Visual Effects Editing guide

Stop Motion style of animation is a visual effect in itself as you are generating a illusion of movement through pictures. Because you are using raw photographs to make the animation it is very easy to create visual effects on a budget. One of these effects could be where you want a character or object to appear like its flying in the shot, so this is what you do; you have to get some-sort of string to firmly hold the object or character in place, and then up move and hold it in the desired location then use the burst function on your camera and then hastily snap up the pictures, after this you are going to need to edit the pictures so I'd advise putting them into a editorial piece of software such as Adobe Photoshop and then you can edit the piece of string out of each picture and then load it into your production sequence for your animation. A good example of this style of effect is Wallace & Gromit made by the world renowned Aardman studios. They most likely didnt use this style of hold the armature with a piece of string as they have a large budget where they can use state of the art software and equipment.

In my animation I did not use any visual effects as they were not needed to project the image I wanted to project for my client the British charity Crisis, but for other animation projects I would definitely consider using visual effects as they add sense of amazement and wonder to the viewer. Visual effects can be found in a number of different formats such as miniature sets and models, matte paintings, live action effects (actors being placed in front of a green screen or blue screen). Large production companys and studios pay out extreme amounts of money to use state of the art effects in their animations this is the bad side to the visual effects world they can be extremely costly, such as with live-action filming using a green or blue screen it costs extortionate amounts to generate the computer generated imagery to be on the blue/green screen, and that's before just the studio costs of filming the scene.

In this next Section I'm going to explain further how to create a stop motion visual effect of a character falling from the sky. 

Step 1: (Materials & props)                                    Get your characters that you want to use for example lego person,  materials for your background and props etc. Find a clamp or tripod like structure with a solid heavy base that could hover above your set, to create this effect you will would be needing a piece of string on a roll (preferably a long piece 4-5m) as this will help you understand the required length much easier and faster. Of course you will also be needing a camera and a tripod to capture the visuals, a camera such as an DSLR that takes bursts of photos only would be the best. The tripod is essential in order to keep a still shot throughout the animation, so I would invest in a heavy duty solid one to keep the frame absolutely frozen in place.




  

Step 2: (Setting up Equipment)

Place the clamp or tripod so that it will not be in any of the shots of your animation, then you will be needing to cut your piece of string to the required length so that you can lower it each time a photo is taken of the character (Or if you have another pair of spare hands about they could just lower the string while you use the burst function on your camera). You will need to lower it closer and closer to the ground of the set. Next you will need to tie a knot around the lego characters torso securely to hold them place. The final stage should be setting up your backdrops and other props getting them in place to your requirements.


Stage 3: (Acquiring your footage)

This is one of the most important stages in making your animation, it is deciding where you would like to place your tripod and camera for your shot angles. After you've decided your camera angles and positions then you now need to start taking photos of the gradual change of the character falling closer and closer to the ground gradually and fluidly between shots. Through previous experience I suggest each time you change the characters movements you take a burst of at least 3 photos as this will make the movement look smooth and not too quick and sudden. After you have completed this transition of the character falling to the ground, we move to stage four.

Stage 4: (editing)                                                                                                        In this stage you will have to be located to a computer that has some sort of editing program for example - 'Final Cut'. When you have opened this you will need to start uploading your images into the program, you do this by connecting your camera to the computer you do this with the supplied usb lead  and plugging it into the computer and camera. Once the images have then been uploaded onto your desktop or file on your computer, then you highlight all the images and drag them into a photo organizing program I use a stop motion program called 'iStopMotion', one all organized before you export the file your going to need to edit the string out of some pictures that have it in it so...


