered to add a rigging point for this puppet. In one of its "armpits" I epoxy-puttied a 1/2"-long piece of 7/32" K&S.
[Notice that underneath the puppet you can see the rough blueprint that I drew for scale before starting construction.]
There, the foam-wrapping stage looks about complete!
Next, I refined the form of the Elder with althletic underwrap. This is an extremely thin non-adhesive foam tape.
I had the thought that maybe I ought to use the athletic tape -- which is flexible -- as the final form-shaping layer. I tried this idea out on a leg tentacle... And found that I didn't like the way it crumples when the tentacle bends.
However, for the torso -- which is not meant to bend -- the tape worked out very nicely. It's sort of like applying papier mache -- but with cloth Band-Aids. The tape did a nice job of refining the form; it also accepts paint better than the porous foam does.
Here's the pup, all ready to be painted.
I mixed mold-building latex with black acrylic paint for the paint job.
My latex has the consistency of thick mayonnaise. I would rather have used a more liquid variety -- but didn't have any on hand.
Why use latex? I was hoping to smooth over the texture. And I wanted something that would help hold the underwrap all together. And I've read about this technique -- but hadn't tried it yet -- so I wanted to try something new.
Nick Hilligoss describes puppets that have been painted with liquid latex as bending "like a rubber boot." Yep -- that's what it's like!
I don't really like how the latex turned out... How it crumples when you bend it. How it wants to stick to itself. [I know I could apply talc -- but it's important that this pup be as black as possible.] ...Still, it's good enough for a test puppet.
Almost forgot: I also added a little bit more epoxy to the eyeballs, just to make them bigger.
On to animating! The first test was a very simple "whipping" motion with one of the legs.
I've got some new photo lights. This was their first outing. Turns out their light is extremely blue. Not too happy about it.
One of the big mysteries with the Elders is: How the heck do they walk?
I haven't really figured it out yet, but I've begun to get a better sense for how weight shifts from one leg to the next.
...This is one of the HUGE benefits of making an elder thing puppet: I don't know how I'd ever be able to figure out how they move if I was just positioning pixels with a CG version. I need to hold the creature in my hands and be able to push it around, trying out different possibilities in a concrete way.
I've been trying on a new hat lately. I'm playing with calling myself a "mixed media animator." (I also heard the phrase "animation artist" recently, which I kinda like too.)
I love stopmo. But "mixed media animation" is probably a better label for the style that I'm ultimately going for. Not just using CG effects to enhance stopmo -- with digital water, skies, and fire. No, what I want to do is mix CG, cel animation, motion graphics, and puppetfilm in innovative ways that blur the lines.
The clip above is a good example. I've taken the puppet animation and used AfterEffects to turn it into what look likes a digital line drawing. ...I like!
Another thing I've been aching to see is how the elder things stand up.
Looking at the prior "walk test," it seemed to me that the Elder was almost comical -- waving its arms around hysterically. These creatures are millions of years old, frighteningly intelligent and dignified. Maybe they don't move their arms much at all? Maybe they don't writhe -- which has always been the assumption -- maybe every motion is very purposeful.
Important puppet construction note: This puppet sorely needs tie-downs at the ends of each of the legs and at the base of the spine. Animating a two-legged puppet without tie-downs is painful, but can be done in a pinch. Having five legs all subtly shifting as you animate, when you really want them to stay fixed to the ground? ...Intolerable.
It's going to take more playing around, but I'm beginning to have insight into the Elders.
(Huh. Does puppet pushing constitute method acting?)
Their limbs are fast and lithe. But lifting up their torso -- that's heavy, so the rise has to be more deliberate and burdened.
As I'm animating, there's a tendency for me to choose one of their five faces and think of it as the front. When I do so, I see a pair of arms and a pair of legs -- which looks almost human, if I don't focus on the other spare limbs.
I think I can use this impression of humanity to good effect at key moments in the film -- but I must beware. What are the other faces doing and thinking while I'm looking at this particular side? Maybe it's better to conceptualize the Elder as five separate people, all standing back to back. Kind of like certain photos of multi-faced (Indian?) gods that I've seen.
The eyestalks... If they function like human eyes, then they ought to dart around from focal point to focal point. But there's a danger of making the critters too human. In the "standing up" test, I tried having all the eyes swing around in unison -- which produced a sort of sea anemone effect. Plausible, but very appropriately alien.
For this last clip, I tried using AfterEffects to multiply the critter, and tried out using white lines on a black background. This is very close to what I think I'm going to ultimately use. I thought I'd like to use a "lens flare" effect to create green, star-like eyes... But it turns out that I'd probably need to use LightWave to get what I want -- which may not wind up being worth it.
...
Holy cow! All that in one day??
posted by sven | permalink | comments (11) | categories: let sleeping gods lie, movies, stopmo
January 3, 2007
making of "the great escape"
by sven at 10:25 pm
I want to fill in some details about the process of making The Great Escape...
1. the computer
I was using my PowerBook G4 to capture frames... Boy, was I glad to have a laptop in this instance! It was really helpful being able to easily move the computer around, depending upon where the camera and set needed to be.
2. the framegrabber
I used FrameThief as my framegrabber. Just prior to this project I spent a bunch of time play-testing the main framegrabber options for the Mac: FrameThief, AnimAideXT, and iStopMotion. I'd like to write a more in-depth review, but here's the short version...
There are two functions that are absolutely critical for a framegrabber: (1) it has to let you do onion-skinning, and (2) it has to let you check your work against a sound clip. FrameThief is getting a little antiquated, but it's the only one that can do both of these things adequately. AnimAideXT has exciting potential, but was buggy for me when it came to onion-skinning. Boinx's iStopMotion has a great interface and support -- but you have to pay $400 for the pro version if you want to work with sound.
FrameThief did crash on me a few times. However, I remain impressed with this workhorse software: I never lost any data -- all I had to do was re-start the program, and I was back in the game.
3. the camera
I used a Canon ZR45 DV cam to capture frames. This cam has given me so much grief...
When I was shooting footage for Let Sleeping Gods Lie, it would turn itself off (to conserve power) whenever I kept it on pause for 5 minutes. Since most of the shots took longer than 5min to set up, this was really irritating...
On this project, the horrible realization was that even though I manually set the exposure to 1/60, everytime Jimmy's white shirt came on screen, the picture would darken to compensate -- resulting in awful flicker.
Sin #3: Even though I had a brilliantly colorful set and excellent lighting, the camera sucked a huge amount of color and luminescence out of my shots. In post I did some brute-force color correction by adding saturation and brightness universally -- but I still couldn't get the quality that I had when shooting the photo animatic with my still cam.
Potential solutions: Get a 3CCD DV cam. (Pretty expensive.) Or use the still cam... Which will require an analog-to-digital converter in order to interact with the framegrabber -- and has an expected life-span of 50 to 70 minutes of animation before conking out from over-use.
4. the tripod
I've been told by several sources that sand is the professional choice for how to weigh down your tripod... Yet, I wasn't sure how to do it in practice. I tried putting the feet of the tripod into yogurt tubs filled with sand. Useless. Filling plastic bottles (with handles) up with sand, and then making wire loops so they could hang from the tripod's hook -- that worked pretty well.
