Script On Stop Motion 6md56

Welcome to the world of stop motion animation. Stop motion animation is a filming technique that manipulates objects to look as if they are moving on their own: the objects are moved ever so slightly between each photo being taken creating the illusion that objects are moving continuously as the frames are played, this illusion is called ‘persistence of vision’. This happens because the frame’s rate is moving faster than the speed human eye can comprehend. It is this illusion that is called persistence of vision. Frame rate per second is how many pictures are in one second, if a it says 12 frames per second then in is a very quick frame because there are only very few pictures in that one second where as if you have 100 then it will be a lot slower because the video needs to add more picture into a certain frame. The two most famous stop motion animators working today are Tim Burton and Nick Parks of Aardman animations. Both have managed to adapt their skills of Claymation to adapt to different audiences and that is why they have become two of the biggest names in the world of stop motion. Aardman was started in 1972 by Peter Lord and David Sproxton who created Morph, one of the most recognisable characters ever for a kids show. Channel 4 subsequently commissioned a show called ‘conversational pieces’ in 1982. Since then Aardman made adverts ,TV shows and Oscar winning feature length films with the Wallace and Gromit series. Aardman animations differ from Tim Burton’s work; they create colourful films for the whole family .Rather than making characters mythical or impossible, Aardman anthropomorphise instead of using puppets their signature look is clay and wire. This makes it a lot easier to change the characters’ emotions. The problem with this type of animation is that if something goes wrong then you have restart the whole scene because it would make the scene look jumpy if the mouth shifted very suddenly in another direction it would also make it look unrealisitic. This process of stop motion with this material

makes the whole process a lot longer than with puppets or another material for that matter. With 40 animators working on feature length film, 20 frames per second instead of the usual 24 and with over 20 characters you can understand why it takes them so long to create an Aardman films. In the pursuit of realism, each of the characters wore different scarfs, not only to tell them apart but to hide the seams in the clay. With Tim Burton, It is his growth in the film industry that makes him so unique and irreplaceable to Hollywood. His talent of being able to go from stop motion films like Nightmare before Christmas to films like Beatlejuice. Tim Burton creates sinister cartoons, with the characters usually being undead and having human emotions and problems except these human traits tend to be exaggerated like the groom in Corpse Bride. Burton is known for his classic gothic films for young teenagers, films like Beetlejuice, Nightmare before Christmas, and Alice in Wonderland. Alice in Wonderland made $1 billion worldwide. He has a signature look with his films which is a decaying look even if they are bright colours there will still be dingy look to it all. Burton has a career as a director these days moving from the role of an animator for the Disney corporation in the 1980s. With all of his stop motion films where he uses materials he makes the animators use their nondominant hand to manipulate and create the figures so that they can portray if signature, twisted look. Nightmare before Christmas reflected Burton’s talent as animato: the film had 227 puppets involved in it with 21 frames per second and the lead character Jack Skeleton had approximately 400 heads . Each smile, each frown had to be changed ever so slightly to convey every emotion. The film took 3 years took make. You can easily see the inspiration/techniques he had learnt from past animators like Willis O’Brien with his idea of moving the models ever so slightly and taking picture on each movement to create the illusion of all the separate

pictures moving as one. Except Burton was one of the first animators/directors to use different emotions on characters and certainly the first to make the characters so dramatic with dancing and singing. This would have put great strain on his animators because it would have that to create the persistence of vision; the frames per second would have to be amped up and dropped down depending on the tempo of the song. These days, you could fix that with editing equipment but in the early 90’s the editing equipment wasn’t sophisticated enough . Now let’s start from the beginning: the inventors that help us see the persistence of vision, would create the idea of stop frame and frame rates and the people who revolutionised the movement of models. The pioneers of this technique were the Lumiere brothers and George Pal. Thomas A. Edison created the kinetoscope, this ran film between a light and a peep hole, and when you look through the peep whole it created the illusion of all the images moving as one. He wanted to make an instrument which recorded and reproduced the pictures in a motion like the phonograph had done for the human ear. The film reel was stretched over two wheels that rotated the images like a conveyor belt. The ‘tape’ had to be very tight to make a clear picture; if the cogs buckled then the film stopped and could ruin the film reel. There were so many cogs with the kinetoscope that when it was cranked it made so much noise and distracted the audience; but later versions of the instruments were improved which led to the invention of the cinematograph. The Lumeire brothers created the first ever film projector called the cinematograph. Which meant they also created the first projector which meant the first cinemas, they took the inspiration from the kinetoscope which shone light onto images to make the illusion of them moving each time the light stopped for less than a second. The brothers invention put the film real inside, in-between a light and a lenses. The light would shine on the film and therefore