Stage 5: (photoshop)                                                                                               As you have used string to hold the character up in place you will need to rub the string

out in order to make it seem like the character has actually fallen through into the shot from the sky to the ground. A DSLR style of camera, makes this stage much easier as they are built to have fast shutter speeds, this helps dramatically when shooting this style of shot because it captures the moment quickly making the animation just look generally smoother. Your going to have to use a photo editing piece of software such as Adobe Photoshop to rub out the string as it is a photo, when it is filmed footage it is much harder to edit within photoshop because filmed footage is fluid and realistic. You will need to place each image into photoshop and click the rubber tool to start erasing the string which will make the character eventually look as if it is falling down. You will need to save these images a JPEG. You will need to place the edited pictures back into iStopMotion and then export the file as a .mov and then import it into final cut, the images will already be in order so that you don't need to shift through them in order. The images will also be in sequence as well so it will be a smooth transition through the pictures. Now it is in Final Cut you can now drag the file into your timeline and there you have your finished visual effects piece.



Camera Test Shot Analsis

In this piece of work I'm going to discuss how I set up the mise en scene of my animation, the camera set up, and also the lighting choices I took. The images below are all the 'test', shots and were not used in the final animation piece.


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.

Evaluation: Presentation for Crisis Animation

The first segment of this piece will show Crisis's evaluation of my filmed charity animation and the second segment will show what went well and what could have been done better within my pitch with a class mate that was aimed towards the charity recently about our animation. The screenshots in the Last section are of our power point made presentation which we used to pitch to Crisis.


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Crisis overall gave positive feedback about my animation, they specifically liked the way I have used lots of different textures to create this advertisement, in this they mean that I have used a choice of backgrounds and then I have used lego for the characters and then other materials onto of that like plasticine and felt, and also the way that the animation transcended into a real life piece of stop motion. They enjoyed this a lot because it will appeal to a wide variety of people from children to adults.
They loved the story line of the animation as they all felt it represents what they do, and what they want to project to a audience. They liked how I have captured how easy it is to change a homeless persons life, and ultimately get them off the street. They felt the way I have made a transition between him on the street to him in a pleasant bedroom was a key to making this a success, because this is what Crisis aim to do with every homeless person, so by showing this it gives a valid reason why to donate to this charity.


Crisis felt the voice over in this animation piece was very strong as it gave a powerful message that they want as it gets the audience involved with the charity, using persuasive techniques such as rhetorical questions, these will hopefully engage with the listener and they will donate to the charity as Crisis have put out a positive and passionate message to help solve homelessness in the UK. Crisis loved the just the way the animation came across to them as a average audience, it reflected them as they desired, giving a professional 'corporate' look but with a drop of quirkiness added to it with the different textures which give it a homely feel with the use of lego which symbolizes youth and if a child was playing with lego it would be in a place where there is  roof over their head, so parents might relate to this.

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Crisis didn't have much criticism for me, as they loved the concept and the physical animation piece. However they did say they would of possibly like a longer introduction that maybe shown the things the average homeless person has to deal with on a daily basis in london, for example the main things are: Hunger, Shelter and Protection. Making this animation I wanted to make it appeal to a younger audience as well because we want to prevent this problem, so if doing this 'longer intro', crisis would have liked it would of supported this a lot more. They suggested the idea of possibly having the homeless man as a teenager to show that people are not born homeless in a normal instance, and hopefully having an affect on a youth audience to show them that they don't want to get to the point of homelessness because its not pleasant. But in this I feel I have met Crisis's main requirements as its persuasive and powerful thus hopefully getting donations.

Pitch Evaluation

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Crisis enjoyed our pitch as we both have had experience in front of an audience pitching our ideas. They enjoyed how each of the presentation expressed a clear process of the design and production of our animation, how we developed it etc. They also appreciated how we done a lot on in-depth hard work into looking into Crisis and how we could promote them as an organisation to get more people dedicated towards their cause. Work I have previously done (on this blog) was also placed into the presentation, these pieces of work were the moodboard of the charity and what we thought the charity entailed with general research upon them. Crisis explained that we had placed a large amount of research work into the animation.