Technically water in those jugs would have worked just as well. But I'm glad that I went to the hardware store and bought some sandbox sand, nonetheless. The thought of those jugs, if filled with water, dropping and cracking open -- well, let's just say that I think sand would do less overall damage.
Even with the sand, though, the head of the camera could still be moved some with a good bump. There's play in the gear that raises and lowers the camera that I don't know how to fix.
5. the set
The set was constructed from a cardboard box, which I then staple-gunned to a piece of plywood. The plywood sat atop two cinderblocks so I could get at the tie-down screws. The ceiling was a piece of white foamcore that wasn't actually attached -- just weighted down. The wallpaper was gift-wrapping paper, and the carpet was felt.
The cardboard walls worked satisfactorily through most of the film. The only problem came at the end when Jimmy pokes out from behind the painting. At that point, he's actually pushing against the walls and they flex. Next time: Rigid walls made out of hardboard or MDF.
The plywood base is adequately rigid, but splinters when I drill holes for the tie-down screws. MDF -- medium density fiberboard -- would be better. It's made out of glue and fine sawdust, which shouldn't be able to splinter at all.
On a couple of occasions I managed to bump the set and shift it on the cinderblocks. Next go around, I plan to build a proper animating table, like the one Justin Rasch has just made, and which Marc Spess shows you how to build in his eBook Secrets of Clay Animation Revealed.
6. props
I'm fairly happy with the look of the comfy chair, which is just fabric glued over insulation foam, with foamcore feet. However, I made two fundamental mistakes here.
One: The foamcore legs were too squishy, and led to the chair moving around while I was animating. I tried using hot glue and pinning it to the floor -- but to little avail. Next time, furniture needs to use MDF for its frame, and there need to be threaded holes for tie-down screws.
Two: Scale! The room was one scale, the pups were another, and the furniture was a third. This was particularly a problem with the comfy chair, which was supposed to be huge -- but was barely big enough to seat Jimmy. Next time, pick a scale and stick to it!
7. lights
I used two 500 watt lamps that I got at a photography supply store, along with umbrellas to diffuse the light. I ran into terrible problems with the lights burning out. I suspect that this had to do with the lights being so hot and the garage being so cold.
The lights get freakishly hot! When one of them burned out, the broken filiment actually burned a pin-sized hole through the glass. With another, the glass of the bulb melted into a bulge!
For the living room set I wanted lots and lots of light -- a bright, saturated, jubilant environent. So the lamps were really necessary. On future projects, though, I'm thinking I'll probably use more colored lights and gobos -- which may mean I need to get some more fresnells and stands.
In the cave set, I'd intended to use xmas lights hidden behind the arches. It proved to be too much trouble. I just went with shining a single light down the tunnel. Less magical -- but oh well.
8. puppets
I used Super Sculpey for the heads, hands, and shoes of the puppet. I ran into problems with it cracking. Jimmy's head had a big crack in it from the get-go, and it wasn't firmly attached to the epoxy putty skull. At the very end of the film, Dad's shoe shattered. Little bits of Super Sculpey would flake off around the wrists. Next time, I think I'll be using Magic Sculpt (a fine-grained epoxy putty for artists) for hands and feet; possibly resin for heads.
The most glaring flaw in the puppets' design was in the necks and wrists. Or rather, the lack thereof. One solution would be to wrap these bits in string and then paint them with liquid latex. I've also heard of latex rubber tubing being used for necks -- partly because you can make a hole in the base of the skull that conceals the join.
(Btw: I'd like to tip my hat to Grant Goans -- the idea for Dad's flapping jaw comes directly from his Vitruvius project.)
9. armatures
The sculptor's armature wire (annealed aluminum) didn't break. Huzzah!
Dad was pretty fun to animate; Jimmy was much harder, due to the smaller armature. Note to self: larger wire armatures are easier to articulate.
I keep on making my pups' necks too short. Dad was pretty much neckless; Jimmy was better, but still couldn't lean his head back far enough at one point.
Dad really didn't want to twist in the middle. More wires in his spine would have helped; but given the amount of foam that had to be moved, I'm not really sure how much more a build-up puppet could be improved.
10. costumes
Instead of sewing the costumes, I used Fabri-Tac glue to attach cloth directly to the foam body mass. This seems to have worked out OK on the pants -- but the arms of the shirts tore out of the shoulders.
I'd really like to know a better solution for the shoulders of shirts. I'll probably try hand-sewing the costumes next time. But even then, I know there's a problem with the sleeves and shirt bottom riding up when a pup lifts their arms. Anyone have any ideas here?
I also didn't bother to fold the fabric over when I attached it. It looked fine at first -- but I was getting some fairly serious fraying toward the end of the film, and had to keep cuticle scizzors on set.
11. lipsync
I used Papagayo to do lipsync. Magpie's the industry standard and costs a pretty penny -- whereas Papagayo is free... So I was a bit dubious when I started out. However, while there are some niceties missing, I found Papagayo was very easy to use, and quite satisfactory for my purposes. I strongly recommend giving it try.
A big discovery: It was much easier for me to animate puppets when I was matching movement to dialogue. It made the entire animation process much more managable when knew exactly how many frames I needed for any one shot. But beyond that, I found that my characters' movements were much more motivated when there was speaking. For each word, I thought about what gesture ought to accompany it. I avoided having the words and gestures match up perfectly -- but just working through how the pups' thoughts should be pantomimed really made them more alive.
12. trick shots
There were a few useful tricks I utilized to get the shots I wanted.
In order to get a point-of-view shot for Jimmy running through the cave tunnel, I made a little wooden sled for the camera... Well, actually, I just picked up a piece of scrap wood and wrapped masking tape around it and the cam. When it got far enough into the cave set, I used a stick to keep pushing it farther in, an inch at a time.
I put screws into Jimmy's feet for tie-downs... But as it turns out, he never stands up in the story! In order to have him not jitter around too much while he was sitting, I stuck pins right through him and into the chair.
(Thanks to Shelley Noble for the pins that I was using!)
When Jimmy had to get out of the chair, I didn't have any easy way to secure him... So I wound up just holding him in my hand. The same was true for when he pokes out from behind the painting at the end: no way to secure him, so I was holding him in my right hand from behind the set, and setting off the shutter release with my left.
Consequently, when I concluded the shot, the poor boy fell out. Right on his nose.
13. post-production
I started working on this film back in October. But when December rolled around, xmas preparations kept me from getting down to business until the 26th -- at which point I pushed everything else aside in order to get this done. On the 30th/31st I worked for 30 contiguous hours without stop... Possibly the longest single stretch of my life (so far).
