Lighting Set-up -
Lighting within this animation went through too phases, In the first 'shoot' of my animation the lighting was a lot more visually artificial with a orangey glare but in the most resent re-filmed version the lighting is much more natural as I moved the whole set up near a window which gave natural light in giving a much more natural look to the animation which I wanted as it relates to the story being outside on the street, because of this natural light I did not need to use a lighting rig at all in the re-filmed final version. The initial test shots the two images below clearly indicate a large difference in their lighting. The left showing a much clearer natural light and the one on the right showing more of a glaring orange artificial light. The main purpose with this animation is to make it seem very realistic and true to the storyline, it needed to look as if it were shot in a real street environment. So I have decided from these test shots we would like to use a similar light to what is shown on the image on the left. This was done using natural lighting shooting the animation near a window, with clear skies so particularly sunny weather. This gave me a clear and natural white light and less of a dark glare like the photo on the right. The lighting in the right image was done using a portable lamp borrowed from my schools media department. I tried many different angles when locating this lamp however we still gained the dark orange glare from each one as the room was dark, this style of lighting would be good if it was a sun setting, be this was obviously not wanted in this animation.
Camera Set-up
In this test shot sequence, Me and my classmate made the decision that we wanted the camera to pan from left to right using the stop motion technique, this shot would of been to almost set the scene to the viewers. We did this by freehand, not using a tripod or any other stabilising equipment. This unfortunately showed us in a small sequence that the camera was very jumpy changing to a new position every shot which was very unsatisfying for the viewer and not the smooth pan we had wished for. Me and my classmate then decided that when I film this animation properly I should defiantly use a tripod and a wide enough angle to set the scene without having to move the tripod with the camera for any advanced camera transitions, as we both feel sticking with one angle will be the best option for me with the limited equipment I have on offer. The test shots below show how I felt adding a zooming effect to the animation would be a affective camera technique with stop motion but this didn't pan out the way I wanted as the DSLR couldn't focus in on the extreme close up I wanted out of it, I would have helped if I had a close up macro lens for the camera but unfortunately I didn't have one to hand, so sadly this idea couldn't be progresses. I wanted the zooming effect to try and pick up the homeless characters emotion as I feel Crisis would have enjoyed this as it starts to show the struggles homeless people have to go through on a day-to-day basis. The images below show this 'zooming test' we attempted, the left image shows the establishing shot setting the scene, and the image on the right shows us attempting to zoom towards the characters, because these are test shots most of them got deleted in the process so I apologise for the bad quality and the random jump between shots, however when watching our first test animation shown on this blog, you can see the frequent jolting of the camera, as we didn't use any stabilising equipment such as a tripod.
General Smoothness & Mise En Scene
In the camera test shots it was mostly to just get the lighting and camera position and focus correct, these were the most important things to this animation for me because if these elements are strong it will give a polished satisfying visual to the production. For the test shots I did use a tripod but unfortunately the tripod wasn't of high quality being rather flimsy and it wasn't rock steady how I would of liked, that's why there was a noticeable jolt within the shots. But In the final re-filmed version of my animation this problem has been resolved with the use of a better tripod and some weights to weigh it down, this made for steady shot to really highlight the stop motion style.
Luckily these test shots where before I started shooting the actual animation so the set, props, backgrounds and characters were all in place, so it gave me the best experience before hand to practise the camera on, there is a lot going on in our animation because I made the set to look like a street so I wanted to keep the focus on the crisis logo and the main characters in the animation, so I used manual focus for all of the animation to keep this focus on the characters and logo. When the car came into shot I was worried it would dominate the shot as its closer but because of the manual focus it blurs the car our so you don't particularly notice it. Through the camera test shots I realised you cant get extreme close ups on the very small lego characters as the camera just cant cope, so this was another worry of mine that the I wouldn't be able to express any emotion through the characters as they are so very small. To move the characters around and keep them in place I used Blu-Tac on their feet and this proved a successful decision as they stayed firmly frozen in place for me to get the shot, it did take a long while to gradually shift the characters along but the more detail and time you put into it you get a lot more out with smoother looking transitions.
Distinction
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