project it. The machine was hand cranked and went around the speed of 16 frames per second which was considerably faster than Edison’s Kinetescope which went at 48 fps. This meant that a lot less film was used and that the noise of the machine was reduced because it ran smoother overcoming the noise problem of Edison’s Machine. The films didn’t buffer nearly as much as Edison’s because the film was placed on a wheel, so when the hand crank is turned the wheel with the film on runs on it. The movement of models in stop motion first started with George Pal. Pal was a pioneer of stop motion, he created the first science fiction films. He first started illustrating posters and then once his talent was recognised he worked at the UFA Studios in Berlin and shortly after ing became director of his department. He created the idea of stop motion photography, unlike Willis O’Brien who invented the concept of making stop motion into persistence of vision. Instead of a cartoon approach to his work, Pal invented his own way of making inanimate objects move by using stop motion photography. He was one of the first animators/directors to personify inanimate object for example he gave cigarette ‘faces’. Pal created the idea that with each movement you could take a picture and create the illusion of the image moving. He was the first person combine the unknown of space and stop motion which from a stop frame point of view allows a lot more room for creative movement because the audience won’t know how the monsters move. This opened up a lot more ideas for how to make stop motion models as before this there were only pictures or static models but Pal created models with clay – a technique which to this day is still used for feature length stop motion films. The use of clay allowed the story to have narrative as well as being able to focus in on emotions and move the limbs. Willis O’Brien developed CGI effects in animation as early as 1949. He helped create one of the most iconic scenes in film history; King Kong

on New York’s Empire State Building. O’Brien made the giant gorilla out of modelling clay and came up with the idea that if you moved the model very gradually and took a photo on each movement and editing the separate pictures to make the illusion of the pictures moving like film. He used a large frame rate this means there were a lot of pictures per second, the frame rate for the Empire State scene was 24 frames per second. His contributions to films such as the Lost World and Joe Young didn’t go unnoticed in Hollywood. The ASIFA-Hollywood said “he was responsible for the best moving images in cinematic history”. He won countless awards including “best visual effects” at the Academy Awards 1950 for Mighty Joe Young. A young O’Brien spent his spare time drawing and sculpting this earned him a job as a draftsman at an architect firm and then a cartoonist for the San Francisco Daily News. As assistant to the head architect of the 1915 San Francisco World’s Fair some of his sculptures were displayed and this is where he was first recognised as an artist. The pieces that were displayed were animated sculptures from O’Brien’s past jobs like his model of a dinosaur and a caveman from his job as a palaeontologist. Because of his ground breaking work in the animation industry, Herman Wobber “an exhibitor saw his talents and offered him a commission to make his own short film. Edison hired him to animate short films with prehistoric themes behind them. It was O’Brien that developed models in stop motion by using different materials like clay, better pictures and better technology with understanding that the more frames you have per second, the better the outcome. Ray Harryhausen was one of the most influential stop motion animators and was inspired by George Pal’s science fiction shorts and Willis O’Brien’s action stop motion scenes. HarryHausen is most well-known for feature films such as Clash of the Titans in 1981 and Jason and the Argonauts in 1961. He created a kind of stop motion called ‘dyanimation’ which is essentially models working with human actors.

+Such as this classic skeleton fight scene from Jason and the Argonauts. As you can see in the skeleton battle here, the film was over lapped so it make it seem as though the actors and skeletons were shot at the same time but what actually happens is the actors are filmed first on set and then the models are on a white set with exactly the same lighting that so that they can crop the foreground out so it looks like the monsters and the actors are on the same set. After seeing King Kong Harryhausen was fascinated by stop motion and so took it up as a hobby but a friend was able to set up a meeting where O’Brien could critique his work; he was told to go to art design and sculpture classes, after shortly he was hired by George Pal to create short animated films. It this that led to the creation of dynamation and then work with O’Brien.

References http://earlycinema.com/technology/kinetoscope.html http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0639891/ http://www.lomography.com/magazine/124654-stop-motion-animation-thenightmare-before-christmas http://www.lomography.com/magazine/128858-stop-motion-animation-chickenrun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_H._O%27Brien