Post-production took a surprising 18 hours to complete. What really saved me was that at the outset I made up a master list of fixes, and then worked that list. Keeping copious notes on my thought process as I went, problem-solving one thing at a time. Here's the outline:
- assemble the clips so they sync to the audio track
- fix problem clips
- add/cut shots
- add titles/credits
- edit timing - must be absolutely finalized
- record additional sound, edit the mix
- color correction (if there's time)
- compress
Since I'd assembled the photo animatic in iMovie, I thought it would be easy enough to just replace the still images with my new animation clips. Not so! Because I filmed at 15fps -- but the animatic was 30fps -- iMovie simply wouldn't let me edit my clips to single-frame accuracy. That threw the whole audio sync off, which would have ruined the film. [Yes, even though the dialogue is in mumblephonics.] I tried out a whole bunch of potential work-arounds, but nothing did the job. So I switched to AfterEffects for final assembly -- which treated me much better.
I discovered that I had the heads of pins showing in several shots. I went through and fixed each frame by hand in PhotoShop. ...Actually, this wasn't a bad experience at all. I think I may use this process more in future projects -- particularly for flying and jumping effects.
At 320x240 pixels, the final render of the film was 752.9MB. It took a lot of fooling around, but I finally got it compressed down to a more manageable 6.8MB. The magic was to use the Sorenson3 codec at medium quality, with all options set on auto...
And then for sound, it turned out that the QDesign Music 2 codec was working out better than QualComm PureVoice. My settings were: best / 44.1 / best / 48 kbit. Bad sound just kills me... The sound quality I wound up with is not everything I could wish for, but it's at least tolerable.
Jason Gottlieb's tutorial, How to compress a movie for the web using QuickTime Pro, was once again very helpful. If you haven't seen it already, I strongly recommend it.
[Reminder to self: Rendering the image and the sound out from AfterEffects in two separate passes has consistently worked best. Make it standard practice.]
...
And there you have it! More than you ever wanted to know about the making of my little 2 minute film!
posted by sven | permalink | comments (11) | categories: movies, stopmo
January 1, 2007
the great escape
by sven at 11:59 pm
Happy New Year!
I'm happy... I managed to complete my film on time for the quarterly "stopmo haiku" challenge at StopMoShorts.com! Click on the image above to see it in the context it was intended for...
Or (in case that link stops working at some point in the future) you can watch the film by clicking here. (6.8MB)
My joke du jour: Can we call this an eleventh hour victory if it was only 10:30pm when I got the film done and submitted?
Very proud.
Here's what I wrote about the film for StopMoShorts:
Armature building's been taking all my attention... So I wanted take a step back and do something more holistic. The idea was to embrace "quick and dirty": go all the way through the film-making process and not get hung up on things being perfect.
When brainstorming story ideas, I latched onto "cave" as a tunnel -- maybe a magical tunnel between places. In terms of animation style, I was inspired by Robot Chicken -- intentionally going for "pop" over "smooth."
The pups are standard aluminum wire armatures, wrapped in thin strips of cushion foam, with heads and hands made from Super Sculpey. The eyes are Van Aken plastilina... One of my weirding-outest moments was when an eye fell off and rolled right down into Dad's mouth.
I shot frames with a Canon ZR45 DV cam... Which (curse its metallic soul) insists on auto-adjusting exposure even when I tell it not to. I used FrameThief for my grabber, 15fps. Sound done in GarageBand, final assembly in AfterEffects.
I actually wrote a script, and then translated it into mumblephonics... Perhaps when I get around to releasing the "director's cut" DVD I'll put together a subtitled version.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (4) | categories: exhibits & events, movies, stopmo
November 5, 2006
four types of storyboard
by sven at 11:59 pm
In all the books I've perused about filmmaking, I think I've only ever seen one kind of storyboard described: the Professional Hollywood Storyboard.
Well, here in indy micro stopmo land, we have different needs. And so, I'd like to suggest that there are at least four types of storyboard that might be of use.
1. the thumbnail storyboard
Draw your storyboard all on one or two pieces of paper. For each shot in your proposed film, draw a little sketch, about the size of a postage stamp. It's OK if the sketches are barely legible -- the point is to be able to get your cinematography ideas down on paper as quickly as possible. If you're working alone, you could even start shooting based on this. Most likely, however, you'll want to do a second, more legible draft.
benefit: very fast
2. the floating storyboard
When you see photos of storyboards, the sketches of scenes are always drawn inside rectangles that match the aspect-ratio that the film is being shot in. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can draw sketches of your scenes in a sketchbook without rectangles around them -- just floating on the page. When you're in the early stages of developing your images, this is a nicely free-form way to work.
benefit: allows drawings to expand, unrestricted
3. the framed storyboard
A framed storyboard is one where you draw your images inside of fixed-aspect-ratio rectangles. The point here is to force yourself to think carefully about how you want to compose things within the shape of the screen that your film will be displayed on.
There are number of ways to do framed storyboards:
- You can just draw a rough rectangle on the page (for each shot). That's often good enough.
- You can cut index cards to the correct size and draw your shots on them. Advantage: this allows you to shuffle and reorder the shots as needed.
- You can use computer software to make multiple perfect rectangles on a page, and then print them out on a printer. In my experience, it can be nice to have a tidy storyboard that lives in a binder when you're in production -- but it's not the easiest way to work when you're still developing ideas.
benefit: forces you to compose images within fixed aspect-ratio
4. the photo storyboard
If you have your puppets and sets done, you can make your storyboard images using a digital camera. With the camera, you don't have to worry about aspect ratio -- the device imposes a frame around the image. Working with the camera also helps you generate camera angles that you might not have thought of when relying only on your imagination. If your puppets and sets aren't done, you can still work with this technique somewhat if you can make stand-ins and mock-ups of some sort.
benefit: fixed aspect-ratio; reveals new camera angles
storyboards and words
With stopmo puppets, we're often making pantomime films without dialogue. Even so, I've found that it can be extremely useful to put words with the storyboard.
Particularly with a floating storyboard, it's easy to write a sentence or two describing what's happening in the image -- sort of like in a storybook. Being forced to switch modes from visual to verbal can help reveal aspects of the story that aren't clear, or suggest new meanings that you want to work into the story.
I haven't gone very far yet with pairing words and pictures in my storyboards. My sense is that there'd be benefits even if you just wrote one or two words beside each image... And if you wrote a whole paragraph for each shot, the discoveries would be even greater.
the purpose of storyboards?
The way that I've typically seen storyboards written about goes something like this:
Write a script.
Stop.
Draw your storyboard.
Stop.
Shoot your film.
I want to explore and promote the notion that storyboards are a way of developing your story.
Storyboards can be part of how you generate your script. When your story concept is still rudimentary, drawing images helps it become clearer in your mind.
Then, later on, when you're writing paragraphs that describe what's in each storyboard panel, the images will help prompt you to think about emotional beats, blocking, and performance. Storyboards can help you figure out how you want your puppet to act.
A storyboard could be compared to having a blueprint when you build a house: it's the plan you keep referring back to as you assemble your film. But maybe this metaphor is all wrong...
Maybe films aren't actually (or don't have to be) built from a perfect preconceived plan. Maybe the filmmaking process is more like watching a blurry and indistinct image come into focus... And each time you draw a new storyboard, it's like seeing that red blur in your mind further resolve into a crisp-edged rose.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (4) | categories: movies, stopmo
August 16, 2006
30fps - flicker textures
by sven at 9:39 pm
Here's the follow up to 30fps: basic principles. This one runs 2 min 17 sec.