Crisis also liked how clear we were in terms of reaching our target, which was 'To generate a charity animation that appealed well to a young audience' I wanted Crisis to know I personally express that we had reached this goal from our feedback questionnaires that we obtained from a varied audience. Crisis then gave me their final evaluation and verdict on my animation. They explained me and my classmate were clear, confident in our presenting style and also that we reached our goal, which helped them understand as much of the development process as possible and also enjoyed our animation of course.

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Moving onto what we could have done better within this pitch, Crisis then again didn't have an entire lot to say about what could have been done better. The one thing they highlighted though, was where they said we could have brought in physical evidence for them to look closer at (hand outs). An example that they suggested were our storyboards, due to the storyboard ideas not being very clear on the powerpoint. They wished to analyse them further so that they could see the details and what I changed for the  final idea and possibly ask us questions that we could improvise on to test our presentation skills further, such as 'Why were these changes made? or Do you want to develop these ideas further?'

         

Editorial Decisions List

Within this animation for the homeless charity Crisis there was not a large amount of editing that needed to be done. All of the photos to comprise this stop motion animation were taken on a DSLR camera, luckily the photos were already in order, so this means I didn't have to do much structuring to the pictures as they where in order; however I did have to take out pictures that I felt were not good enough to go into the animation as the lighting was either off or the picture was not relevant. The main piece of editing that was done to this piece was the audio. I have added a backing track that assists the tone of the animation and also a voice over done by myself to explain to the audience why I am making this animation. At the end of the animation I have strategically placed the Crisis logo as well as there website link below to show where people could donate. I will now go into detail with my edit of the Crisis animation:

The first stage of the edit this animation was placing the photos into iStopMotion and then importing the edited clips into final cut, (I this animation had to be edited on final cut), due to the pictures edited in order on iStopMotion I had exported them as clips, so the pictures where in the correct order and time per frame already. I searched for a backing track that had to reflect this animation and the feeling I wanted to portray from watching it, I felt a progressive gentle ambient sound would be suitable for this and wouldn't be too harsh on the ear so it would be good too lead and back the voiceover. Once I found the track I wanted, I dragged the mp3 file into my final cut timeline and cut it to fit the required size. As we start to get to the end of the animation I have slowly faded the backing track out to tell the audience that the advertisement has finished but also giving them a period of quietness that will allow them to think about how they are going to help homelessness. This gradual fade out was also done for the audiences satisfaction to not give an abrasive cut, so its a smooth transition not startling the audience which I do not want to do as I feel this would send out the wrong message about Crisis.

A extremely large factor to this animation was the audio options, I wanted to record a voiceover as I feel they are very persuasive as it is the personable voice of a human, after recording this voiceover I knew I wanted to have a gentle backing track to keep the audiences engaged in the pauses between where I speak. The voiceover was recorded at my home where I used a large diaphragm condenser microphone to record onto a piece of software called Mixcraft, where I then mixed the file into a mp3 format so I could then drag it into Final Cut to get edited into the finished product that it is now. I my voice over in the position I felt it would be most effective in the animation as I didn't want it to start too early or finish to early as this wouldn't give a satisfying feel. The music underneath backing this voiceover has been used in adjacent to it, this is to stress Crisis's message, and ultimately get people to donate to this charity.

The last piece of editing within my animation was getting Crisis's logo and there donation website link in the ending sequence of the animation. I this by writing the website link into a piece of software called live type and then picking the font I felt was appropriate for and then its transition into the frame; which was just a simple one as I wanted it to look serious so I felt a simple transition would work best at gaining this look, then I saved the file. I dragged this file into my final cut timeline. This link is very important because it tells the audience where to donate and this is the purpose of the animation to gain interest in the charity. The Crisis logo on top of the website link was done simply by searching the internet and saving the best quality image I could find to my desktop, from there I dragged it into my final cut piece. I did this as it tells the audience the charity's name and it is the main part of marketing for the charity I want people to link the homeless animation with that logo so whenever they think of a homeless person they will make the connection with the charity.