The final "symphony" reminds me a bit of those old electronic "Simon Says" games from the 80s... Or of video game music. Still, it was interesting to identify some more "flicker textures" through playing around: syncopation and strobing.
Music was useful for emphasizing changes -- but it also distracts attention from the flicker more than I'd like.
After putting together the basic "symphony," I tried a bunch of different variations. This one uses photos rather than flat colors. It's only 57 sec -- but all that quick flipping between images makes for a very large file size, even when compressed with Sorenson3.
An observation. The eye can read a high-contrast image (like a number) with only one frame. A photo is more difficult to interpret, and seems to require two or more frames for readability.
I could see doing a third "30fps" piece: one that explores using motion clips, rather than just stills... However, it's more likely that I'll just end the series here, and move on to other things now.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (3) | categories: movies
August 13, 2006
30fps - basic principles
by sven at 7:46 am
We're only just back from Canada... And immediately I get one of my signature bouts of inspired insomnia.
Last night I started typing out a list titled "exploring the formal qualities of stopmo animation." Why? Form precedes content, I think I've decided. I'm just not gushing forth ideas for stories that I want to tell -- but if I spend a while dissecting the empty cinematic container that's meant to transmit stories, I suspect some part of me will start stepping forward to fill the void.
After I went to bed, one of the items on my list developed itself into a full-fledged short film concept -- so I was compelled to get up and execute the idea. Click on the image above to see the film; it runs 1 min 16 sec.
For your additional amusement, here's the passage I wrote that inspired the film:
5. As animation is actually a series of still images displayed rapidly, one might have more than one series of images interspersed with each other, perhaps at varying rates. At a one-to-one ratio, the two story streams would appear superimposed. At a ten-to-one ratio, the minor story stream would become subliminal. There could be not just two, but three or four or more story streams being interspersed at the frame-level of time, each at varying rates. The rate at which a story thread is visible could be constant, or it could change during the course of a film -- e.g. increasing in frequency until it’s visible at a conscious level -- and then receding back to a subliminal rate.
5A. Do the interspersing of frames using nothing but still frames of color. (This isn’t stopmo proper, and there are no evolving story threads -- but it would be a much simplified version of the basic idea, useful for testing how it works in practice.) Each of these colors might be paired with a musical tone, which would both help alert the viewer to new themes, and create an organic soundtrack. ...Backtracking, this raises the question of how a soundtrack would be handled if one were working with actual story threads.
5B. The principle of intermixing different story threads at the single-frame level could be explored even more simply using black and white screens. At its most basic, there are four concepts to demonstrate: unbroken, superimposed, subliminal, and transition. Have the name for each concept in white letters at the top of a black screen, and in black letters at the bottom of a white screen. After demonstrating the four basic concepts, one could move on to demonstrate ratios, e.g. 1:14, 2:13, 3:12, 4:11, 5:10, 6:9, 7:8. (Working in 15fps would probably be most practical.) Having the words for the black screen and the white screen spaced so that they wouldn’t overlap would make it easier to see the principles; for the ratios, it might be more interesting to have the black and white text fall on the same spot on the screen. For sound, perhaps just white screens would have sound (a simple sawtooth tone?) -- black would have silence. If there were a title at the beginning and credits at the end, perhaps it would be appropriate to the medium that they each only be one frame long; using a QuickTime viewer, they would stay visible until the film was set into motion. It might also be appropriate to have the title cards written on gray screens. Possible titles: ratios, intercut, 15fps, stacking frames, impersistent vision... This experiment would do a very good job of laying the groundwork for the color, multi-thread experiment. The title card might also be an explanation, rather than a title -- the title and credit could come at the end. Looking at this project from a practical point of view, it could probably be assembled in AfterEffects by dropping single-frame compositions into a master composition (nesting them), and then using the keyframe assistant command to sequence them.
(Oh so witty... Now may I please go to sleep, please?)
posted by sven | permalink | comments (8) | categories: movies, stopmo
April 23, 2006
a film by the unconscious collective: "catch"
by sven at 12:00 pm
The "Unconscious Collective" was an informal filmmaking group that I initiated following a double-feature movie party at my place (Delicatessen and The Cook, The Thief, The Wife, and Her Lover). The group -- which eventually included Leopoldo Marino, Carl Caputo, Andrew Stout, Laura Grant, Gretchin and myself -- was active from November 2003 to June 2004. Our mission: "Get together, make a movie. Do it in one night. Use what you've got. Work with whoever shows up."
This is the final film that the Unconscious Collective made.
Nearly all of the films we made are available online at my Unconscious Collective website. The clips are encoded as mp4's. ...When I tried to encode "Catch", the sound didn't sync up right... Which is why it has taken until now to get it online. --Three cheers for the Sorenson3 codec!
The night we made "Catch" I came to the meeting with a vague notion that we might try making an animation. Each of us made a bunch of drawings with sharpie markers on typing paper. Using these pictures as inspiration, we brainstormed a simple story. I took digital photographs of the drawings and cleaned them up in PhotoShop. I did the animation in AfterEffects while everyone hung out and chatted. The voice of the pup was provided by Gretchin.
All told, I don't think the clip took more than 4 hours to complete.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (2) | categories: movies
April 22, 2006
first time online: the "let sleeping gods lie" trailer!
by sven at 12:00 pm
For those of you just joining us...
Let Sleeping Gods Lie is my "serious" film project that I've been working on since 2003, and hope to complete in 2007. The one-minute teaser-trailer premiered at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival last October. This is the first time I've put the completed teaser online... I was kinda burnt out after last summer's big push. ;-)
Previous "making of" posts can be found in the blog's let sleeping gods lie category.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (3) | categories: let sleeping gods lie, movies
April 19, 2006
against keeping your film production secret
by sven at 8:39 pm
[I just wrote a long post over at StopMotionAnimation.com that's worth repeating here. Leevi Lehtinen is working on an excellent stopmo film, and my blog brother Ale suggested that Leevi shouldn't show us any more clips from the work until it's complete. I've been roughing out an essay about why I'm against keeping film projects secret -- Ale's comment just opened the floodgates.]
Quote
Keep it up and please don't show so much about the film! I love it, but prefer to see it completed!
Oh! I must respectfully disagree with Ale! PLEASE, don't hesitate to post work-in-progress shots! If a viewer does not want to see the film until it is completed, then it is their own responsibility to not click on those files.
I am of the opinion that getting to see the film as it's being made only enhances the experience. Rather than spending five minutes of attention on your well-crafted work of art, I get to spend months or years enjoying it bit-by-bit. I'm cheering you on -- and when it is completed, I feel that in some small way I was able to help make it possible -- by being a supportive ear / eye.
Telling artists not to show their work until it's done -- this doesn't help them at all! Isolation is a terrible motivator. Look at SMA itself: when we get to share our energy, we are reinvigorated and inspired to do more! Sharing encourages sharing -- and that's where we get our spark.
"Keeping it secret" is NOT a step towards professionalism. Look at Peter Jackson's online "making-of" video diary for King Kong. Look at how Joss Whedon showed rough cuts of Serenity to eager audiences... Sharing the process of creation -- as you're creating -- is an excellent way to build your audience prior to release.
...And after your film is released, showing the "making-of" doesn't somehow spoil the magic. Pick up almost any DVD, and you'll see "making of" documentaries. The viewing public knows movies aren't magic -- we're curious to see how they're made, and only gain respect by learning how well-crafted the film is. The "making-of" is part of the product, just as marketable as the film itself.
The film-viewing public is literate and should get to make their own choices where "spoilers" are concerned. For example, when the new Star Wars movies came out, myself and lots of my friends knew that there would be spoilers -- and we conscientiously avoided them. In the world of blogging, there's an etiquette whereby you warn people that there may be "spoilers" in your post so they can decide for themselves if they want to read on.
The movie itself is only half the story. I want to know about about the people who made it. There are movies that I go to not because I know anything about the film -- but because the film is a Peter Jackson- or George Lucas- or James Cameron- or Steven Spielberg- or Jim Henson- or Joss Whedon- or Martin Scorsese- or Whoever- film. As filmmakers, we shouldn't try make ourselves invisible. Ultimately what we want is for people to be invested in US. Hopefully I'm not going to make just one film. I'm going to make several or many films -- and I want my audience to follow ME as I grow and create.
I don't know what Nick Hilligoss' next film is going to be about -- but it doesn't matter! I already know that I want to see it! Same goes for the the next film by Mike Brent or Alejo Accini or Jeffrey Roche or Shelley Noble or Dave Hettmer or Lio Ivan Orozco or Marc Spess or (forgive me, folks I'm failing to name)... I want to see WHATEVER these people do next, because I've come care about them and what they're doing.
And I want to know about their work as it's in progress, too. So, please -- everyone -- keep sharing your works-in-progress!
Sven
posted by sven | permalink | comments (20) | categories: movies, stopmo, writing
April 7, 2006
lighting: par cans
by sven at 12:00 pm
I just got my par cans in the mail.
As I had hoped, these lights allow me to create more dramatic lighting.
The PAR 46 is what's lighting all the test photos here.
The PAR 16 didn't come with a bulb -- and I'm a little confused about what I need to get for it -- so it hasn't been tested yet. Just to give you a sense of scale: this one's small enough that a 60watt bulb wouldn't fit inside of its housing.
The blue gel produces the happiest results. As Gretchin pointed out, I could use it to suggest a moonlit night.
The red gel created surprisingly saturated results. If I hadn't taken this shot myself, I would have sworn it was photoshopped... But no -- the pic is unaltered.
The green gel didn't really do much for me one way or the other.
Prior to the arrival of the par cans, I'd been using lights that are made for photographers doing portrait shoots. They are amazingly bright -- the par can can't compete at all. I suspect I'll order another par can or two in the not too distant future... Maybe some PAR 64's? I'd like to be able to do a traditional three-point lighting arrangement.
I'd also really like to get dimmers for the lights -- but I haven't been able to find anything appropriate yet. If I could dim my white lights, then maybe I could use them together with the par cans... which would be nice.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (4) | categories: movies, stopmo
March 9, 2006
percy wakes up
by sven at 1:14 am
Tonight I got set up and did some motion tests with the new puppet, Percy.
In my opinion, the first clip was the best. The eyes more than anything else make Percy live.
Problems:
- using just sticky wax, one of the eyelids fell off a few times (a plug-in system might have been wiser)
- the eyeballs catch and don't want to turn smoothly
- it looks like the facial paint smudged an eyeball; do I need varnish?
In the second clip, I wanted Percy to smack himself on the head -- as if to say, "What was I thinking?!"
Problems:
- jerky, jerky, jerky...
- I only tied down one foot -- and it shows
- the pants hang so low, they almost entirely cover the shoes
- when the head leans back, there's a big gap between the neck and the body
- is there a camera flicker? --or did my shadow effect the lighting?
- the eye movement is unmotivated
...And, of course, I had to try a walk cycle. Trying to make things a little more interesting, I dressed up the set a bit with stuff I got from Loose Ends back in January, and had the camera shoot from above.
Problems:
- dang it's hard to keep the head moving in a straight line; guess I need a surface gauge
- when the arm moves forward, the shirt sleeve pulls up and shows a lot of wrist
- the shirt also wanted to ride up and uncover the small of his back
- I tried to make sure I was bending the limbs, but he still looks pretty stiff
After all the effort that went into making this puppet, it's hard not to be a little disappointed as I discover design flaws. Still, the point is to learn -- and I can't complain on that account. I learned a helluva lot making this guy.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (12) | categories: movies, stopmo
January 29, 2006
now showing: "Experiments in Super8" and "Two Men, One Pair of Glasses"
by sven at 12:30 am
You can finally see the work I did for my Super 8mm Filmmaking class!
Here's my final project, "Explorations in Super8". It's 3min 14sec in length, so expect a long wait while downloading. Sadly, more image quality was lost when I went from Super8 to DV. Sigh... I knew going into this project that I was working in a lossy medium.
I've previously written in-depth descriptions about how each effect was achieved. You may want to refer back:
Amusing / irritating note: When the film was finally developed, I discovered that in several shots the camera is zooming out. I didn't do that. What happened? There was a knob on the lens that you would rotate to adjust the zoom. While I was shooting, its own weight would cause it to slowly and imperceptibly descend from its initial position -- thus causing the zoom effect!
As a bonus, here's the "Two Men, One Pair of Glasses" film that Andy Weinstein and I made as a quick in-class exercise. No one else wanted it, so I figured I'd use the reel for practice doing video transfer -- before potentially chewing up or melting my own precious celluloid. This is also 3min 14sec in length.
It's out of focus a lot of the time... Let's you and me say that was intentional: the camera man needed glasses too. ;-)
How did I get the Super8 footage digitized? Here's a shot of me setting up the video transfer. Inside that black box is a mirror, so the light from the Super8 projector can shoot directly into the DV cam. Very fussy work, trying to get everything lined up correctly and in focus. ...And then you turn off the lights.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (0) | categories: classes & workshops, movies, stopmo
January 22, 2006
comic homage to moon baby
by sven at 10:11 pm
My brother drew a comic using Moon Baby and the Sven blocks!
Here's what he had to say about it on his art blog:
"This will probably make my brother do a double take. I used two of his characters and two of his themes in this comic. Moon baby and the Sven blocks both come from his recent explorations into stopmo. If you look through Scarlet Star, you'll see Love and The Moon constantly show up in his work (well, at least I think they do). Pardon any off character sheet drawings, I didn't look up what they looked like before I started drawing."
...Wow. I wish I'd thought of that story line. (Thanks, Bro!)
posted by sven | permalink | comments (2) | categories: movies, stopmo
January 16, 2006
scenes from "Explorations in Super8"
by sven at 12:00 pm
I turned in my final project for the "Super 8mm Filmmaking" class at on Sunday (Jan 15). I tried to turn it in twice on Friday (the deadline), but no one was at Radius Studios (grrrrr).