Below is my Final cut timeline which shows the edit in its raw form:

Animation: Analysis of Movement

Previously mentioned in other pieces of work, I had to re-film this animation as the first rendition was not up to the standard I would of liked, this was due to the extremely unsatisfying camera shots jumping around. This made it hard to even focus on the characters and make out they are even moving. With this new re-shot animation I have solved these issues, I done this by using a solid tripod with weights to hold it down, this made sure the camera was still  when taking the shots. This piece of work is going to be based on the new re-filmed version.

I have taken screenshots of some of the main movement within this animation, these screenshots will give you a basic representation of the movement of the charters and objects.  

This first screen shot shows a homeless person in the middle of the shot, he is in a residential street and you can see he has his back up against  a wall, to comply with the stereotypical homeless 'look', I have wrapped him in a piece of felt to look like a cover for warmth. The homeless man doesn't move a lot as he is sitting on the floor, but if you move your attention to the two characters right on the sides of the frame the man is coming into the shot and the woman is chatting with another pedestrian and getting ready to move out of shot. I shot the animation from this angle because this is how I feel you'd see this situation happening in the street, in the perspective of a pedestrian in the street. 

In the second and third screenshot you can see it is relatively the same as the first original one, other than now  in these it is evident that the outside characters are moving the gentleman on the right hand side of the frame is walking with a normal pace towards the homeless man, and the woman on the left side of the screen is departing from her conversation and leaving the frame.

In these screenshots we lose one character and have the entrance of an object and slightly part of a character that quickly comes out of frame again. In the first shot of these four, you can just about see on the right hand side that the entrance of a green car is starting to become apparent. Also the man in the middle has walked to the homeless man and he is about to put money in the homeless man's cup interacting with him. The woman is still in the frame but she is walking out of the shot, and the person she was talking to has had more coverage in this shot as he starts to cross the road. In the next couple of screenshots you can see this movement progresses at a suitable and accurate rate to make the movement smooth like as it were real. The main progression is the car coming across the screen, as you can see I used manual focus to keep focus on the homeless man as he is the main character and the car is just for mise en scene. The man putting money into the homeless mans cup, gestures in the last shot here to 'look up', at the graffiti/sign on the wall behind him.

In this section of shots you can see there is a complete change in setting, and use of real life footage even though it is still in the stop motion format. In these shots it shows with a close up that the gentleman was putting money into the homeless mans cup and then the gentleman points up at the sign to tell the homeless man to look up. 

In this small section it cuts back to the previous setting and the movement just carries on progressing to give a smooth transition not cutting important scenes out 

In this section of shots its very basic the man giving the homeless man money is starting to depart from the shot, he has just spoken to the homeless man and told him to look up at the sign on the wall above him, and now he is walking off to disappear from the frame; this gradually progresses within these shots. Another change in movement in these shots is that the homeless man stands up and turns around to observe this sign the kind man was telling him to look at; this progresses within these shots as well.

This section of shots shows a change in setting, here we see the homeless man in his new room smiling and looking much healthier. The movement in this carries on from the previous shots outside where he's got his back to the camera and then... in these shots he starts of with his back to the camera and then turns around looking much happier he has had help from Crisis a charity to help homeless people and get them off the street.

At the end of this in the last shot you can't see it in the screenshots but the character twists his hand giving a 'waving' effect aswell to emphasis he is in good health. 

FEEDBACK TJ

U27 LO3 - Doc Research

Distinction - Research to a near pro standard with large amount of detail from a range of sources

U5 LO1 - Doc Research

Distinction - Research to a near pro standard with large amount of detail from a range of sources

U27 LO4 - Production Log

Distinction - Planned to a near pro standard, i get a clear sense of the production process.

U5 LO3 - Production Log

Distinction - Planned to a near pro standard, i get a clear sense of the production process.

Final Filmed Animation