I feel like this class is jinxed. I just wouldn't be surprised at all if my film cartridge somehow got lost in the mail. So, I will now spoil all surprise and describe exactly what I did for this project. I'm hoping that when I get the developed film back, I'll be able to do a transfer to digital and put it online. But, like I said, I'm not holding my breath.
I shot one complete film cartridge. A cartridge contains 50 feet of film, which works out to be around 3 minutes 30 seconds of screen time. To keep track of where I was in the roll of film, I used graph paper to make worksheets -- marking off one square for each frame shot.
I took quite a few "making of" shots with the digital camera... Not everything's covered, but you'll get the idea.
Opening shot: The words "Explorations in Super8" write themselves on a white backdrop. The camera angle changes, showing that the words were actually written on a surface that was at an angle. The closed spaces of the the letters P, O, R, and A -- and of the number 8 -- sequentially turn black, as I put pieces of black paper over them. These cut-out shapes then all slowly tilt sideways. All the cut-outs on the left slide over to the right and are consumed by the black shapes there (the "O" of exploration and the "8"). The remaining "Explorations in Super8" logo appears again later in the film.
The number "1" seems to write itself on top of the logo...
...This effect was achieved by writing the number "1" in grease pencil on a sheet of acrylic "glass". I was very pleased with the strategy I came up with for making the glass stand up. As you can see in the photo, each side of the glass is clamped to a piece of wood. These two pieces of wood are held in corner clamps. The corner clamps are then clamped to the table using two more clamps (a total of six clamps).
Eight blocks that I made previously, ones with photocopies of my face on them, present themselves in a half-circle. The middle two swap places. The next two out knock heads and return to their places. As do the next two out. The last blockhead on the left runs over to the one on the far right and tips him over.
The blockheads start running around the set willy-nilly. Some slide across the floor; others slide up, down, and across the wall. One comes down the wall and gets on top of a block that's on the floor.
A little comedy: a totem pole of two blocks, a totem pole of three blocks, and a single block all stand next to each other. The middle one looks at the others and seems pleased that it's the tallest. The one on the left rams it while it's not looking, and then everyone is equally two-blocks-tall.
The first exploration used a predominantly white set, where butcher paper was the backdrop. The second exploration dealt with sets that were predominantly black. Using the same trick that I used for "#1", I animate "#2" appearing by writing with a white grease pencil on the glass sheet. In both cases I also animated the numbers erasing themselves.
My face, floating in blackness, is replaced with a ghostly skull. See my post on "compositing, retro-style" for details.
A spaceship rockets between the stars. As it zooms past, the stars spin in its wake. The spaceship is a drawing cut out of paper; its exhaust is made out of green tissue paper.
The spaceship fires its retro-rockets and gently lands on an alien world. The mountains and hills are made from scraps of blue insulation foam.
A panicking robot runs by in the foreground. The focus changes, and we see the landed rocket in the background.
Having done "light" and "dark", I decided to do "wet" and "dry". Exploration #3 is animation done using sand (dry concrete mix, actually). After I draw the "3", I animate it disappearing -- by vacuuming up a little bit of it at a time.
(For how-to details, read "animating: sand, paint, shadow.")
Three O's appear. They turn into two eyes and a mouth. The mouth smiles -- and then frowns, and tears fall. The lines that make up the eyes connect themselves to the mouth, and the resulting snake wriggles its way off screen.
New scene: I cover the entire screen with sand. I wipe some away, so that white shows through, and an American flag appears. I make the stripes seem to flap in the wind. The flag dissolves, and the mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb appears. (Clearly I was free-associating here!) The cloud disappears, and random zig-zag lines mark the sand for a while.
On to "wet" animation! A number four paints itself on the glass, and then erases itself.
I splatter paint onto the whiteness a little at a time until there's a black puddle. The puddle turns into a checkerboard. The checkerboard becomes a more ornate "weaving" pattern.
Circles radiate out from the center. A spiral takes its place. The spiral pattern becomes a wild whorl. The whorl resolves into a painting of a human eye, which blinks once. The paint is gradually wiped away, until it looks like a bagel. Bites disappear from the bagel until it's gone. (I must have been hungry!)
I thought it would be interesting to use this retro medium, Super8, to film digital images. I think there's an impulse, if you're using super8, to try to make everything look "old-timey." Why ignore the existence of digital? Maybe hi-resolution digital captured on low-resolution Super8 will create an interesting visual effect... ?
For the transition to this section, I quickly made a three dimensional "5" in LightWave and set up a scene where it would rotate. Rather than rendering out this footage, I simply advanced the frames manually in preview mode, and snapped a shot each time with the super8 cam.
I experimented with reusing animations that I've made previously. The first one, "star", shows a person looking at the sky... They see something and point at it; they reach out a hand, and catch a falling star. This animation exists as a QuickTime movie. I advanced it one frame at a time on an Apple Cinema Display, taking two shots of each frame with the super8 cam.
The second animation I recycled is called "dot". It was an improvization where a dot morphs into all kinds of random shapes. Both "star" and "dot" can be seen in their original forms at my old "Sven's Animation" site.
For "dot", I tried filming the movie off of the laptop rather than from the workhorse computer. I shot this using the macro setting -- and have a suspicion it'll probably be all blurry. I tried filming "dot" three times in succession: once at 3 frames for each drawing, once at 2 frames per drawing, and once at 1 frame per drawing.
For the sixth and final exploration, I decided to work with shadow puppets. The shadow of the number six appears, and then disappears.
(For how-to details, read "animating: sand, paint, shadow.")
A shadow robot waves, shakes its head, and walks off screen.
Random geometric shapes -- squares, rectangles, triangles, circles -- appear and disappear in interesting patterns. A circle and triangle form themselves into a timer, which goes through two revolutions.
At this point, my best guess was that I had 10 - 20 seconds of film left. I brought Gretchin over to the studio and had her help me with the final shot. I wanted to have this last bit be live-action, and I needed her help to actually run the camera.
Gretchin -- fine calligrapher that she is -- wrote "by sven" for me on my the back of my hand...
I show the camera the back of my hand: it says "by sven". I turn my hand over and "2006" is there, written on my palm. Just as I finished showing my palm to the camera, we think we heard the camera run out of film...
THE END!
posted by sven | permalink | comments (4) | categories: movies, stopmo
January 15, 2006
animating: sand, paint, shadow
by sven at 6:00 pm
For the Super8 final project I tried out several animation techniques that I've read about, but never had enough interest in to actually pursue: sand, paint, and shadow.
Animating sand and animating paint both had a similar setup. You work on a horizontal piece of glass, lit from below. You put your sand or paint on top of this glass, and film with the camera above.
The super8 camera has a minimum focal distance of 4 feet (unless you use macro). My sheet of acrylic "glass" was raised up about 18" off the ground by two recycling bins. This meant I needed to get the camera pretty high up in the air -- and it had to point directly down, which the tripod wasn't built to do.
So, I took the camera and tripod as one piece and put them in a microphone stand! ...A little wobbly, but a very workable solution.
With sand, I put a piece of white butcher paper on top of the glass -- to prevent scratching, and to diffuse light. I didn't have any proper sandbox sand around, so I used some of Gretchin's dry concrete mix instead. Concrete has lye in it, so I was careful to wear latex gloves while working with the grit.
Sand was kinda fun to work with. ...Dropping pinches of it onto the glass wasn't very precise -- and trying to pick it back up to move it somewhere else was fairly irritating... But pushing around little lines was pleasant. And spreading sand across the whole sheet and then making lines with negative space was also pretty good -- so long as the image didn't need to be very fussy.
For animating paint, I took the sheet of paper off the top of the glass and instead clamped it onto the underside. I started off by dripping black tempera paint onto the slick surface -- Jackson Pollock style -- and then proceeded to move it around with brushes (occasionally re-wetting the surface).
This I liked a lot. It was very much like finger-painting: the process being more about moving paint around than capturing a single static image. And the light shining up through the glass really illuminated the texture of the brush strokes nicely. Just beautiful.
For filming shadows, I needed to change the camera setup. I put the white butcher paper back on top of the glass, and pointed the lights downward at it. The shadow puppets sit on top, held in place by gravity. The image I wanted to capture was going to be underneath the glass.
If the camera were directly underneath the glass, then the glass would have to be at least four feet up in the air (due to focal distance). That would have been really awkward to work with. So instead, I put a mirror on the floor, and pointed the camera at that. The focal distance was measured not from the camera to the mirror -- but rather from the camera to the mirror and then up to the glass.
Shadow puppets are typically hinged with thread, I believe. But I was feeling lazy. I wanted to use brads (the metal fasteners you find on large manilla envelopes) -- but we didn't have any on hand. So, in a pinch, I used small wire nails for my joints. Pointy -- but effective!
The robot pictured above was cute, but not a very practical puppet. The shoulders would bump into the neck if I moved them too far. If I make shadow puppets again, I must remember to make sure that none of the joints interfere with each other.
Animating the shadow puppet was a real pleasure when I was only moving one limb at a time. The arms moved wonderfully smoothly. But when I had to move the whole body -- that was trouble. All the joints would flail wildly, dragging behind the main torso.
Another problem I ran into was bad lighting. Because it was easiest to just lean the lights inward, I had beams coming from two sides. The puppet didn't always lie totally flat upon the glass, which meant that side-lighting could wash out some of the shadows I was trying to create. If I had had light coming from directly above, it probably wouldn't have mattered so much if the puppet wasn't lying entirely flat; all the shadows would be perpendicular to the glass.
Conclusion: Having known about these animation techniques for years, I'm glad to have actually tried them now. I doubt that I'll return to them any time soon... But if I do, I expect it'll be paint that I pick up again. It has a really lovely improvisational quality about it -- and it would be interesting to see what I could do with it if I were working in color. Any serious work, though, would probably require oil points -- which is an investment I'm not quite ready to spring for yet.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (0) | categories: movies, stopmo
January 14, 2006
compositing, retro-style
by sven at 11:59 pm
I finally finished the Super8 final project Thursday night; it took 19 hours to complete actual shooting. I squeezed in a lot of interesting experiments, so I'm going to break this story up into more than one post.
The trick I'm most proud of was making a ghostly skull appear in place of my face -- without any use of digital compositing!
Note: Super8 is, of course, actual celluloid. What you see here are photos that I took with a digital camera from the same angle as the Super8 cam, so I could document my process.
The "ghost" trick begins with this image of my face. The image is just a photocopy, blown up from a photograph that I had lying around. The photocopier lopped off the edges of my head -- so I cut out some paper to make that fiery "manga" hairstyle.
As you watch, the face is slowly replaced...
...by this skull, which is a paper cut-out.
How did I achieve the effect? Well, it's a little tricky to explain.
The key to the effect is putting a plate of clear acrylic "glass" between the camera and the image of the face. The glass is at a 45 degree angle, so it will reflect whatever is on the wall to the camera's left.
On the wall to the left of the camera, I taped the skull onto a piece of black foamcore. If there's no light on the skull, then there's no reflection on the glass that the camera is looking through. But, throw some light on that skull, and then a reflection appears. If I subsequently turn down the light on the image of the face, then I can almost get it to disappear, so we're left seeing only the skull.
My problem here was in trying to isolate the lighting... If there's any light at all on the skull, then we're going to see some reflection of it in on the glass. The ideal solution would have been to have a spotlight focussed on the skull that was controlled by a dimmer switch. That way I could keep the skull in darkness, and then gradually illuminate it. ...But I didn't have a dimmer switch.
So, what I did instead was have a light pointing away from the skull, but aimed at a mirror. For my purposes, I clamped the mirror to a microphone stand. When the time comes to illuminate the skull, I swivel the mirror on the microphone stand, and the light is bounced onto the skull. Overly complicated -- but pretty effective.
Here's a picture of the whole setup. As you can (hopefully) see, I've got two light sources: one on the left pointed at a mirror, which will illuminate the skull -- and one on the right that's pointed directly at the photo of my face. When it comes time to film the trick, what I do is animate the lights turning. ...For each frame of film, I incrementally turn the one light away from the face -- and the other light so that it's illuminating the skull. Run the film at 18 fps, and the metamorphosis appears!
My understanding is that this is an old theatrical trick... I think it was used around the end of the 1800s to make "ghosts" appear on stage, next to live actors. The trick there, too, was putting a big inclined sheet of glass between the audience and the stage.
More recently, I've seen the trick put to use in science museums, using a two way mirror. At the traveling "Star Trek: Federation Science" exhibit, for instance, I recall there being a station where you could sit in front of this pane of glass, and as you raised the lights on the other side, you could see a Klingon face superimposed over your own. Neat gimick.
Since compositing is so easily done in digital, I don't know when I'll ever need the "ghost" trick again. It's labor intensive, and relies on a complete control of lighting sources, which is difficult to achieve...
Note to self, in case I ever do attempt it again, though: An even more effective means to isolate the light on the skull would be to put a board between the light and the skull, with a "keyhole" in it... Cut out a skull shape in the board, so all extraneous light is truly masked and only a thin beam can shine through.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (0) | categories: movies, stopmo
January 11, 2006
explorations in super8
by sven at 12:05 am
So, Monday I finally began shooting my reel of Super8 film.
Ultimately, I decided that I'd have to be crazy to shoot animation I care about on Super8. As I stood in the kitchen Sunday night, thinking about this project -- which might turn out blurry, will be very difficult to get online, and could take up to 20 hours to shoot -- the exact words that went through my head were: "Do I hate myself?"
...So instead of wasting my "Mud & Metal" script on this project, I decided to film a series of improvised experiments in animation. It'll still take me a hella lot of time -- but at least this way there's no risk of heartbreak.
Title: "Explorations in Super8." ...I'd meant to title it "Experiments in Super8", and when I got to the end of animating the first word, found myself wondering why the letters didn't fit as planned!
posted by sven | permalink | comments (0) | categories: classes & workshops, movies, stopmo
January 8, 2006
script: mud & metal
by sven at 9:55 pm
Yesterday I wrote a new script. I'm very excited about it... When it was done, I read the whole thing through... and cried! (Of course, I have the benefit of perfectly heartbreaking mental visuals to go along with it.) I used the new story generating strategy a third time, brainstorming ideas as a numbered series. Read them as a text file.
This is the story of a young robot losing the human that takes care of him, told in three acts. ...I say "acts" -- but it's really a short piece, probably four minutes long -- reading more like haiku than theatre. Still, there are three distinct movements: the first is a "gotcha" gag; the second is straight comedy; the third: tragedy. ...I like how the the third act hits just that much harder because you were laughing only a moment ago.
Anyway, without further ado, here's the script:
MUD & METAL
January 7, 2006
ACT I.
They're a little unnerving
And we're so dependent on them.
What if they rose up against us?
Still...
Some of my best friends are human.
ACT II.
Human: After we're gone, you'll still be here
I tried to make you everything I'm not.
Robot: Why? Are you ashamed?
Human: We are... hungry, unhappy, smelly, confused.
People are made of clay.
But you -- metal is immortal.
Robot: I wish I could fart.
ACT III.
I can't always tell
if you're sleeping.
I wait
and I worry
If you die
who will take care of me?
posted by sven | permalink | comments (0) | categories: movies, stopmo, writing
January 7, 2006
Attention Surplus Disorder (ASD)
by sven at 4:17 am
Thursday I had crazy laser focus and wound up creating a complete stopmo short: all the way from getting the idea to having a compressed movie ready to put online. Biggest one yet by far: 1 minute 20 seconds -- that's one thousand nine hundred thirty eight frames that I shot!
I didn't start the day with any particular project in mind. I just wanted to keep experimenting. So, using my new story generating strategy, I brainstormed 18 ideas for films that could use blocks as main characters. Read them as a text file.
After 2 hrs 15 min, this is the idea I decided I wanted to run with:
#013 FIRST PICK
Back to writing words on the backdrop. Maybe as the characters speak, words are added to the backdrop without erasing the previous ones. The dialogue is added increasingly quickly and angrily, until the air is blackened with accusations. If I were easily able to do it with Super8, I'd then have everything go still, and let it all fade away, being replaced by a clear white backdrop again. If I were going for crude, one of the characters would then say: "So, wanna f*ck?" Or, the punch line, after all the furor could be "I love you." Or I could try to steal that beautiful scene between Tara and Willow on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" where Tara says "I know we have so much to repair... but could we be kissing now?" (paraphrase). ...In this set up, the cubes hardly move, except maybe to twist and turn a bit while talking. All the action is in what's being written up above them. This is probably not more than a minute-long gag: as the air gets increasingly cluttered with words, you either have to focus on the words or the cubes -- you can only really show the whole conversation written above the cubes and have it remain legible early in the game.
...It's not all hashed out -- but you can see the germ there.
I was working in the livingroom again -- but this time I bothered to set up better lights -- and I put my 2'x2' hardboard "stage" up on the piano bench, so I'd be able to place the camera more easily. I was sloppy with the backdrop, though -- it's a piece of of big newsprint folded over another piece of hardboard, not even taped on. It shifted a little during the shoot -- but I got lucky, and it didn't give me too much trouble.
The real pain this time was when I'd bump the camera. With such small characters, I had to have the camera right at the edge of the set -- forcing me to contort around it to do the animating. Important lesson: I think I'm going to make a point of using larger puppets in the future, so the camera can be farther back, giving me more elbow room. Glad I learned this while working in digital... A Super8 cam is much trickier to focus; bigger puppets will save me a lot of grief.
For folks who are wondering about tech details, here's the scoop. I'm shooting photos with a Canon Powershot G5 digital camera. I'm using the laptop computer to activate the shutter release, using a software application that came with the camera: RemoteCapture. The computer is a Macintosh PowerBook G4. I've been doing research on framegrabber software, but none was used on this project.
...Overall, I'm thrilled with the piece. There are some glaring problems: I bumped the camera several times, there are pauses that last too long, the spinning sequence is too slow, and the blocks' "body language" doesn't always make sense. Even so, it's a complete story -- which counts for a lot. And there are several bits that came out really well -- like when the zig-zags shoot around and you see the action carry over from one shot into another, and when the word "really?" seems to wrap itself around the cube.
It took seven hours, non-stop, to shoot. That's about 11 seconds of footage per hour. My previous experiment with animating blocks averaged out to 10 seconds of footage per hour -- so it looks like I'm pretty consistent (at least with these puppets). I finished the thing at 2:45 in the morning. Exhausted...
But euphoric. :-)
posted by sven | permalink | comments (4) | categories: movies, stopmo, writing
January 6, 2006
while moon baby's in the hospital...
by sven at 11:59 pm
Tuesday and Wednesday I did a few more simple stopmo experiments. Can't let Moon Baby being in the hospital bring everything to a halt!
Tuesday night I went over to the studio; threw together a bit of 2"x2" pine scrap, masonite, and bronze (?) wire; painted it all white, and taped on a paper face. ...Voila! New puppet.
It only took about an hour to make; I consider it a throw-away. The masonite base is so I don't have to worry about tie-downs and walking for a while; it just slides around. The arms are too stiff to do much with... However, I did try something new: drilling holes in the torso, and weaving the strands of wire through -- a good idea that I'm borrowing from Nick Hilligoss. I also gave this puppet some fingers using very thin aluminum wire, just to get a feeling for what that would be like.
Earlier Tuesday afternoon I was brainstorming story ideas. When I was making this clip, I had this story germ in mind:
"a solitary artist [...] nightly looks at the stars, paints them and paints them, and ultimately releases a star into the sky from his own chest"
I liked the look of the puppet interacting with the paintbrush -- but it also turned out to be pretty difficult making it grip the prop. Puppet hands aren't people hands; that's something I'll have to remember. Maybe they'd grip better if I exaggerated the length of the fingers?
When the painter in the first clip is making his spiral line, that was drawn in with a black crayola marker. ...I wanted something without fumes! The look was so appealing, I decided to try something else with the markers.
The light in this second clip is pretty awful -- I've been doing my work on the livingroom floor again. Gretchin was typing on the couch, so I wanted to hang out with her. ...This experiment was a nice surprise for her when she finally looked up, too. :-)
I did this third clip the following night, after being out doing Artist's Way postering all day. Again, terrible lighting in the livingroom -- and I forgot to turn off the camera's auto-focus for the first bit. Still, this was my longest stopmo clip to date -- 363 frames @ 24 fps for 15 sec.
Like I said in my last post, I'm thinking now that the final project ought to be done animating objects rather than puppets -- hence the blocks. The blocks were cut off the same 2"x2" piece of pine that the artist puppet came from -- using a miter saw to get straight lines. I taped on photocopies of my face just to make them a bit more interesting. I chose to go with black and white because the Super8 final project will ultimately be shot on b/w filmstock.
My lesson while working on this clip: it's easy to make things zip around on screen way too fast! Move the obje